Six-Week Summer Fitness Packet: Off-Season Training for Serious Players
Here's what preseason reveals every single year without fail: the players who did the work over the summer hit the ground running, and the players who didn't spend the first week just trying to keep up — while everyone else is already a week ahead of them.
That gap closes eventually. It just costs them.
So we built a packet. Six weeks. Progressive load. Ball comes in at week two. No gym required — a ball, a bit of space, and the discipline to do the work when nobody's watching. That's all it takes.
Download the Summer Fitness Packet (PDF)
What's in the packet
The six weeks are structured into four phases that mirror what a proper preseason would do, compressed into the time your players have before camp starts.
Weeks 1–2: Aerobic Foundation. Easy running and core work. Conversation pace throughout — if a player can't hold a sentence, they're going too hard. No ball yet. The body needs a chance to adapt before you throw intensity at it.
Weeks 3–4: Ball Integration and Mixed Load. The ball enters the picture. Rondos, dribble circuits, passing against a wall, possession squares. Technical sessions double as conditioning sessions — keep the intensity moderate and the touches deliberate. Week four steps the load up. It should feel harder.
Week 5: Intensity Build. This is where it hurts a bit. Sprint intervals, high-intensity rondos, 1v0 attacking runs at match pace. Saturday of week five is benchmark test day — players run their mile, their 200m repeats, their beep test. They write it down. They compare it against the targets and they send it to you.
Week 6: Preseason Simulation. Long sessions that replicate what camp actually feels like. Then a taper from Thursday so players arrive fresh, not wrung out.
The fitness benchmarks
These are the targets players should arrive at preseason able to hit. They run the tests themselves in week five.
| Test | Varsity Target | JV Target |
|---|---|---|
| Mile run | Sub 6:30 | Sub 7:00 |
| Beep test | Level 12+ | Level 10+ |
| 200m repeat (×6, 90-sec rest) | Sub 35 sec | Sub 40 sec |
| 5km | Sub 23:00 | Sub 26:00 |
Honest self-testing matters more than the numbers. A player who sandbagged their 200m in week five will be exposed in the first training session. They know it, and you'll know it.
The rules players actually need to follow
The packet includes a full guidelines section, but these are the ones that get ignored and shouldn't be.
Sleep. Eight to nine hours. Non-negotiable. This is when adaptation actually happens. Late nights cancel the work.
Nutrition. Eat within thirty minutes of finishing a session — protein and carbs. Don't complicate it. Real food in reasonable quantities.
Weak foot. Every single session that involves a ball: twenty percent of the time on the weaker foot. Every session. Not most sessions. Every session. The season starts and that window closes.
Missed days. Miss one day, continue from where they left off. Miss three in a row, restart the current week. Don't double up to catch up — that's how you get injuries before camp even starts.
How to use it
Print it or share the PDF link with your squad. There's an accountability log at the back — a simple checkbox grid, one row per week, one column per day. Blank boxes at the end of the week are a conversation. That's by design.
The check-in on benchmark day (week five Saturday) is the bit coaches often skip, and it's the bit that matters most. If a player texts you their results, they did the work. If they don't, that's also information.
Download the full six-week summer fitness packet here
Print it, send the link, or drop it in your team group chat. The work is there. It's on them now.
If you want to tailor the programme to your squad's fitness level or build something different for a specific player, ask the Gaffer and bring the context — what age group, what position, what you already know about where they're starting from. We go from there.