Smart Training: How Often Should Footballers Do Strength and Conditioning for Best Results?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to how many S&C sessions a footballer should do each week. The real question isn’t just how often to train, but what to train, how intensely, and when in relation to matches and football training.

Done well, S&C improves performance and reduces injury risk. Done poorly, it can cause fatigue, interfere with technical development, or even lead to injury. As a general guideline, 2-4 sessions per week is appropriate for most footballers, depending on their age, training background, and overall weekly workload. But frequency alone doesn’t guarantee progress – the key is strategic planning, smart intensity management, and proper exercise selection.

Why Session Timing Matters

A session’s placement in the week is just as important as its content. For example:

• Matchday -1: Ideal for low-volume power work (e.g. jumps, throws) to prime the nervous system. Core and injury-prevention exercises also fit well here due to their low fatigue.

• Matchday +1 (recovery day): Best for mobility, stretching, and very light movement-based sessions to promote circulation without overload.

• Strength Sessions: Should be placed furthest from matches (typically 48+ hours before or after) to allow for full recovery and maximum output.

A poorly timed session – such as high-volume leg strength work the day before a match – can reduce speed, limit sharpness, and increase the risk of soreness and injury. In contrast, a well-placed session can actually enhance performance and support recovery.

Training Intensity is More Than Just Weight, Sets and Reps

Intensity isn’t just about lifting heavy or how much a player sweats. There are two key forms to understand:

• Mechanical Intensity: Relates to load, reps, and sets – the traditional view of how ‘hard’ a session is.

• Neuromuscular Intensity: Relates to how challenging a movement is in terms of balance, coordination, explosiveness and control.

A controlled single-leg landing onto a foam pad may involve no external load, but it places a high neuromuscular demand on the body. The instability challenges joint control, coordination, and balance, requiring constant feedback between the brain and body. Similarly, plyometric exercises (like bounding, hopping, or depth jumps), acceleration drills, and reactive speed work also demand fast, precise movement control and rapid muscle recruitment – all of which tax the nervous system heavily, even if the muscles don’t feel sore afterwards.

These types of exercises highlight how intensity isn’t only about lifting heavy, sweating or feeling tired – it’s also about the technical difficulty, motor control, and neurological load involved in each movement. This kind of stress also needs careful management. Overloading the nervous system – especially when layered on top of technical training or match play – can lead to fatigue, poor movement quality, or even injury if not balanced with rest.

Why a Periodised Plan Beats Random Training Sessions

One of the most common mistakes players make is doing random S&C sessions, even if those sessions are with a qualified coach. Without a structured, periodised plan that considers the player's full weekly and seasonal schedule, these sessions can easily cause more harm than good. Timing matters. For example, placing a high-intensity strength session immediately after a demanding match or late in the week before another game can lead to training interference, poor recovery, and reduced performance.

When key fitness components – like strength, speed, power, and endurance – aren’t strategically balanced, they can work against each other. This is known as competing adaptations. For instance, too much endurance work around strength-focused phases can blunt power development, equally too much neuromuscular load without recovery can stall speed gains. That’s why showing up for isolated sessions with no connection to one another or the rest of your week’s workload can't deliver long-term results.

A well-designed, periodised plan takes into account player goals, match schedule, and recovery needs – ensuring that each session builds on the last and contributes to consistent progress across all areas of performance. In short, random effort produces random results. Periodised planning turns effort into progress.

Effective Training Starts with the Right Guidance

Understanding how to blend different components of fitness into a well-structured, periodised plan is critical for long-term success. It’s not just about creating sessions – it’s about knowing how each element (strength, speed, agility, endurance, mobility, etc.) interacts with the others and how to sequence them correctly to avoid interference and maximise adaptation. When exercises are placed strategically throughout the week, players experience better performance gains, improved recovery, and lower injury risk. Every session builds toward a clear goal, and no effort is wasted.

Without this kind of knowledge or guidance, even the hardest-working players can end up spinning their wheels – putting in hours of training without making meaningful progress, or worse, falling into cycles of fatigue, inconsistency, or injury. Effective training isn’t just about working hard, it’s about working smart and understanding the full picture.

Don’t Overlook Deload Weeks

Every few weeks, players need a strategic drop in intensity and volume – known as a deload week. This isn’t about stopping training, but about pulling back to allow the nervous system and muscles to recover and adapt. Deload weeks are a vital part of any structured training plan, not a sign of slacking off. They allow the body to absorb previous training, reduce accumulated fatigue, and prepare for the next block of progression.

Benefits of well-planned deload weeks include:

• Allowing greater recovery of the nervous system so players return fresher, sharper, and more explosive

• Consolidating gains from previous weeks by giving the body time to adapt and rebuild stronger

• Reducing the risk of overuse injuries by temporarily easing joint and tissue stress

• Maintaining training rhythm and habits without pushing the body into overload

• Creating a mental break that can help restore motivation and focus ahead of the next phase

Skipping deloads or training with the same intensity week after week often leads to plateaus, chronic fatigue, or injury. Strategic rest is what makes long-term progress possible. However, if a player has recently had an inconsistent period due to travel, illness, exams, or a packed match schedule, a formal deload week may not be necessary in this scenario – as a natural reduction in training load has already occurred. However in these cases, it’s still important to monitor how the player is feeling and recovering before returning to full intensity.

Training to Failure Isn’t Necessary

Another common misconception is that training to failure is necessary to build strength and power. Though it might feel logical for a player to push themselves to the limit with every set, constantly going to failure increases injury risk, delays recovery, and can actually slow down long-term progress – especially when combined with the demands of football training and matches.

Instead, footballers should use tools like the RPE scale (Rate of Perceived Exertion) to gauge how hard they’re working (see Chapter 10 for more details). For strength and power development, an RPE of 8 (10 being failure) is usually enough to drive adaptation without tipping into excessive fatigue. Training at the right intensity means players can recover faster, train more consistently across the week, and reduce the chances of injury or burnout. Over time, this consistency is what delivers real results.

Tracking RPE also builds awareness – helping players understand their body, stay within optimal intensity zones, and ensure that every session supports progress rather than derailing it. In elite football development, smart effort always beats blind effort. Training smart also means knowing where you are in your development, and not trying to shortcut years of structured progression. This is a major reason why simply copying what pro players do often backfires.

That said, training to failure can be useful in specific situations, but it should be applied strategically. For example, it can be appropriate during the off-season, when players are not constrained by frequent matches or high training loads, have more time to recover between sessions and can focus more on maximising strength, size and power gains. It may also be useful when training frequency is limited – for example when travelling or on holiday – so pushing a single session to failure can help maintain stimulus despite fewer sessions overall.

In cases of injury, training to failure may be beneficial when working with uninjured areas of the body, particularly if the player is unable to perform their usual full-body training routine. For instance, a player with a lower-body injury might use failure-based upper-body and core sessions to push for greater increases in size and strength during the season than is normally possible when not injured.

A training strategy known as "overreaching" also involves training to failure. It requires a short-term increase in training volume and/or intensity that intentionally pushes the body beyond its current capacity, leading to temporary fatigue and a dip in performance. When followed by adequate recovery, it can result in supercompensation – a rebound effect where performance improves beyond previous levels. In football however, it's rarely appropriate due to the constant need to maintain performance, manage fatigue and injury risk, and the limited windows in the season where this type of training can safely be applied.

As a general rule, training to failure should be avoided by beginners and in-season players, it can impair recovery, increase injury risk, and interfere with match performance and technical development. The aim is to challenge the body enough to drive progress – yet still be able to show up consistently, session after session. If a single workout pushes you too far, the next one will either suffer in intensity or be skipped altogether, breaking the consistency that ultimately leads to results.

The Long-Term Advantage: Building Up to More Frequent Sessions

One reason professional footballers can tolerate more frequent, high-intensity sessions is that they’ve spent years building their training capacity. Players who enter academy systems at a young age and follow structured, periodised training plans gradually develop the ability to adapt, recover faster, and handle higher training loads. This foundation isn’t built in a matter of weeks – it’s the result of years of consistent, long-term development.

For players who are newer to S&C, trying to replicate a pro’s training schedule without that same base is a fast track to overtraining, fatigue, or injury. It’s not about working less, it’s about building up the capacity to do more safely and effectively over time. The key is to progress gradually, increasing intensity, volume, complexity and frequency in a way that matches the player’s biological age, training age (how many years a player has been consistently doing structured S&C work), and overall load from football.

This long-term, structured approach is often what separates academy-trained players from those who arrive later and struggle to cope with the athletic demands of a high-performance environment.

Key Message

There’s no fixed number of S&C sessions footballers should complete each week. The right frequency depends on the player’s goals, training history, match schedule, and the specific physical qualities being developed or maintained. A well-rounded plan might require multiple sessions per week to cover all necessary components. However, not every session needs to be intense to be effective. In fact, players can train daily if the workload is properly managed – incorporating lighter sessions focused on mobility, flexibility, or recovery alongside higher-intensity strength or power work.

What matters most is structure. A periodised approach ensures the right qualities are trained at the right time, with intensity and recovery balanced across the week. Guidance from a coach such as myself helps ensure every session contributes to long-term progress – without interfering with performance or increasing injury risk.