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"Box of Death"
Conditioning Exercise
Based upon an exercise found in Lawrence Fine’s Practice book Full Season Training Program available for sale at http://www.finesoccer.com/full_season.htm Coach Mike Pline used it at Decatur High School (Alabama) where the girls team came up with the charming name “Box of Death”.
Setup:
Lay out 8 cones in pattern shown (box with 3 cones per side). Each cone should be 20 yards apart resulting in a box 40 yards by 40 yards.
Exercise:
Player start at cone #1 and run to cone #2. At cone #2 they slow to a jog and jog around the perimeter of the square. When they reach cone #1 to start their second lap they run at full speed again until they reach cone #3. When they reach cone #3 they slow to a jog and continue the jog until they reach cone #1 for their third lap.
This progression continues until they finish lap #8 at which time start over in reverse. By that I mean that on lap #9 they will run all the way from cone #1 to cone #8 and then jog from cone #8 to cone #1. On lap #10 they run all the way from cone #1 to cone #7 and then jog from cone #7 back to cone #1 (starting point). This continues until lap #16 when the exercise ends at cone #1 with a complete lap being jogged.
By the end of the exercise they have run/jogged about 1-1/2 miles at an intermittent pace similar to a soccer game pace.
Coaching Points:
The biggest problem is that the players do not use their jogging time to fully recover. Early in the exercise they often tend to jog too fast to recover. The coach needs to ensure that they recover properly or they will wear themselves out before the exercise is complete.
Web Administrator Ken Gamble