Chapter 3. Getting Football-Fit - and Keeping So

The name of the manager of the Fulham club is Dodgin, quite an appropriate name when connected with his days as a player. There is a story associated with the name which, even if not true, deserves to be. When Bill Dodgin was manager of Southampton, he sat on the side of the field watching some of his regular players going through their training exercises. Sitting alongside him on the form was a new player who had just joined the club on the recommendation of the scout, and who didn't even know the manager.

After the pair of them had been sitting there for some little time watching the other fellows work, the newcomer turned to Bill Dodgin with the question: 'Who are you?'

To this the reply was made: 'I'm Dodgin, the manager'.

The newcomer broke into a broad smile. 'That's funny', he said. 'I'm dodging him too. Shall we nip out and have one?'

There's a serious side to the little story. If there are fellows with that sort of outlook towards football, the sooner they look around for some other sort of job, the better. Physical fitness is so obviously included among the footballers' qualifications that I shan't waste energy by preaching a sermon with that as the text.

Just one or two general points should be stressed before I travel on to deal with the question of how to get fit and how to keep fit. Only the player who is really fit can get the full enjoyment out of the game. That applies whether he is playing for Newcastle United in a Gup Final or for Oswaldtwistle Strollers in a pick-up match on the local brickfield.

Let me go to another line, being driven there by the current tendency to put speed of running first. Many years ago a fellow named Downer earned a lot of fame, winning most of the affairs in which he entered, on the running track. He could go like the wind. He was jet-propelled, if you like. Someone connected with Preston North End watched him run, and giving his imagination full play thought that if Downer could run like that at outside right for the club he would leave all the opposing defenders standing still. So record-beater Downer was persuaded to join the Preston North End playing staff. You won't find his name among the list of famous players who have turned out for their first team, however. He just could not make the football grade, for the very simple reason that while he could run like a hare he couldn't do it when there was a football to be controlled as well as a stop-watch to beat.

Of course, speed has its value, and of all people I am not the one to write it down. Once upon a time, when I was a very young footballer, it was suggested to me that I should be taken to some secret place to train for the Powderhall handicap. The vision of winning the valued prize on the running track fascinated me. On mentioning it to a footballer friend of mine he turned it down flat. 'Forget it', he said. 'Winning the Powderhall handicap and winning medals at football aren't the same thing at all'. In short, you don't have to do record time over one hundred yards at football. The things which really matter are how quickly you can work up to top speed, and how fast you can cover the fast few yards of the sprint.

I am in danger of going too fast myself, however. So I must turn back to the real beginning, and deal with this question of getting fit and keeping fit in the correct sequence. Let it not be overlooked, by way of a start, that getting fit and keeping fit for football are different from being fit in the general sense. A football season lasts for eight months. And the game itself lasts for ninety minutes, with one very brief break.

Those twin thoughts - the length of a season, and the duration of a game - must ever be in the mind of the fellow who wants to get fit and to keep fit for football. They should even be kept at the back of the mind during the summer months when there is little or nothing doing in the actual playing line. They should be taken from the back of the mind and brought to the front as the season draws near. In general, I would say that the footballers of to-day - those who take it seriously -look after themselves to a much greater extent than did the players of other days. They don't let themselves run to seed during the summer: they play other games.

Even at that, when they answer the club call to return to the real training, they don't change into football kit the very first morning and dash on to the field to kick the ball about. For at least a week they don't even see a football. Young - and not so young players alike - should take a leaf out of their book. The leg muscles are high up among the things which matter to the footballer. Before the ball is really kicked, at the start of the season, the legs should be made ready for the strain. This means that road-work comes first, short walks followed by longer walks, and from there to lapping the ground, and thence to the sprinting.

The football boots haven't come into use as yet. The walks can be taken in ordinary good shoes; with spells of it done on the toes. Because of the part it plays in the strengthening of the leg muscles, a bicycle is most useful. The training equipment at practically all the big club headquarters includes a bicycle which doesn't move, but which can be pedaled in exactly the same way as an ordinary 'bike'.

There is no necessity for me to recommend to the footballer the usual things done by people who want to be fit for the common or garden purposes of life. Physical training in the general sense - medicine-ball throwing, exercising the stomach muscles, and so on - are part of the routine. I am convinced, too, that most of us - whether footballers or not - would be all the better equipped for doing our job well if we gave more time and attention to breathing exercises. For the footballer the wind is particularly important. Deep breathing - inhaling and exhaling - done to the accompaniment of all the movements of arms, legs, and trunk, should be developed as a habit. When the walking, the laps and the sprints - plus the deep breathing - have got the muscles and wind in proper fettle, the time arrives to take the ball on to the field, or the piece of spare ground.

Even at that - and remembering that it doesn't pay to run risks of straining anything in the early stages - those first efforts with the ball should be taken easily. There is no point - and there may be danger - in hitting the ball as hard as possible when it is at the feet for the first time after a summer rest. It is just as helpful, for instance - and will also prove useful in the course of the season - to take a few shots at the goalkeeper with placing, rather than power, as the objective. In trying to kill the goalkeeper, or trying to break the net lies the risk, in the early training with the ball, of doing more harm than good.

Somebody may suggest that it would be helpful to the coming footballers if I set out a sort of routine for the week: a timetable telling when, and for how long, to do this or that. There is one excellent reason why I refuse to make any sort of attempt to set up a schedule. Training is a personal affair.

No trainer of a first-class side would dream of drawing up a training schedule to be followed by every member of the staff. He knows well that in connection with training one man's meat is another man's poison. In order to be fit for those vital ninety minutes, some players need much more training than others. Look at a party of footballers, back from their summer break, and note the different stories which the scales tell. Some of the fellows have put on weight during the period when they have not done much regular training, while others may have lost weight. It isn't very difficult for each player to find out what suits him best in the way of training. The footballer with nous will certainly be at pains to discover what suits him best.

I could make out a case for most of the training, if not all of it, to be done by fellows who are fresh: in the morning, say.

Last season I chatted with the manager of a Yorkshire Third Division side which was in rather a bad way: holding up all the other clubs in the table. I asked him what was the matter with the team. He looked so glum that I shouldn't have been surprised if he had replied: 'Everything'. He did not give that reply, however. 'There's only one thing wrong', he said, 'and that is the training'. He went on to explain that, partly because of housing difficulties, more than half his first-team players lived a considerable distance from the ground.

'They turn up regularly for training', the manager said, 'but before they turn out, they've spent two or three hours getting to the ground: in stuffy trains or in a car. I wouldn't say they're tired out, but they're not as fresh as they should be'.

I realize that it is well nigh impossible for those to whom football is no more than a pastime to do their regular training other than late in the day. But if, at the end of the day's work, the footballer is fagged out he would do himself more good by going to bed than by indulging in any form of serious training. Time is too precious to be wasted, and no useful purpose is served by flogging jaded limbs.

Assuming that, following the general lines laid down, the player is reasonably fit, there arises the natural question of keeping in as near perfect physical condition as it is possible for anybody to be. When there are regular matches on the program, and the season wears on, the amount of training for the average player can be reduced. And, of course, there is a very good reason for cutting it down: the risk of staleness.

In order to dodge this risk, I strongly recommend forms of training which have what might be called a competitive interest: exercises which can be most helpful and can be done by the individual at times when collective training is out of the question. I have already stressed that it is speed off the mark and pace in the short sprint which tell in this game. All right! Take a pal with a watch (preferably a stop-watch) to a spare piece of ground. Try the quick sprints from a standing start: get him to time you over a short marked-out distance. You will be interested in noting whether, doing this sort of thing in your spare moments, you are able to cut seconds off the time taken. In short, the sort of training during which even the fellow who is on the job forgets that he is doing it.

By way of further variety to sprinting, and indeed to all forms of running, whether in spiked boots or running pumps, make the double journey as fast as possible. Get to the mark: reach it, then turn, getting as near to making a right angle as you can, and dash back to the starting place. Quite often, on the field of play, it will be necessary to vary a forward run by a quick turn to the right or left, in order to beat an opponent. Thus, in the way I have suggested, the training without a ball can at the same time help the player in possession.

Running backwards also strengthens certain muscles, not to mention that it is also specially helpful to defenders in these back-pedaling days.

There are other methods of training which help the footballer towards proficiency in the all-round sense, and which have the merit of being interesting. The trainers of many first-class clubs put a lot of store on head tennis - which is to all intents and purposes games of lawn tennis with a football instead of a tennis ball. It can be played by two, four or even eight players, if a piece of ground about the size of a tennis court, and a net - or even a length of rope - are available. When I was with Arsenal four of us would arrange such a game as a part of the training. We also agreed - to create competitive interest and to make sure that we didn't just 'play about' - that the winners should collect sixpence apiece from the losers. The rules were quite simple. Two players, say, on each side of the net, 'serving' in turn with the football headed, by way of starting the exchanges, into the service court at the other side of the net. A player on the other side returned the ball over the net in any way he liked - with head, chest, knee or foot with one over-riding rule: that the ball must not be allowed to touch the ground more than once before being returned. So long as the ball was not allowed to touch the ground in the process, the player receiving it could juggle with it if he felt so inclined, even pass it to his partner for him to return it over the net in due course. The winners were the pair who reached a total of twenty-one points first.

This game helps the footballer to develop his football in certain obvious ways: quickness of movement, speed of thought, ball control, the art of anticipation, swerving - all these are improved. In short, it is a 'game' with a competitive interest which helps to make better footballers - well-trained ones, too, supplying the variety which is necessary if training is to be kept alive, and beneficial throughout the season.

That is the ideal to be aimed at in the business of keeping fit. Staleness can be a most awkward enemy of the athlete, and it is just as necessary to master the art of dodging it as it is to master the art of dodging actual players. I am all for ball practice, but too much of it is a short cut to staleness. If the footballer, at the start of a match, doesn't feel very much as he felt as a boy when released from school, something has gone wrong. The cure is to cut down the mid-week ball practice.

A few years back, when Huddersfield Town had reached the Cup Final, the players were taken away to the seaside for what was called special training. One day a Press photographer called on them. He wanted to take pictures of the players doing this or that with a football. 'You will have to go into the town to buy a ball before you can do that', said the trainer, 'because we haven't brought one with us!' It was true.

It's a fallacious idea that late in the season special training for the members of a football team means intensified practice with the ball. That spell away from the usual haunts, in different air, is meant to freshen up the players: to bring back their zest for the game. The footballer who doesn't give all his time to the game can't indulge in this so-called special training. But if he is lacking schoolboy enthusiasm and the zest to be on top gear on match days, then the time has come to forget football in mid-week.

This doesn't mean neglecting the rest of his training, which brings me to the point that, regardless of the status of his team, the footballer who wants to give of his best must bear that desire in his mind all through the week. To play the game calls for sacrifices. Dancing is a fine exercise for footballers, but dancing loses its value if it is kept up till the small hours of the morning. Early to bed, George! - certainly each night of the week after Tuesday. And early to bed the other nights, too, for preference.

Don't ask me how much you should smoke, as my reply to that would be that you shouldn't smoke at all. I have already emphasized the part a player's wind plays. Two rules relating to smoking are laid down by trainers of most of the big football clubs. One is no smoking after eleven o'clock in the morning of match days. The other is no smoking ever in the dressing-room.

I wouldn't say that the first rule is never broken. Indeed, I have seen an International footballer sneak into a quiet corner, away from the dressing-room, to have a few puffs at his pipe as the players were getting themselves ready for a Gup Final. That player felt that he must have those few puffs at the pipe, and who is to say that they did him any harm? There was no evidence in his play, during the match, that they had done so.

But smoking in the dressing-room is a law which is never broken. Even when a director, wanting a word with the lads, overlooks the rule, he gets a reminder in chorus from the players: 'Put that cigar out!'

What you smoke, or how much - if at all - is no business of mine. Nor am I really concerned with what or how much you drink. That is your personal affair. I don't suppose you would spend two moments on this book if you didn't hope to find in it something which would help to make you a better footballer. This surely means that you would be foolish to do anything which carried with it the risk that it would reduce your efficiency on the field.