In this professional article, Dr Yaron "Buki" Barak, head of the physical fitness staff at Maccabi Tel Aviv's Youth Division, presents his long-term plan for the physical development of the club's young players
"Starting with the 2012/13 season, the Maccabi Tel Aviv Youth Division embarked upon a long-term physical fitness programme whose stated purpose is the physical development of future generations of the club's players. The first season focused on integrating both training systems and programmes into the Youth Division training regime. The physical fitness programme was meticulously designed in accordance with the characteristics of the various age groups and in consequence of long international experience with the development of young players. The programme includes such physical capacity tests as quickness, agility and break-away speed, conducted on a regular basis twice a year with the most state of the art electronic measurement equipment available in the football world. Such measurements enable us to follow both the players' progress and the effectiveness of the physical fitness programme as a whole. The physical fitness staff follow closely every age-group team in the Youth Division at a large number of training sessions during the course of every week, in accordance with the physical fitness programmes that are distributed each week to all the various age-group team coaches".
"The work programme described here has been carried forth in full for the 2013/14 season. This year the infrastructure has undergone a significant upgrade. At the eastern pitches a work area has been created for the express purpose of developing physical fitness, containing a variety of special training surfaces for improving athletic capacities. A designed purpose training area containing deep sand has also been created. The Youth Division have acquired one of football's leading electronic networks called "Team System", which includes 24 pulse watches which are capable of transmitting pulse data in real time during trainings and games. This in addition to a GPS system that analyses speed and distances".
"The programme described here is a long-term physical fitness programme which we all hope will bear fruit in the very near future".
Dr Yaron "Buki" Barak – sports physiologist, head of the physical fitness staff at the Maccabi Tel Aviv Youth Department
