Train Like the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team

Read this arti­cle to under­stand the inspi­ra­tion behind today’s workout…

FROM STACK, pub­lished March 2005

For nearly a quarter-century, the U.S. Women’s National Soc­cer Team has been “the” team to beat, set­ting the bar for soc­cer excel­lence by win­ning numer­ous World Cup Cham­pi­onships and Olympic gold medals.

Now, with retir­ing soc­cer leg­ends Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy pass­ing the torch to young up-and-comers like Cat Red­dick and Abby Wambach, the future of U.S. women’s soc­cer is as bright as ever.

In addi­tion to the depar­ture of sev­eral mar­quee play­ers, head coach April Hein­richs recently resigned from her post. A major fig­ure in U.S. women’s soc­cer, Hein­richs will be greatly missed.

As a player, Hein­richs was instru­men­tal in the U.S. team’s vic­tory at the firstever Women’s World Cup in 1991. And as a coach she engi­neered the team’s gold medal per­for­mance at the 2004 Olympics. In one way or another, she has con­tributed to nearly every U.S. women’s team vic­tory over the past 15 years.

“I absolutely believe that con­di­tion­ing had a lot to do with our suc­cess in our final game in the Olympics,” Hein­richs says. “We had the old­est team in the Olympics. We had to play six games. Only one other team had to play six games. All the other teams played any­where from three to five games. So we played more games than any other team, and also played two over­time games.”

Sim­ply put, the dri­ving force behind Hein­richs’ great suc­cess is hard work.

“Our play­ers are on the field three to four hours a day, five to six days a week,” Hein­richs explains. While on the field, the team works on improv­ing fun­da­men­tals, skills and con­di­tion­ing, some­thing Hein­richs con­sid­ers a major fac­tor in their Gold Medal performance.

While the national team also takes part in some strength train­ing (pri­mar­ily upper body work and main­te­nance work with the legs), the spe­cial type of con­di­tion­ing that gets the team in peak shape can be described as “inter­val training.”

Accord­ing to Hein­richs, a six-to 10-week pro­gram fea­tur­ing a series of 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 mile inter­vals is ideal for that type of train­ing. Here’s a basic inter­val train­ing plan, rec­om­mended by Hein­richs, which you can follow.

  • For the first two to three weeks use a 1/4 mile dis­tance. Then, for the next two to three weeks, use a 1/2 mile dis­tance and finally, for the last two to three weeks, a 3/4 mile distance.
  • Per­form three to six rep­e­ti­tions at each dis­tance per inter­val train­ing ses­sion, and com­plete two to three ses­sions per week.
  • Start by run­ning the des­ig­nated dis­tance as fast as you can. Record the time of the run, and divide the time by .8 and .9. The result is the Pace Time Range in which you must com­plete each inter­val run, so that you train at a pace that is 80 to 90 per­cent of your top speed for the distance.
  • Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of each inter­val run, rest for one to one and one-half times your actual run time. For exam­ple, if you run a 1/4 mile at top speed in 90 sec­onds, the time in which you must com­plete each 1/4 mile inter­val train­ing run is between 90/0.9 and 90/0.8 or 100–112.5 sec­onds. If you com­plete your first 1/4 mile run in 105 sec­onds, your rest time should be between 1 x 105 and 1.5 x 105 or 105–157.5 seconds.
  • The same sequence as the exam­ple above should be used for each of the var­i­ous distances.

The over­all suc­cess of inter­val train­ing, accord­ing to Hein­richs, also depends on when dur­ing the sea­son you do the training.

“You don’t do inter­val train­ing at the start of your sea­son, you do it later,” she says. The rea­son? An ath­lete needs to build a strong aer­o­bic base before the sea­son, and before begin­ning an inter­val train­ing program.

You can build your aer­o­bic base through car­dio­vas­cu­lar train­ing in which an ele­vated heart rate is sus­tained for 20–30 min­utes. Exer­cises like jog­ging or rid­ing a sta­tion­ary bike for 20–30 min­utes are great exam­ples of car­dio­vas­cu­lar training.

“With that [aer­o­bic] base in place, then you start to do more of an inter­val train­ing period,” Hein­richs says.

Hein­richs also believes in the impor­tance of an ath­lete improv­ing upon his or her own abil­i­ties. The pace time of a team­mate should not be used as your base­line. It is impor­tant for you to set your own base­lines, and work to improve on pre­vi­ous performances.

“The best advice for any­one is to estab­lish your own base­line, and raise your own stan­dard every time,” she says.

Who is April Hein­richs?
An accom­plished player in her own right, Hein­richs was a key player on the 1991 World Cup Cham­pi­onship Team, and was the first woman to be inducted into the Soc­cer Hall of Fame. Set­ting the stan­dard at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina for future female stars like Mia Hamm and Cat Red­dick, Hein­richs was a three-time All-American, won three national cham­pi­onships dur­ing her col­lege career and was the first female soc­cer player to have her jer­sey retired. Now, with the com­ple­tion of her final sea­son as the head coach of the U.S. National Women’s Soc­cer Team, she has left a last­ing mark on U.S. women’s soccer.

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