FOOTBALL
TRAINING
Long Eaton United Community FC Academy is committed in their endeavor to identify talented boys and provide quality coaching combined with a relevant education package, in order to produce young men of integrity and the ability to play football for Long Eaton United Community FC first team and our young CFC team.
Mission
We pride ourselves on the quality of the coaching programme we have developed and we attempt to challenge our academy players technically, tactically, physically and psychologically We take a holistic approach to coaching where we try to identify strengths and weaknesses of all our players and improve all aspects of their game by giving them the tools to identify both and recognize the pathway to improve both.
Technical Development
All our players will work on improving all aspects of their technical ability from their first touch to passing on to more complex skills. This is done on a daily basis with an element of technical development incorporated into all training sessions with an emphasis placed on quality and repetition to help develop good habits that will in time become permanent. We recognize that every player’s development is unique and that all players will develop at a rate that on the whole is directly proportionate to the time and effort they are prepared to put in themselves. We encourage peer support within our players and ensure we set smart targets to help players achieve.
Tactical Development
Part of our role is to develop our players into first-team players and the first team management is acutely aware of the club’s ambition to produce our own players. We are obviously aware of how the first team’s wishes to play and we try to develop our players accordingly. As part of our player’s tactical development however, we look to play different formations throughout the time the players spend with the Academy and challenge our players to understand the game better. We will use video analysis as a tool to help with the understanding of the game and we hope to be able to break the game down with analysis of players' strengths and areas for improvement.
Physical Development
We take our fitness at Long Eaton United Community FC very seriously and pride ourselves on the fitness levels. Players are challenged to keep themselves in peak physical condition by hitting nationally recognized physical targets set by industry professionals. Our players will be pushed particularly during the pre-season element of our training cycle. Every player will be given their own 24-week weight training programme that is tailored to their particular needs and runs in parallel with the conditioning cycles we have in place. Each player will be set short medium and long term physical goals and will follow micro, meso and macro cycles throughout the season.
Psychological Development
Sports psychology is a skill that the best athletes have managed to use to their benefit. We will try to give our young players the tools to help them cope with the highs and lows of football and education at this level. It is our job to identify those who are strong characters and encourage them to help develop those who are not as strong as themselves. We believe in a strong team ethos and we try to impress upon our young players that although their own development is very important to us, the team is the common denominator and we encourage our players to discover their role within the team and develop their psychological strengths and weaknesses from there. We realise that there will be peaks and troughs in young players' development and we are conscious of how we manage these extremes in a player's development.