Determination of the Opinions of the Soccer Players Regarding the Training With and Without Balls

Running and interval exercises without a ball is an important part of the training in football. Since aerobic capacity and anaerobic threshold cannot be achieved in trainings performed with the ball, it is recommended that running and interval based exercises without a ball are performed to improve endurance. However, the opinions of footballers about this type of exercises without a ball have not been clarified yet. The purpose of this study was to determine the opinions of football players regarding exercises without a ball. 145 soccer players (age: 22.70 ± 4.53 years; training age: 8.94 ± 2.01 years) in Afyonkarahisar province participated in the current study. In addition to demographic information, questions were asked to determine the opinions of the players about the exercises with and without balls. 17% of football players reported that they did not like to train without balls while 9.7% of them reported that they hate that. In addition, while 24.1% preferred to exercise without a ball during normal intensity and duration, 75.9% reported that they would prefer training with a ball in higher intensity and longer duration. As a result, it was seen that football players wanted to conduct training with a ball more even if the training was high intensity and the duration was long. It has been reported in the related literature that the load intensity of small side games and drills is higher in exercises with a ball than the exercises without a ball. It is suggested that amateur teams with low training numbers should use correctly planned small side games and drills in order to improve the physical, technical and tactical characteristics of footballers in combination using their opinions regarding exercises with a ball as a motivation tool