Having a high standard of fitness is essential for football players, that’s why tracking your fitness workload during training might be very beneficial. If you want to compete at a high level where you have to perform at your absolute best for 90 minutes. Making sure that every move and touches you make at the beginning of the match are as sharp as they are in the last minute of the game.
Probably, you already aware of the drills you need to do to increase your stamina. There are loads of drills available on YouTube and other social media platform, so there is no excuse for not knowing them. Now, I’m going to share with you how you can actually monitor your movement, fitness, pace and everything just using a phone and a vest that you might consider to invest in.
Just for a disclaimer that I’m not being sponsored or received any commission. I genuinely want to share with you as I personally doing it and found it useful for myself. You might initially think that I was talking about this PLAYR vest or STATSports vest that cost hundreds of pounds or dollars. I think that’s a great piece of equipment but I personally couldn’t afford it, too expensive for me. So, this is a cheaper alternative for tracking your fitness as a football player.
Review
That’s why I want to introduce you to this vest called FreeTrain V1 Vest. It is much cheaper than the ones above. It only costs me £30, which is much more affordable. This vest actually meant for runners but I decided to buy and use it for my football training. So, the vest has a pocket for your mobile phone on the front side of it where you can just put your phone there while you train.
The main pocket fits most phone sizes nowadays so you shouldn’t be to worry about it. If you have a smaller phone, there is a phone case provided for you as well to ensure that your phone won’t be moving around when you put it in. It also comes up with additional mini pockets on both sides of the vest.
How to Use
Now, you can pick any running app you want, could Nike Running Club, Strava, MapMyRun, etc. Then, download and install the app on your phone. Set up your profile and you’re good to go. Essentially, you just click “start workout” or whatever it says in the app to begin your training.
Wear your vest and put your mobile phone in it and it will automatically track your movement, your speed also the duration you train. Simple right? By then, you can know how long does your training is, how many distances you covered, what sort of movement you do during training.
I think it’s good to get an idea of how effective you train and how hard you work. Also, to see if the movement you do actually mimic the movement you do during the game.
Downside
But here is the weakness of using this method. Unlike the PLAYR vest and STATSport ones, which comes with a GPS pod and sophisticated analysis which properly design for football players. This method unfortunately won’t provide that level of depth analysis. That’s probably the biggest reason why they cost so much.
But hey, if you have the money to purchase them go for it. This is just an alternative for football players who aren’t able to spend that much money but still want to get some sort of fitness tracking of their own training.
My Own Experience
I’ve been using this for two weeks every time I train. Personally, I found it useful so that I can have a rough idea of what I did during the session and how is my movement and fitness look like. So far, I didn’t find any disadvantages using this except the downside that I mentioned above. My phone (Samsung A series) fits perfectly inside the main pocket. Overall, it has been a good experience using it and hopefully, I can inspire you to do the same as well. Stay safe and keep ballin’!
