“Switched On App” Training Review

You are all alone in this current moment, not having access to a private coach or equipment but you want to train your speed reaction and awareness. How can you do it? This is my completely honest review regarding a training app called SwitchedOn that could help you train in a simple yet innovative way. I’m not being paid whatsoever, I just want to put my opinion regarding this app to let you guys know.

Beforehand, I will explain what aspects you actually need to train to improve your reaction and awareness in the pitch. There are two aspects that involve both physically and mentally.

Change of Direction & Change of Speed

These are physical attributes that you need to train and mainly focus on your explosiveness. In football, you not running in a straight line or neither you are running at a constant speed. There are always situations when you have to change direction. For example, go for a 50/50 header and suddenly run into tackles to get the ball.

The same applies to change of speed, you are not constantly sprinting, there are times when you have to jump, jog or even walking. There are situations when you dribble the ball and you often change your speed to make the defender guessing or when you as a defender, you have to jockey and follow an attacker that constantly changes their speed. So, it is essential to train this physical aspect in order for you to be familiar with these scenarios. You can use pre-determined drills that are widely available through Instagram or YouTube, etc. It could be shuttle runs with and without the ball, run in a zig-zag pattern and so on. I know those examples are simple but trust me it will work if you do it consistently.

Mental Reaction – Cognitive Ability

The second part is your ability to recognize the situation and essentially, react to them quickly. Related to the first point, everything you do is based on what you perceive in a particular situation. The things that happened in front you are sent into your brain to be processed. Then based on what you received in your brain, it triggers your body to react.

Football is a game that constantly changing, you could not predict what is going to happen next. So, essentially you have to react to a certain scenario and based on that scenario you make a decision. Ideally, you want to combine your physical attributes with your mental reaction. It is ineffective if you have the physical ability, but your brain is slow to react to the stimulus, you would still be left behind and vice versa. That’s why it is important to train both aspects as they work hand in hand to help you make a better and faster decision.

So how you train this mental aspect a.k.a your brain a.k.a cognitive ability? Ideally, if you have a training partner or a private coach, he/she will perform certain behaviour such as shouting numbers, colours or directions and you react to that virtual or audio stimulus while you are either doing technical or conditioning stuff. However, not everybody has access to that or might have limited access to that, especially in this current pandemic time. But, this shouldn’t be your excuse to not training and developing, instead, you could adapt and improvise by using these days technologies such as your smartphone and earphone.

Simply record your own voice calling out random numbers, colours or directions. Paired it with your smartphone and wear it while you train. You can also find a video on YouTube that shows either numbers, colours and directions and play with while you are training. Even without these methods, you can easily lift your head up and call out whatever things you see while performing any technical drills that you do i.e. lift your head up after 3 or 4 passes.

SwitchedOn Training App Review

Thank you to technologies and the intelligence and creativity from this man, we currently have access to an app called SwitchedOn that actually does exactly what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The app just made us far easier to train our speed reaction and awareness, especially if we want to train by ourself.

Personally, I have been using this app in my training session for the last three days. I absolutely love it. It provides everything you need in order to train your awareness, speed-reaction and decision making that is essential for football. They have all the stimulus you need – colours, numbers, directions – or maybe audio stimulus in the future.

So, I want to encourage you guys to try this app out and experience it yourself. It is completely free and you could download it through AppStore for IOS and PlayStore for Android. I’m sure it will be very beneficial and improve you in order to be a complete player. Also, don’t forget to check their website for more details! Stay safe and healthy, ballers!