Josef Bican advises young athletes III.
Josef Bican | 23/10/1947

Training must be divided into athletics exercises and ball exercises. And I must remind you: do not underestimate either. Practice both equally honestly and alternate them regularly. So once with the ball, the second without.

From athletics you will mainly practice running. Best short distances of about ten to fifty meters. During these runs, you have to run faster than the arrow fired. And by doing so, you will practice the most important thing for a football player: A quick start, or in professional football, we call it tapping. You will also train your leg muscles when jumping high. You will jump from the place without starting as high as possible and you will practice taking the ball with your head. The jumper must literally unscrew to the higher and only at the dead point to steer the ball with a sharp movement of the head. A classic example was Ben Barek's headers, which many of you admired during the Prague-Paris match.

In athletics training, it is necessary to run longer tracks of about a kilometer for endurance. I also recommend jump rope exercises that train all your muscles.

And now, as I imagine exercising with a ball. I have already mentioned in the introduction that the centre-forward must control his right foot as well as his left foot.

Zigzagging can be practiced by running the ball through a row of bars about a meter apart. Such a football slalom. Of course, it is keyed with both foot.

Passes are best practiced on the run. It's harder, but necessary. He practices, for example, by stepping in the middle of the middle circle with the trainer running with the ball quickly after the said circle, passing them to the center to catch them again. This exercise is just as important for other players.

And we got to the shooting. A good center is a good shooter. Therefore, shooting practice is important and it can be said that it forms the essence of training at all. Especially with the new W-M system.

If the center is smaller, it is good to widthdrawn (technical term) a few meters back, namely to the center of the field.

You will be asked who is to handle the shooting. Of course, both insiders, which are fast, penetrating and especially good shooting.