DIET, EXERCISE, MUSIC - BACK IN THE DAY & NOW

I've been playing indoor soccer and now futsal for 20 odd years. In that time you pick up the odd handy hint toward playing game, your diet and tactics. Guess this column is a very general topic with regards to preparation before you go onto the court and my experiences with indoor soccer in sydney. Hope to hear yours also.

In the old days playing at chullora indoor soccer centre (off roberts road) me and a team mate would eat at hungry jacks at the shell servo before the game. Thats like 20 mins (if that) before the game, usually it'd be a whopper meal with coke n fries. The warm up before the game would normally be chatting to team mates about last week's serie A match of the day on sunday mornings (This would've been around 1994-98). The music in most peoples cd stacker (no mp3's back then) would've been new jack swing tracks from guy, blackstreet, will smith etc. Thinking back it was a great centre...complete with change rooms and the courts were surfaced with re-bound ace the kind of stuff you'd see on a tennis court in europe. Anyway back to the soccer...most places allowed you to rebound the ball off the wall and the ball was this big furry tennis ball. You could really give it some hammer and if it got some wear...the ball would mutate into a hard rubber ball. The big chullora carpark would be filled with two types of cars, honda preludes and V8's. I've seen some almighty brawls there...very different times!

These days playing at five dock leisure centre...I'm a spritely 35 years old. The big furry soccer ball is now a firmer, smaller leather futsal ball filled with cotton. If you time it well, flies off the boot just as well as the big azz tennis ball. Preparation these days is a garlic and chilli penne pasta which I eat 2-3 hours before the game (as I was told it takes that long for your body to digest and use it for energy). As far as training, someone showed me the most simple training technique a few years back and it's best exercise anyone has shown me. Simply get a ball and find a big wall at a park...the key is to keep kicking the ball against the wall without stopping it. This improves passing, shooting and trapping by a million percent. If you do that exercise even for 20-30 mins once a week, give it a month...you will really see a difference. As far as the music is concerned...I listen to roy ayers these days, the older you get everything seems loud.

Think the older you get you realise just as important as exercise - is rest...make sure you don't overdo it!!

Peace,

Administrator

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