How To Improve Stamina FAST (Ultimate Guide)
Summary
This video provides a seven-step guide to improving football stamina by focusing on breathing techniques, lung capacity, recovery strategies, specific running drills, playing actual games, pre-match routines, and the importance of consistency and patience.
Key points- Breathing through your nose instead of your mouth increases oxygen intake by 10-20%, leading to more energy and better stamina.
- Expanding lung capacity through specific breathing exercises can help you hold oxygen longer, delaying fatigue during games.
- Prioritizing recovery through adequate sleep (8+ hours), hydration (3 liters of water daily), rest days, muscle rolling, and a healthy diet is crucial for peak performance.
- Incorporating specific running drills that mimic game-like movements, including turns and sprints, is more effective than steady-state running.
- Playing actual football games, especially small-sided games, is the most effective way to improve in-game stamina due to short, sharp turns and high intensity.
- A consistent pre-match routine involving light ball work, stretching, a balanced meal 2-4 hours before kickoff, and visualization can prepare both mind and body for peak performance.
Chapters
Notable quotes (4)
“The number one thing that will hold your stamina back is breathing through your mouth.”
“And repeat this three times every single day. Each time you do it, try to improve on your time from the last day.”
“The truth is that if you get a bad sleep, you recover bad. And if you get a good sleep, you recover good. It's that simple.”
“The reason you train as a footballer is to improve. And you know that training once a week won't get you anywhere. Stamina is the same.”
0:00Most footballers train hard trying to build their stamina. But no matter how much you do, you still get tired easily in training and games. So today, I'm going to walk you through my sevenstep playbook on exactly how to improve your stamina fast. By the end of this video, you'll be able to run the entire match every single week. Because the problem isn't how much you're doing. It's the way you're training and the tiny habits that you do right now that are holding your stamina back without you even realizing. So, let's fix that and start with step number one. Learn how to breathe. The number one thing that will hold your stamina back is breathing through your mouth. Just breathing through your nose instead will give you 10 to 20% more oxygen with every breath. And oxygen provides your muscles with energy when you're playing. More oxygen equals more energy equals better stamina. It's simple and you don't even have to run to train this. Wait, so you
0:44get 20% more performance without training for it? Uh, yeah. How? Well, if you're a mouth breather like this guy and 61% of people in America, becoming a nose breather is easier than you think. And good news, not only will your stamina improve from doing this, but so will your appearance. I know it sounds weird, but just take a look at these two pictures. And with that in mind, let's get into the training. First of all, the easiest thing you can do to start breathing through your nose is using mouth tape. There's two scenarios you can do this in, but the first you probably heard before, and that is wearing it while you sleep. This is the easiest time to train yourself to start breathing through your nose. Doing it is simple. You don't need to buy fancy mouth tape. Just buy some cheap, gentle medical tape and put a strip across your mouth like this. Sorry. What this does is it forces you to breathe through your nose while you sleep. As you've discovered, nose
1:35breathing gives you more oxygen, improving your sleep quality and recovery time. Now, sleep itself is really important, but I'll dive deeper into that later in the video. If you're worried that this could suffocate you or restrict breathing, you can start with taping half of your mouth just to get used to it. This method is great, but it's not always perfect. If you have any of these conditions, I would avoid it since it could cause some problems. But this is one of the things that's worked for me, so I'm sure for most of you it'll work as well. Now, the second way to use mouth tape, which might sound crazy, is to wear it. Sorry, during individual training. This is like during your sleep, but 10 times more effective. You're not training yourself to breathe through your nose when your lungs are under strain. Like sleeping, you might want to start with just half the mouth because this is much tougher than wearing it while you sleep. But over time, you should be able to
2:21have it over your entire mouth, forcing yourself to breathe in and out your nose. If there was one thing that improved my stamina the most, it might honestly be this. Because if you could train at full intensity here, when you get to games, breathing through your nose feels like second nature. And that's why I put this as the first part in this video. Because once you learn it, mastering each of the next steps in this playbook becomes much easier. But before we get into that, there's one more exercise you can do to train your nose breathing, and that is meditation. And honestly, yeah, I thought this was rubbish when I first heard it, but if you can learn to be in the present moment, you'll be more conscious about what's happening during each day. So, when you start breathing through your mouth, you can catch yourself quickly and start nose breathing. It seems complicated, but with some practice, it'll happen without you even thinking. The way you want to meditate is setting
3:02a timer for between 5 and 20 minutes. Lay or sit down, close your eyes, breathe through your nose, and try to clear your mind. You want to focus on the sound and feeling of your breath and not think about anything else. When you get a thought, catch it and throw it away. This teaches your mind to focus on the present moment, instantly improving your stamina without having to run at all. But it's not the only way to boost your stamina without running. Which brings me on to step two. In this step, we're going to use your nose breathing and take it to the next level. Our second goal is to expand the capacity of your lungs to help you take in more oxygen and hold it there for longer. This will literally slow down how long it takes for you to feel tired when you play. So instead of getting tired at 30 minutes, it will take 50 and helps your muscles recover faster since they're getting more oxygen to repair. First, find a comfortable position lying or sitting down. Start a timer for 30
3:49seconds and breathe only in and out of your nose until it's done. The deeper the breaths, the better.
4:04Now, when the timer hits 30 seconds, hold your breath for 1 minute or as close to that as you can get. And repeat this three times every single day. Each time you do it, try to improve on your time from the last day. And make sure you add progressive overload so you're always improving, either increasing the time you go for or the amount of times you do it, going from three a day to four, for example. Now, there's a secret to doing this that will make it 10 times more effective, which I'm going to be breaking down later this video in step seven. But first, let's
4:38move to step three and talk about one of the biggest reasons your stamina is always holding you back in game. Because you can learn all these breathing tricks, but if you get this one thing wrong, it all becomes pointless, and that is recovery. Your body must be at 100% all the time to be able to actually run as far as you're capable of. The issue is some people think they're playing at 100% when in fact it's more like 70 or 80. Why? Because nearly nobody has actually felt while being at 100% is like. So now I want to help you get there. Here's some strategies you can use to recover quickly. So you're always performing at 100% in every game. Number one, sleep. Sleep is the first recovery trick you should be using. The truth is that if you get a bad sleep, you recover bad. And if you get a good sleep, you recover good. It's that simple. You can do all the tricks I'm about to give you, but if your sleep isn't locked in, your body can never reach its peak. But what's the
5:26difference between a good sleep and a bad sleep? A good sleep is above eight hours. A bad sleep is anything less than that. You need eight hours to get the proper amount of rest in. A good sleeper goes to bed and wakes up at the same time every night. A bad sleeper goes to bed and wakes up whenever they feel like it. When you go to bed and wake up at the same time, it aligns something called your circadian rhythm. This will make you tired when you go to bed and make you alert when you wake up. A good sleeper also has a routine before bed. They don't eat, use screens, or exercise too late because that tells their mind to be awake, which is the opposite of what you're trying to do. A bad sleeper, on the other hand, does whatever they want. Food, video games, exercise as late as they like. If you want good stamina, become a good sleeper. If you want to be called lazy on the field, be like the bad sleeper. Second is hydration. Simply drink around 3 lers of
6:13water a day, or else your body can't function how it's meant to. Not drinking enough water will decrease your energy, making your stamina worse. It's a simple fix that could improve your stamina a lot. The third thing you want to do is have rest days every week. If the goal is to be 100% every time you play in training or games, having rest days is really important to break up the weeks and give your body a chance to recover. Without the rest of knees, you'll continue to get more and more tired. One deal a week is all you need to do. Fourth is rolling out your fatigued muscles. I use a spiky ball or tennis ball and do it pretty much every day because it massages those specific sore spots on your body and they feel extremely light afterwards. But it's not as effective as the final recovery tactic which is diet. Now, I won't go into too much depth since diet is different for everybody. But diet is one of the most important steps because what
7:01you eat becomes a fuel that you use for energy and if the fuel is unhealthy, you won't have the same amount of energy. So, there are a few things that are essential for improving your stamina no matter who you are. First, cut out seed oils from your diet, like canola oil and vegetable oil. These are highly toxic oils that almost every processed food is cooked in, and in short, it'll really mess with your gut overall, making you feel way worse when you play. Instead, only eat foods cooked in non-seed oils, and your health will improve dramatically. Another highly toxic food that is really common is high fructose corn syrup. This is found everywhere like sodas, candy, and cereal, and it's one of the biggest causes of obesity. So, stay away from that. And if you want to be as optimal as possible, I also recommend trying to avoid sugar as much as possible. Sugar will cause your energy to act like a roller coaster, spiking and falling constantly
7:49throughout the day, and you don't want to be going from energetic to tired mid-match. Now, that's all I'm going to say on diet. It's quite a touchy subject, but hopefully these tips helped. And if you want more personalized diet advice with meal plans and one-on-one coaching, I've created the ultimate football training program that gives you everything you need to sign for a professional academy. It's called the Player Accelerator and it's 70% off from December 24th to 28th for Christmas. So, if you want access to personalized meal plans, recovery protocols, and prolevel coaching to fix your stamina and help you sign for a professional academy, I'll leave a link in the description and you can go check that out. But before you do, it's time for the fourth step in the stamina playbook. So, let's get into running. These are the two running focus drills that I do regularly to improve my stamina. You don't need any equipment. It doesn't cost money. All you need is
8:34some space and legs. And if you don't have legs, then why are you watching this? Now, both of these are going to involve running around the length and the width of the field. If you don't have a field, set up a box of four cones and run around that. And we'll start with drill number one. So, you're going to begin the run with a jog down the line. Simple and easy. When you get to the opposite side, turn and sprint the entire by line at full pace. Yep. Now, repeat this on the other side, jogging out the sideline and sprinting the goal line without stopping. Once you get back to the start, you've completed one rep. I like to do three reps at once and do this in total three times. This drill is effective because it allows you to train like a footballer and not a runner. Instead of running at one pace in one line, we're adding in turns and sprints to replicate the real game. The more you do, the harder it'll be. Start by finding what sets and reps
9:25you can do right now. And as you go on, make sure you're doing more and more every session. But remember the golden rule. The harder you go, the more results you're going to get. If you're not pushing yourself past your limits, you'll never truly reach your potential. I also like to set a timer before starting to make it more competitive by trying to beat that time. Okay, moving on to drill number two. Start in the corner, but this time sprint down the sideline until you get to the other end.
9:51When you do, jog the entire field back to where you started without stopping. When you get back to the start, sprint down the side. But when you get to the opposite side, sprint down the goal line, too. We started at one side sprinting, three jogging. I just did two sides sprinting and two jogging. Now, sprint three sides, jog the last one, and finish by sprinting every side of the field at maximum intensity. It will burn. Your mind will be telling you to stop. But if you can do this consistently, you'll never be called lazy on a football pitch again. This is the part in the playbook I guarantee 99% of you are already
10:31doing, but you're most likely doing it completely wrong. You see, the drills help, but they never get closer to the stamina you need to perform in games than actually playing real games. In games, you rarely ever sprint that far at once. It's short, sharp turns dribbling to get in and around players. So, if you want to improve your match stamina quickly, first be on a team so you're constantly playing games. And second, find friends, teammates, or even random strangers that you can play pickup games with. Pickup is basically street football. No competition and no rules. The best part is that it's mostly free as well as super beneficial because it replicates what you do on the weekend. But you want to know the best place to improve your in-game stamina? Smallsided games. Football six aside, seven aside games. You don't have to be on an official team. A lot of pickup will be this size anyway. But these smaller games make you run much more than on a regular field. The turns are
11:21shorter and sharper and you have to be really fit to play at a decent level. So you can breathe in your nose, recover well, and do running after your training sessions. But never forget to actually play more football. And let's get into step six. Now, I just yapped about how real games will make you fitter. And in step six, I want to talk about something every pro player does before games that drastically improves their stamina and performance. You see, if you want your body to perform at its absolute peak on the field, you can literally force that to happen by having a routine you follow consistently every time you play a game. So, I'm breaking down my simple matching routine that you can start following straight away to make sure your mind and body is ready to run as far as possible. And that routine starts at the field. I guess I'm already here. But for the first step in this routine, I like to get some touches on the ball at a wall
12:06or anything that rebounds is my favorite tool for this. I'm not going to train or wear myself out before the match. And I'm definitely not going to be working out or doing the running training today. Instead, my focus is on things like juggling and simple wall passing. so I can warm up my touch for the match without getting tired at all. I like to do this in the morning, whether the game is at midday or night. I like to do this early. Next step is making sure my body feels loose and relaxed before the match. This is when I'd usually stretch out my entire body. If you want a stretching routine, there's a ton of users that are already really good, but doing this will get your body feeling as fresh as it possibly can, meaning your stamina gets a boost. Now, with my stretching work, I always use this massage ball to make sure my muscles feel as good as new. My goal is to try and start every match feeling like I'm in my prime. And these two recovery
12:50techniques help me feel that way. Now, there's about 2 to 4 hours until kickoff. And this is when I'll eat my last meal. This is the perfect time to eat because it allows your food to digest and means you won't be playing on an empty stomach throughout the match. So, you're not hungry or full. You feel perfect. I don't like to overthink what I eat. Just remember that whatever you put in your body is the fuel that you use when you're running. Complex carbohydrates are the best types of foods to eat before a match. At this point, your touch is warmed up, your body's warmed up, and you're fueled by your pre-match meal, ready to go. But there's one more piece to this puzzle that you need to be doing on the way to the game. That's right. In the car, put on some headphones, close your eyes, and visualize the game you're about to play. Visualize yourself tracking back, sprinting as hard as you can to win the ball, making a run behind, sprinting faster than the defenders. And feel
13:34yourself running with ease as if elite level stamina comes naturally to you. Your mind can't tell the difference between the images you show it and real life. So use this to your advantage and trick yourself into thinking you're in goal of conte. So, when you pull up to the field, you prepared like a pro and you're ready to run the entire game without getting tired once. But what if I told you that even after all of that, there's one thing that's going to stop you from performing like you should. That will hold you back from ever reaching your stamina potential if it's not fixed. So, if you can learn it, you'll have everything, and I mean everything you need to turn your stamina around. And to show you exactly what that issue is, I want to share a story. When I was 16, I was playing on my Sunday league team and my high school's BT. I was horrible at football and my stamina was just bad. I couldn't even run for half the game without getting
14:18tired. And when my game finally started improving and I could actually play football, my stamina didn't improve with it. The worst part was I was trying to train my stamina already. I was running, wearing mount tape, even doing all the tricks I've shared in this video, but they didn't work at all. And it went on for months, months of hard work with no results. And I feel stupid thinking back on it now, but I wish someone had given me this advice I'm about to share back then because it would have been the most important piece of advice I learned about stamina. I guarantee that if you could only do this training for 2 weeks, it won't work. 100% guaranteed because the honest truth is real results take time and effort. The reason you train as a footballer is to improve. And you know that training once a week won't get you anywhere. Stamina is the same. If you're serious about improving your stamina, make sure along with the rest of your
15:02training, you train consistently and stay patient. And after a month or two, I can guarantee you'll be running for longer in games than you ever have. Your performances will go up, your confidence will go up, and stamina will never hold you back again. And if you want to also improve at football 10 times faster than your friends, I'll leave this video right here that's going to break down three training plans you can follow to take your game to the next level. Click it and I'll see you inside. Peace. Click it.
Works on any YouTube video.
Swap youtube.com for 2outube.com in the address bar — or paste a link.
Read another video