Soccer Better for you than Jogging

No surprise here. What the general public considers jogging doesn't come close to the workout that you get from a soccer game. In running terms, soccer can be likened to a hard repeat workout. What's gonna burn more fat and build more muscle, an hour of jogging or an hour-long interval session of short, hard repeats?

i would agree considered running is different from jogging. jogging=8-10min miles

themack

I agree with the sentiment, but I think the general public would consider 8 mins a pretty brisk pace for jogging. 10-12 min/miles would be more common, I think.

The avarage distance coverd by a premiership midfielder is seven miles, 246 yards in 90 minutes, which is actually quite a lot when you think about it.

I think David Bekham has been recorded at covering over 9 miles when playing for england against greece

I wonder if a different test group would get different results. I'd like to see the study done with an all female group.

Anecdotally, when I was in high school, the men's soccer team had a lot of guys who were just as fit as the guys on the cross team. They had a few guys who were as fast over 5K as the runners.

On my soccer team, just about the only girls who could run a mile comfortably were those of us who did fall cross-country and a few forwards. Almost our whole defense was a bit chubby and not in aerobic shape at all. We had a pretty good, competitive soccer team, but it seemed a lot of girls had learned to compensate for poor aerobic shape with good ball handling skills.

Soccer is definitely a fine sport for getting a great work-out, but the same people who jog 3 miles at 10-12 min pace are the soccer players who just hang back and only get into the play when the ball happens to come near them. A hard-ass soccer player would most likely be a good runner and a good runner would most likely be at least an aggressive soccer player, and possibly a good player if they developed any skills.

Yeah, high intensity soccer is a great workout, certainly better than just "jogging" or running easy miles. But let's remember a few things.

1) Most people that play pick-up soccer (i.e. not in formal, full-field leagues), do not get intense workouts - they get an occassional 15-30m sprints and then mostly walk around waiting for the ball to come near them - the total distance covered in 60 minutes of recreational play is probably more like 1-3 miles, not 6-9 as in a pro match. If you don't believe me, just watch a soccer pick-up game. At any given time, there are usually on 2-4 players giving any real exertion.

2) Easy running can be, and often is, safely and easily done 5-7 times per week. Most recreational soccer players only play a few times per week because it's hard to find games or because their bodies can't handle it. Similarly, injuries that totally prevent participation for extended periods appear much more frequent in soccer than in easy running. (Yeah, of course, serious runners to get serious injuries; but here we're talking about only doing low-intensity running). That's probably part of the reason there are so many middle-aged and old joggers, but relatively few older soccer players, at least in the U.S.

So training and playing on a SERIOUS soccer team is a great way to maintain and achieve fitness. But for the average person that is trying to decide whether their long-term health is better served by jogging regularly or playing pick-up soccer a few days per week, jogging is almost certainly the better option. Of course, soccer will be much more enjoyable for many people. And, of course, there's no reason that recreatioanl soccer players can't jog a few times a week to maintain better health and playing fitness.

well put. I agree wholeheartedly. As a high school coach, I frequently found the freshmen kids who were cut from the soccer team turned out to be the best runners as freshmen. They are typically good athletes and they're already in good shape.

For most of my life, I've been a soccer player, not a runner.

In high school, our soccer team all had to run a 12 minute 3200 on the first day of practice. Almost everyone did it without any specific training. I suspect that most of them would have made decent high school cross runners, but about half of them ended up being division one soccer players, so they were definately going with their strongest suit by sticking with soccer.

In college, the gap widened significantly because the cross team had a real aerobic base. While my high school team could go for easy runs with the cross team, my college team could hardly stick with them for even a few miles. This was what made me realize how different soccer fitness is from competitive running fitness. I was one of the fittest guys on the team, but I only managed 3:06 in the marathon while I was playing soccer.

Now that I'm done with college ball and I've been running for a few years, my body has changed completely. I joined a men's league team last year for fun and was shocked to find that I couldn't get out of bed the morning after our first game. My body felt destroyed. I had thought that soccer would be easy now that I was in such good running shape. My back, abs, groin, pretty much every muscle that isn't for just running in a straight line--they were all exhausted and sore. (It's worth noting that this game was full of ex-D1 and ex-pro players. It was 90 minutes on a 120yd field. Pickup games in the park are a whole different level of exertion.)

Now I realize that there's just no comparing sport-specific fitnesses.

Agreed. So the best bet for your fitness may be to play soccer recreationally, and on the days you don't have a game, do some jogging. And when you do have a game, don't be one of those lazy-asses you stand around waiting for the ball to come their way occasioanlly. Being a somewhat aggressive player is the best way to get a decent workout.

Except when you remember the obvious fact that it that a soccer player is playing perhaps 1 or 2 games a week tops (with exceptions) whereas a runner in training is running far more often than that.

Obviously a soccer player on a school team has practices and the like but take someone beyond those years and mostly what they're going to do is play the game and practice very little.

If you played soccer 6 or 7 days a week, you might have a valid comparison.

800 dude wrote:

In high school, our soccer team all had to run a 12 minute 3200 on the first day of practice. Almost everyone did it without any specific training. I suspect that most of them would have made decent high school cross runners, but about half of them ended up being division one soccer players, so they were definately going with their strongest suit by sticking with soccer.

Funny, my high school had the same requirement - 3200 in 12 minutes - but no one was able to do it.

Soccer, played at a high level, is a terrific workout without a doubt, but it's really a young man's game. I played into my 30's until the injuries just got to be too much. Same thing with basketball. Playing at less then all out was no fun, so I pretty much quit. Running has filled the fitness/sport gap very well, with only a fraction of the injuries.

800 dude wrote:

about half of them ended up being division one soccer players,

That must have been one helluva high school team if half of them played DI college ball.

At our school, I look for soccer players to come out for XC because they are usually in better shape. I just work around their soccer schedules so that I don't have them trashed for either XC meets or soccer games.

One factor you also have to consider with soccer is the physical play. There's a lot of bumping and hitting going on that you don't see in running. Having to do things with the soccer ball also develops a lot of different muscles, so you might actually be in overall better shape.

I saw in Men's Health where Chad Johnson of the Bengals crosstrains with a soccer ball to develop quickness.

After competing pretty seriously for a couple years after college I basically quit running and taught English in Korea. My buddy and I formed a club soccer team and joined into a league of "foreign" players with 12 other teams. We'd also have friendly games against various korean teams. We played about once a weekend sometimes twice, and if not we'd usually have practice.

We also usually played on dirt fields which kept the pace of the game very brisk. Playing in the center midfield for most or all of the game would kick my ass more than any tough running workout or race I ever did. Running 80 meters at a sprint on offense, only to turn right around and make lateral zigzag runs back on defense and maybe jump up for a header, already 40 minutes into a game will completely tax you. I'd finish those games barely being able to walk off the field. Overall I felt like it was a better workout than track or cross country workouts because so many parts of my body were worked from the heart and lungs to the lateral leg muscles and even back.

Running is so specific in it's fitness, it is certainly great but I don't think it is near as encompassing even at the competitive level as competitive soccer.

Just my opinion.

yetanotherchick wrote:

it seemed a lot of girls had learned to compensate for poor aerobic shape with good ball handling skills.

That's usually the way it goes. The chubby chicks try harder.

On my 4 by 8 team that set our school record (7:52) in high school, all four of us played soccer in the fall instead of running cross country.

The thing to keep in mind is that with high school soccer, you get out what you put in. Even on the varsity team, and a pretty good varsity team, the four of us were the only ones that had any real degree of fitness. And even though I was in darn good shape, I was really, really tired at the end of each half playing on the right of what was basically a 3-5-2.

It's true. I played soccer my entire life, and then went out for track my freshman year in high school and ran a 4:19 mile, 9:20 3200m, and a 1:55 800m....all off soccer fitness. Once I started concentrating on running, my times barely improved. Soccer rocks!!!

My good pal played every minute of every game for a top 10 D1 school his senior year and was an academic all-american. He told me he couldn't have broken five minutes for the mile then. He was a defender though.