How often should field hockey players train?

There is no universal number. Matthew Eyles sets his floor at one to three strength sessions a week and one speed session, and says explicitly that one a week is fine if that is all the time there is. Mick Beunen's club translation is three sessions a week and preferably four to prepare a Sunday game. The ceiling is set by recovery rather than enthusiasm, and by the training your players are doing elsewhere.

How do I know if I am overtraining my players?

Compare the last week's load against the last month. Then look for power dropping off, a sprint test coming back slower, players getting sick, and disrupted sleep. Glenn Turner's low-tech version is that fatigue shows up as skill errors first, a missed chop or a pass a metre off, long before a player looks distressed. Session RPE, the session rating out of ten multiplied by the minutes trained, costs nothing and flags the player finding it harder than everybody else.

Should I give tired players a week off?

Matthew Eyles argues against it: deloading to the point of doing nothing is usually counterproductive, and a week off in season probably does more harm than good. He prefers reducing the load, one or two sessions fewer depending on how much the squad trains, over stopping entirely.

What do the physical demands of a hockey match actually look like?

Short, repeated bursts. Wouter Blondeel describes hockey as a repeated and intense running based power sport: high speed sprints, explosive accelerations and decelerations, changes of direction, then a brief recovery before the next effort. He notes many games are decided in the last fifteen minutes, when players can no longer hold that repeatedness. Train the pattern, not just the distance.

Is steady running still useful for field hockey fitness?

Yes, as a base. Glenn Turner stresses in Hockey Conditioning Made Simple that hockey is first and foremost an aerobic game and players must be able to run. The gap he highlights is between jogging for an hour and being able to repeat sprints when tired, so laps build the base while game shaped repeated efforts build the match specific fitness.

Do I need a gym or GPS to train hockey fitness properly?

No. Glenn Turner recommends starting with bodyweight squats, push ups and lunges that can be done on any field, while Mick Beunen and Wouter Blondeel both note you can begin monitoring physical demands with simple observation and honest tests before investing in GPS tracking.

How do I control the intensity of a conditioning game?

Adjust pitch size, player numbers, rest between rounds and the rules you impose. The Small Sided Games masterclass with Andreu Enrich shows how reducing numbers and space forces more efforts per player, while Wouter Blondeel in Mastering Physical KPIs in Field Hockey stresses knowing what each drill actually costs through simple metrics or honest intensity cues.

Do I still need any off-ball fitness work?

A small amount, yes. Glenn Turner in Hockey Conditioning Made Simple argues most foundation work can be simple bodyweight movements like squats, lunges and push-ups, and Matthew Eyles in Injury Reduction Training Methods highlights that robustness and prehab are best handled with dedicated foundation strength that sits underneath your ball-based conditioning.

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How often should my players train before I’m overcooking them?

Quick answer. There is no universal number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing about your squad. What these coaches do agree on is the shape of it. The floor is lower than most coaches think: once a week in the gym and once a week of real speed work will do a lot. The ceiling is set by recovery rather than enthusiasm. And the load that actually overcooks players is usually the load you cannot see, which is school, work, other sports and the other club they play for. Watch for skill errors and unexplained fatigue rather than waiting for somebody to be sick behind the goal.

That is the short version. Here is how the coaches on The Hockey Site work through it.

The floor is lower than you think. Matthew Eyles works with full-time internationals and still sets the bar somewhere a club coach can reach. In Injury Reduction Training Methods he describes his own programme as “one to three sessions a week, that’s a non-negotiable, at least once a week in the gym, even in tournament modes”, and then translates it down without any hand-wringing: “one to two times a week is great. If one time a week is all you got time for, great.” Speed gets the same treatment. “Speed once a week. Absolute non-negotiable.”

What a club week can actually look like. Mick Beunen runs the Belgian men’s programme, and when asked what a club should do with that he gives a straight answer in Physically game ready: cut the second hockey session, but keep “three sessions at least, and preferably four, to prepare your club game on the Sunday”. He also works in waves rather than a flat line, three weeks of gradual overload followed by one deload week, and he is candid that this is not what he sees elsewhere: it is “something that I don’t always see in international hockey or at club level, either”.

The load you cannot see is the one that hurts. This is the most useful idea on the page and it comes from Phil Moreland’s pre-season masterclass. Looking back at a squad with a serious injury record, his diagnosis was not the programme, it was the blind spot: “we didn’t understand the total load that the athlete was being exposed to. We didn’t know what was going on in Clubland. We didn’t know what was going on for some of our school age kids in their school environment. We haven’t taken into account that the school age athlete might be competing in two or three other sports. And they show up to your training session absolutely cooked, yet we continue to push.” He makes the same point about adults, having coached sides full of carpenters, builders and bricklayers, and asks how you account for the physicality of somebody’s job before you write their week.

So the fix starts with a conversation, not a plan. Moreland’s answer was to talk to the other coaches his players reported to, in both directions, so that nobody was writing a week in isolation. If your players belong to a school team and a club and a regional squad, you are one of four people loading them and the only one who can see your quarter of it.

Recovery is not a type of training. Eyles is firm about this and it changes how a week reads: “when I talk about recovery, I don’t talk about recovery training. It’s something that rubs me the wrong way a little bit. For me, you have recovery and you have training. And any training is something that you have to recover from.” Full rest days are scheduled deliberately, “because if you don’t, you’ll build up fatigue, and a build up of fatigue is going to increase that likelihood of injury”.

But do not deload to zero. The instinct when players look tired is to give them a week off, and Eyles thinks that is usually wrong: “deloading to a point of doing nothing is not always the best thing. A week off, especially a week off in season, you’ve got a bye round or something and you give the athletes a week off, it’s probably going to do more harm than good. Deloading your training a little bit, maybe having one or two sessions less depending on how much you train, that might help.”

The sessions you labelled easy are not easy. Glenn Turner describes exactly how a well-planned week quietly turns into an overload in Hockey Conditioning Made Simple: “they always get muddled between, oh, this one’s going to be easy because we’re doing this. But all of a sudden you’re running into deflect corners and you have a mini game at the end because you know as a player you want to play.” The intention was recovery. The session was not.

Training harder can make the numbers worse. Turner’s own example is worth sitting with, because it is not a cautionary tale about somebody else: “my best two examples are both my Olympic cycles. We trained too hard and too much because we became full time athletes. And during the course of the three months before the Olympics my beep test went down. And as an athlete about to go to the Olympics that’s not good physically, but it’s not good mentally either.”

How you spot it before it costs you a season. Eyles gives a practical list. Compare the last week’s load against the last month, and if the week is much heavier you may be overreaching. Then look for power dropping off, a sprint test coming back slower, and two things that sound too simple to matter: “are they getting sick? And what are their sleep patterns like? Because disrupted sleep, lacking in immune system are all signs of overtraining as well.” Turner’s version is the one you can use without any equipment at all. Unfitness and fatigue show up as skill errors first, a missed chop or a pass a metre off, long before anybody looks distressed.

The cheapest monitoring tool is a question. Eyles again: ask the player how hard the session was out of ten, multiply by the minutes they trained, and you have a number. Eight out of ten across a hundred minutes gives 800. If one player is reporting 1,300 for the same session the rest of the squad scored at 800, that is worth a conversation, and you found it without a GPS vest.

If you only see them twice a week. Turner’s prescription for that situation is deliberately undemanding, because the goal is that it actually happens: “This week it’s a 3k run. I don’t care about your time. So this is really important. I need to see you do the run. I don’t care about your time.” He also adds slow running as a recovery tool rather than a punishment: “everyone hates running slow but the benefits are huge and you recover better so you can train better the next day.”

And the sixteen year old playing for five teams. Turner has a script for that conversation, aimed at the player rather than the coach: “I can’t train on the field six days a week as a 16 year old. I could do a running session on Tuesday instead of going to hockey at all. I could do machine work in the gym on a Thursday with my body weight strength stuff and I’m going to be a better athlete for you.” Note who is doing the negotiating there. He wants the player able to make the case.

None of this adds up to a number of sessions. What it gives you is a way of reading your own week, so that when a player starts fading you can work out whether it was your programme, somebody else’s, or the fact that nobody has counted them together. Watch the sessions in full, take what fits, and ask your players what else they are doing before you add anything.

Go more in depth here

Matthew Eyles

Injury Reduction Training Methods

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Mick Beunen

Physically game ready

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Glenn Turner

Hockey Conditioning Made Simple

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More coaching questions: How do I build field hockey fitness without taking players off the ball?, How do I get field hockey players fit for the real demands of a game?, How do I know if my players are actually fit, and what’s a good score?, How do I motivate field hockey players who have checked out?. All of them are in Field Hockey Coaching Questions.

The experts mentioned in this article

Matthew EylesS&C expert from Australia who worked for Hockey India and the Dutch national teams.

Mick BeunenPhysical trainer for the national men’s team of Belgium and a former international player.

Glenn TurnerFormer Australian international player.

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How do I get field hockey players fit for the real demands of a game?

Quick answer. Fitness for hockey means training the way the game actually loads a player: short, repeated, high intensity sprints, with sharp accelerations, decelerations and changes of direction, followed by a little recovery, and then again. The coaches on The Hockey Site build that on a base of running and simple strength, but they shape the work around match demands rather than steady laps around the pitch.

Getting the heart rate up matters, but the coaches on The Hockey Site would tell you not to stop there. A player who can jog all day and still fades in the final quarter has trained the wrong thing, and running laps rarely fixes it on its own.

Start with what a game actually demands. In his masterclass Mastering Physical KPIs in Field Hockey, Belgian strength and conditioning coach Wouter Blondeel describes hockey as a running based power sport that is, in his words, repeated and intense. He notes that a lot of games are decided in the last fifteen minutes, when players can no longer hold that repeatedness. On his reading, fitness is the ability to produce high speed running and explosive changes of direction over and over, not simply to cover distance. He tracks this as high speed running plus explosive distance, the accelerating and decelerating that comes with every change of direction.

Laps build a base, but they miss the pattern. Glenn Turner is clear that hockey is first and foremost an aerobic game and that, as he puts it, you have to be able to run. In Hockey Conditioning Made Simple he even worries that running conditioning has been slipping in parts of the game. The point is not to abandon steady running, it is to see the gap between being able to jog for an hour and being able to repeat sprints when tired. Laps develop the first, but the game asks for the second.

Train the repeated sprint, not the single one. Mick Beunen, physical performance coach for the Belgian men’s team, makes the case directly in Physically Game Ready. As he says, strong athletes can continue to fire at high speeds up until the last quarter, or the last game of a tournament, which is usually the one that matters most. Hockey, in his description, has become a sport of physical duels, explosive sprints and fast changes of direction. Conditioning, then, should rehearse exactly that shape: accelerate, decelerate, change direction, recover briefly, and go again, rather than one long continuous effort.

Build the engine inside the hockey. Beunen’s preference is to integrate physical work into the hockey session rather than bolt it on afterwards. He talks about focusing on movements and not muscles, and about adding what he calls dual tasks, so that the running comes with decisions, agility and game context attached. For most club and youth coaches, that points towards small sided games, shuttle based drills and repeated efforts with the ball, where the sprinting is real because the situation is real.

Put strength underneath the sprints. Turner argues for getting the foundation and movement right first, and warns against overcomplicating it. Bodyweight squats, push ups and lunges can be done on any field, and he would rather see a player do fifty good bodyweight reps than three heavy ones they cannot control. Beunen frames strength the same way, as the foundation that lets a player accelerate, decelerate and withstand contact repeatedly, but always combined with speed and movement rather than trained in isolation.

Know which efforts matter for which player. Blondeel individualises the demand by role, watching his midfielders closely because so much of a team’s play runs through them. In his framework a midfielder needs sprint distance combined with explosive distance, while an attacker leans more on explosive metres and short bursts. Beunen splits it a similar way, adding that defenders need robustness and goalkeepers need explosivity in several planes. Both are keen to stress that you do not need expensive GPS to start, simple observation and a few honest tests will tell you plenty.

Protect the body that has to repeat. Repeated sprinting only helps if players stay available. In Injury Reduction Training Methods, strength and conditioning specialist Matthew Eyles works through how to build that robustness, and Turner is candid that he has seen too many careers dented by programmes that loaded players before they could move well. The message from both is to earn the right to sprint hard by owning the basic movements first.

Periodise so the fitness peaks when it counts. Beunen builds his year in cycles, roughly three weeks of overload followed by one lighter week so the body can adapt and come back stronger. For coaches wanting to map that across a season, Periodisation for Club Coaches lays out how to plan the phases without needing a full time sports science department behind you.

None of this is a fixed prescription, and the coaches above would be the first to say so. The value is in seeing your own team through the lens of the game’s real demands, then borrowing the ideas that fit your level, your time and your players. The masterclasses below are the place to think it through in more depth.

Go more in depth here

Glenn Turner

Hockey Conditioning Made Simple

Watch on demand

Mick Beunen

Physically Game Ready

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Wouter Blondeel

Mastering Physical KPIs in Field Hockey

Watch on demand

More coaching questions: How do I build field hockey fitness without taking players off the ball?, What is the best field hockey warm-up to get game-ready and cut injuries?, How do I know if my players are actually fit, and what’s a good score?, My players are fit but slow to turn. How do I train change of direction?. All of them are in Field Hockey Coaching Questions.

The experts mentioned in this article

Glenn TurnerFormer Australian international player

Mick BeunenPhysical trainer for the national men’s team of Belgium and a former international player

Wouter BlondeelStrength and conditioning expert from Belgium

Matthew EylesStrength and conditioning expert who has worked for Hockey India and the Dutch national teams

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How do I build field hockey fitness without taking players off the ball?

Quick answer. Yes, you can build most of your field hockey fitness inside stick and ball work. Design games and drills so the running is high enough to matter, keep the ball involved for as much of the session as you can, and only step outside for the foundation strength and prep work that ball drills cannot cover.

That surface answer is comfortable, but the coaches on The Hockey Site would not want you to stop there. Conditioning inside drills only works if you actually control the intensity, monitor what a session is costing your players, and keep a small amount of off-ball foundation work in the plan. Here is how a few of them think about it.

Start by keeping it simpler than you think. In Hockey Conditioning Made Simple, Glenn Turner makes the case that hockey is first and foremost an aerobic game, so the ability to keep running matters more than a big number on a squat or bench. He warns that overcomplicated gym programmes and heavy lifting have ended careers rather than built them, and argues coaches should back themselves to use simple bodyweight movements, squats, lunges, push-ups and pull-ups, that can be done on any field. That is good news for anyone worried about time on the ball, because it frees you to put the running load where the ball already is.

Make small-sided games your main engine. The Small Sided Games masterclass with Andreu Enrich is built on the idea that reducing numbers and space forces more touches, more decisions and more repeated efforts per player. The same tool that teaches basic skills and off-ball principles is also a conditioning tool, because you can dial the physical demand up or down through pitch size, player numbers, rest between rounds and the rules you impose. A tight four-versus-four with short recoveries asks a very different physical question than a spread-out seven-versus-seven, and both keep sticks and a ball in every player’s hands.

Integrate the physical work rather than bolting it on. In Physically game ready, Mick Beunen, physical performance coach for the Belgian men, describes running small-sided games above 85 percent of maximum heart rate with limited rest to reproduce match intensity. His principle is that strength is the foundation but is never trained in isolation, it is always combined with speed, movement and game context. He also leans on dual tasks, pairing agility and running with decisions under pressure, so the movement is stored alongside the hockey rather than separate from it. For club teams with only two sessions a week, his advice is blunt, integrate physical skills into the hockey session and keep short strength routines on the side.

Condition through game scenarios, not just fitness tests. That thinking runs through Smart Pre-Season Planning with Russell Coates, who encourages coaches to reach match fitness through targeted hockey activities and game scenarios rather than isolated running drills. When the conditioning stimulus is wrapped inside a pressing game or a transition drill, players get fit while rehearsing the exact actions they need on a Saturday, which is a far better return on limited pitch time than laps of the field.

Sequence the week so the load lands where you want it. Conditioning inside drills can quietly overcook a squad if you do not plan the rhythm. In Practice Session Design, Fede Tanuscio treats session and week design as a deliberate act, deciding which sessions carry the highest physical demand and which pull back. If your Tuesday is a high-intensity small-sided block, your plan needs to know that, so the harder ball-based conditioning arrives on the right day and eases off before a match.

Measure it so it is not guesswork. Mastering Physical KPIs in Field Hockey with Wouter Blondeel is a useful companion here, because conditioning through drills only stays safe when you know what each drill actually costs. Whether that is sprint counts, explosive metres or simply honest intensity cues you can read off the group, having a KPI in mind turns a fun game into a controlled training load. Beunen makes a similar point about monitoring roles differently, midfielders on combined sprint and explosive distance, attackers on explosive metres.

Keep a little off-ball foundation in the mix. Not everything can live inside a stick and ball drill, and Injury Reduction Training Methods with Matthew Eyles is the reason why. Robustness, tissue tolerance and the prehab work that keeps players available are best handled with dedicated foundation strength, much of which Turner shows can be simple bodyweight work. That is the honest limit of conditioning inside drills, it can carry your aerobic base and your repeated-sprint quality, but it works best sitting on top of a small, non-negotiable block of foundation work.

Put together, the message from these coaches is reassuring, you rarely need to choose between fitness and the ball. Build small-sided games that run hard, integrate the physical demand into game scenarios, plan the week so the load lands well, keep an eye on what each session costs, and protect a little foundation work on the side. The masterclasses below go far deeper than any single session plan, and they are worth an evening if you want to design this properly.