How to Improve Your Stamina for Football

Improving your stamina for playing football involves training and pushing your body in a variety of ways over a sizeable period of time. It can be several weeks before you notice an improvement in your stamina, but a consistent program can give you added endurance that will help you in practices and games. Football requires high levels of two types of cardiovascular fitness: endurance running and explosive sprint running. A good stamina program focuses on both, along with general exercises designed to improve endurance.

Things You'll Need

  • Pen and paper
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Instructions

    • 1

      Pick a cardio exercise, like running, bicycling, or stair climbing, and continuously engage in that exercise for more than an hour at a time. Adjust the resistance levels, if possible, to make the task easier. Aim to go farther every time. This exercise program should dramatically improve your stamina.

    • 2

      Begin a rigorous sprint program; sprinting during games can deplete stamina quickly for untrained athletes. Make sure that you warm up before sprinting sessions. Sprint for 30 seconds, rest for up to a minute, and sprint again. Rest for at least 30 seconds between sprints. Repeat this rotation until you feel unable to sprint again, and then rest until your body recovers. Record the number of sprints you were able to do during a session and work to increase this number over time.

    • 3

      Shuttle run every day that you train. Shuttle runs combine running sprints with endurance training and build capacity to stop on a dime. Run from the goal line to the 10-yard line, tap the ground, run back to the goal line, tap the ground, and repeat. Again, record the number of full rotations done during every session and try to exceed your best number each time.

    • 4

      Start an in-home exercise program that you can do when you wake up, at some point during the daylight hours, and during the evening. Include push-ups, sit-ups, burpees and other stationary stamina-building exercises. Find out how many push-ups you can do in a minute, and try to increase that number over time. These exercises will give you a great all-body workout and improve your stamina.

    • 5

      Start a yoga program. Many yoga postures bring the body into greater overall health and fitness, which translates directly into stamina. Use the upward and downward facing dog postures to warm up the legs, arms, and core before a workout. The stick pose is a difficult pose to maintain, so working on it every day will get you fitter and improve your endurance. Enter a few yoga poses every day to maximize their benefit.