By Kerry Greer, Athletes’ Performance
The UEFA Champions League players spent months preparing to take on the tough competition in the one of the most respected and prestigious tournaments of the year. At the same time the players were preparing, many of you took on miCoach’s UEFA Champions League five-stage soccer challenge where you trained like Jose Mourinho´s top players. Your training included:
Preseason Conditioning
Your training kicked off with preseason conditioning, including foundational cardio and movements. This training helped build your basic fitness to improve movement quality and fitness needed to play to the last minute. It also decreased your risk of injury on the pitch.
Group Stage Prep
In the second stage of training, you completed group stage prep—the same training the UEFA Champions League teams completed. Here you began to build strength and continued to improve your cardiovascular fitness by performing higher-intensity intervals.
Winter Stage
A break from the game during the winter stage didn’t mean the work stopped. Instead, you pushed yourself harder to build speed and power both in movements and in cardio.
Knock-Out Stage Prep
During this stage, you focused on exercising using short, explosive intervals during your cardio workouts. This helped increase your power and put you one step ahead of your opponent.
Final Stage Prep
The last stage was all about fine-tuning your skills and putting the finishing touches on your game.
Now that your training is done, take your skills out to your local field, revisit the UEFA Champions League training plan for a refresher, and tune in to see how your favorite teams are doing in the UEFA Champions League. Click here for a recap of the tournament so far.











