Women's soccer

Syracuse adopts Fit for 90 system to monitor fitness, avoid injuries throughout season

/ The Daily Orange

Jackie Firenze and other Syracuse players fill out daily questionnaires as part of a soccer-specific training system, Fit for 90. Head coach Phil Wheddon receives a daily re-port with percentages, not the actual answers, of how his players feel and structures his practices based on the results.

When sophomore defender Maddie Iozzi wakes up around 7 a.m. each morning, she rolls over in bed, picks up her phone and fills out a questionnaire on the Internet.

Her daily obligations for the Syracuse women’s soccer team have already begun.

She answers five questions rating her fatigue, soreness, sleep, stress and mood.

Players fill out the questionnaires as part of a soccer-specific training system, Fit for 90, every day before 8 a.m. practices. Head coach Phil Wheddon receives a daily re-port with percentages, not the actual answers, of how his players feel and structures his practices based on the results.

In the first season SU (5-8-3, 2-5 Atlantic Coast) is using the system, the result has been one of the Orange’s healthier seasons in recent years, junior captain Jackie Fi-renze said.



“From (the results), I can say ‘OK, well we really should back off on so-and-so be-cause she’s very sore,’” Wheddon said. “Or I’ll discuss it with that player and say ‘Hey, I noticed you’re very sore,’ so it gives us a little bit more of a feel for the play-ers as well.”

Fit for 90 tailors practice routines around three main premises: the overall work-load, the type of workload and the progression of the training session. Based on the results each morning, Wheddon knows how intense practice should be.

“It’s a great way for letting (the coaches) know how we feel off the field and when we’re not in practice,” Iozzi said, “so it’s a good eye-opener for them.”

Before the season, Wheddon approached John Cone — Fit for 90’s founder, the di-rector of sports science for the Portland Timbers and a friend of Wheddon’s from crossing paths as goalkeeper coaches in the MLS — about the system.

Cone has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and teams at Clemson, North Carolina State and Ohio State have used his system.

Fit for 90 is built around the way practice is segmented. In team sports, oftentimes the entire team practices the same amount at the same intensity. With Cone’s pro-gram, practice is broken down on an individual level.

“This allows us to make those micro adjustments with an individual within the team to prevent an injury for that player,” Cone said.

Instead of having every player practice a drill for 20 minutes, some players might be best suited to only play 10 minutes based on their questionnaire results.

This allows for optimal training and player development. Cone said that every non-contact injury has at least some component of overuse.

Though Fit for 90 doesn’t give Wheddon the exact drills he should run, it does rec-ommend whether the Orange should practice playing small-sided games with few people on each team or games with more people on each team.

“Obviously you’ve got to have a little bit of a feel with it as well,” Wheddon said. “We see something on the field, you want to fix it, so it’s a balancing act between the in-formation you’re receiving and then what you see on the field.”

Wheddon recognizes that sometimes players are dishonest about how they really feel, but urges them to tell the truth.

Iozzi said she thinks lying was more of an issue at the beginning of the season when players were just getting used to the program. But now, with only three games left, she said players are more open about admitting soreness.

Though dishonesty is a risk, Cone said that in his experience, nobody cares more about their health than the players themselves.

“The biggest challenge is educating the players and making sure that they under-stand that this is about them, about their health,” Cone said, “and it benefits them to be honest.”





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