3 Lessons I've Learned from Playing Pro Football

what's going on guys matt here from become elite and welcome to the video in this video particularly it's gonna be a mix between three big lessons that i've learned from playing professional football as well as a typical offseason vlog with my training and workouts and everything so kind of a mix match of the video right here [Applause] [Music] the first lesson that i've really learned over my time playing professionally is that you should train to eliminate your butt it sounds a little funny but i'm sure you guys have heard this like player a is a fantastic center midfielder but he's not 90 minutes fit player b should be our starting center back but he's not comfortable playing out of the back player c has all the physical and technical attributes to be a professional winger but he's just lost defensively or positionally he doesn't fully understand the position player d could be a pro but he's just too unathletic or weak i've heard and i've seen this time and time and time again there's so many players out there that have attributes or have potential to play at the professional level but they have one or two parts about their game that's holding them back and usually at the lower levels at club level high school even sometimes college or semi-professionally you can get away with having a butt you can be a starter you can have a successful semi-pro or collegiate experience by having parts of your game that are not at the standard that they need to be but as those players want to push on to the professional level i've seen their butts their weaknesses hold them back from signing a pro contract and the best players that go on to have the most successful careers end up working in training to eliminate their butts eliminate their weaknesses and i think there's definitely truth about specializing a bit as a player and having one or two aspects of your game that really set you apart from the pack set you apart from everybody else but you should still always be working to improve your weaknesses and prove the worst parts about your game up to the professional standard so not only do i think it's 100 possible to specialize yet still work on your weaknesses but it's something that i think the best players really do because you can be a fast attacking winger and still work on your tactical understanding of that position defensively you can be that big strong center back that's always in the gym but still spend time working on your first touch in your tight space tiki taka style play and i believe that you can be that technical vision center mid they can just spray the ball wherever he wants but still work in the gym to become a little bit faster and a little bit stronger so i think that's the first big lesson that i've really learned from my time playing pro is that the best players are constantly doing that and they're constantly looking at their game seeing which attribute or which aspect is holding them back and working tirelessly to improve in that area so that no coach is looking at them and saying look he should be the starter he should be playing in the mls or he should be doing this but this is holding him back okay we'll jump into the training session now and while you guys are watching that i'll talk about the second lesson that i've learned i got it where's the when i put the pump oh isaiah you want to do a little crossing and finishing it today again anything else anybody other requests colebroon i definitely need some small sided small sided no more megs yeah no more banks i swear culprit you get a good meg on me i'll throw it up now i'm gonna i'm gonna try getting a little small group session with spencer colbrin vince and isaiah i think you guys have met ever spencer i haven't introduced you huh come over here yeah easy chances i'm 16 i play for united pdx 04 and go to jesus i was like my rival back in high school but we would always be jesuit every single time so not that way anyway so the second big lesson that i've learned from playing pro is that improvement really comes from deliberate repetition and improvement at whatever skill it is is a lot more simple than you think so once you acknowledge your butt or the one thing that's holding you back from performing at your current level or playing at the next level or signing a pro contract or whatever you really just have to get out of your comfort zone and work at it there's no secret formula sure there's better drills than others but just go out and just work at exactly what you want to improve on you just have to work while being mentally focused and engaged on what you're trying to improve and you just have to do that multiple times a week every single week for years and years or even decades sometimes but my main piece of advice is just to not overthink or over complicate whatever it is you want to improve at like you want to improve your juggling well then do a thousand juggles every single day or every single night before you go to bed for three months and just watch how quickly your juggling record is going to be broken and how quickly your juggling will improve or you want to improve your first touch from aerial passes have a partner ping you out aerial passes and work on just trapping the ball if you don't have a partner then use a wall if you want to improve your tight space speed of play get some teammates create a tight space and play if you want to improve your physique or your strength don't over complicate it just get in the gym and start doing some push-ups and pull-ups and squats and actively track your progress week after week or lastly if you want to improve your fitness pick a workout like the john terry workout or the two mile or the manchester united fitness test and just do it over and over again until you reach your goal and i know that's an oversimplified approach and i know there's there's things that you need to do you know different types of training and periodization and all that stuff but just start off simple as simple as you possibly can and then as you start to progress you can start to make things more complicated you can start to add in a little bit more complicated drills you can add in new exercises you can make it a little bit more complex but the key the beginning is just starting and you'll be so surprised how much you'll improve by just doing something that you really think is just so simple or so easy almost at first but you just work at it and over time you'll be very very surprised with how much you improve two three four five yeah six one two three four five six switch one two three four five yeah yeah yeah one two three four five six one two three four oh good round good round one two three four five six one two three four five six one two three five yes one two three four five one two three four five one two three [Music] four [Music] so we've done like a little passing warm-up done some tight space possession drills like how i always like to start every single session we'll move into some crossing and finishing work because we have a couple full backs as well as like a center back and like a central midfielder so the central players will stay inside and the full backs will be out wide crossing in uh balls so we'll get a few sets of that and then we'll keep on moving on your balls fence touch good good round yes yes good good ball all right so it's 9 35 we've been out here for about an hour and a half a little over that now we'll do some another game of two touch some tight space possession game and then we'll end with like a fun horseshoe type game a longer range passing game uh yes covered [Music] like it [Music] like your show it is if colbrain and isaiah want to lose again uh horseshoes you got faith good good touch i've never had that happen um god vince you're carrying the team right now yeah yeah that's fine look at that all right yeah i'm ready okay it's 11 42 in the morning um wasn't feeling the typical breakfast this morning which is really weird because usually i'm all about same meals consistency everything so i cooked this chicken marsala last night with like some pasta and some broccolini really good so i'm just having that for lunch just reheating this and then i'm going to do a workout upstairs and then i'll have my smoothie after the workout so just watching the us men's national team right now play against panama just as my food digests i'll probably i'll probably finish out this whole game it's like the 24th minute right now i'll watch this game and then by the end of it i should be ready to work out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay so i hope you guys enjoyed the training session hope you guys enjoyed that workout now i want to talk about the third big lesson that i've really learned over these last few years and that's regarding connections and how they're really formed so the third lesson is that connections usually stem from your coaches and your teammates i think there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of misunderstandings about that i think a lot of players think of a connection as like some crazy powerful scout or agent that's gonna help them get into a new team and that definitely is the case and i think that definitely helps you but majority of the time you meet your agents you meet those scouts through your team through your play and talking with other players and your coaches about how to get up to the next level and what's funny but the one thing i really didn't realize even though it seems so obvious but the more teams you play for and the more coaches that you play under the more connections you really build and the higher level that team is usually the better those connections are so if you've gone your entire life and you've only played for your local club team you're not going to have many connections into the football world but if you've played for multiple club teams you've gone out and trained with a couple different coaches or a couple different players in your area high level players in your area maybe you've gone off to college and played d1 maybe you've gone and played pdl at the semi-pro level and met a couple different teammates and coaches through a couple teams there you are going to build a lot of connections during that time and if you guys really don't believe that i can give you some first-hand examples from my career but all of these opportunities or even the agents that i meet are all through another teammate or an old coach or a current coach for example my opportunities at the san jose earthquakes u23 team and the sacramento republic both came from my collegiate coach reaching out and talking to those coaches on my behalf all of my opportunities and trials i had over in germany could all be traced back to one of my old youth coaches that i just stayed in contact with over the years my opportunities at the orange county blue is my very first pro contract and my opportunity at the tulsa roughnecks the contract that i got coming back into the usl both came from a player that i met at sacramento republic the agent that i'm using today was actually just the brother of one of my old teammates at the tulsa roughnecks and my last agent the agent before that was the same agent that one of my old teammates used at st louis fc so you meet your agents you get these opportunities you meet new coaches and you talk to new teams kind of through your coaches and through your teammates past and present to really set up new opportunities for you so if you're sitting there right now and you're thinking okay i got to stay in contact with my current teammates and current coaches but you're looking at your current teammates and current coaches and you're thinking there's no way that these guys are going to help me get into the pro level then one i would really say that you kind of need to go one step higher stop trying to go from the level that you're currently at to the professional level and take one baby step higher whether that's an academy team whether that's a semi-professional team whether that's college wherever that is for you take one step higher to get with slightly better players and build slightly better connections to that next level even higher and you keep on rinsing and repeating of the cycle of performing and pressing and moving on performing and pressing and moving on and you hopefully do that throughout your entire career until you get up to the professional level and even in the professional level you hopefully continue to do that so that was really the third big lesson that i've learned from playing professional football i hope you guys like this video i hope you guys kind of could take something from this video at least if you did please hit the like button subscribe and i'll see you guys in the next off season series episode bye guys peace

Channel: Become Elite

Views: 57,971

Keywords: soccer, football, sports, vlog, matt, sheldon, become, elite, professional, pro, footballer, athlete, workout, weight, lift, train, training, saint, louis, fc

Id: caRg1O72f6s

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020