Introduction:
Over the final week of 2024 and the first week of January 2025 SIA Academy held its annual Christmas soccer camp. The purpose of the camp is to give young players a chance to experience the lifestyle of a professional soccer player, having access to elite training facilities, a nutritional plan tailored towards improving performance and improve their individual skills with the help of expert certified coaches. The camp itself contains a combination of varying training sessions, soccer related workshops and performance testing such as anthropometric measurements and plyometrics training.
Table of Contents
The camp experience:
First arrival:
The camp experience begins with a tour around the SIA facilities. This gives our new athletes a chance to get to know the academy grounds and witness firsthand the facilities which they will be taking full advantage of within the next upcoming days. The tour showcases SIA Academy’s most prominent facilities including the soccer fields, the gym, the restaurant, the sports clinic, and the video analysis rooms. All the rules, camp requirements and participant questions are also clarified during the duration of this tour.
Morning routine:
Our camp days begin at 8:00am with our participants being given just over an hour to have their breakfast in the snack lounge and get their equipment ready for the day. At 9:30am the first training session begins, and participants are expected to be at the designated facility 5 minutes before any activity to ensure maximum time efficiency. Depending on the day this first training session may vary between a training session on the soccer field or a physical preparation training session at the gym accompanied by a physical trainer and a physiotherapist. Physical preparation training will often involve a combination of mobility and strength exercises to ensure our athletes’ bodies are properly awake and have the core strength needed to carry out all camp activities. Physical preparation also includes a series of plyometric workouts to improve our participants explosiveness and landing exercises to prevent injury in game situations.
After the first hour of physical preparation is accomplished, camp participants are given 30 minutes to rest and have a nutritious snack courtesy of SIA Academy’s in house nutritionist. Following snack time our camp participants are back onto the field for another hour of training. During this training session SIA Academy’s UEFA Pro certified coaches will prepare training drills that resemble in-game situations in which the players must adapt to and respond accordingly. Based on the level and performance of each player SIA Academy coaches will provide personal feedback and tips on how they can improve on their current abilities. With two training sessions finished, it is time for the soccer workshops to begin. Depending on the day, the workshop category may vary between sports nutrition, sports psychology and video analysis.
Sports nutrition workshop:
One of the focus points of SIA Academy’s sports nutrition workshops involves anthropometric measurements allowing our nutritionist, physical trainers and coaches to understand the current state each camp participant finds themselves in and tailor a training and meal plan specifically for that player. Another focus point is the understanding of basic nutritional factors in a sports context and the application of those factors through learning interesting, healthy and tasty recipes players can easily make at home to improve the nutritional level of their diets. This includes both pre and post training recipes as they focus on providing different nutritional benefits depending on the time of consumption.
Sports psychology workshop:
SIA Academy’s sports psychology workshops focus on understanding the mind and driving forces behind each camp participant. The workshop helps our participants to set better goals for their future and understand the steps they need to take to accomplish their individual goals. These workshops will often tackle subjects like internal/external points of stress, setting realistic expectations based on what each player has control over and how to progress once those goals are met.
Video analysis workshop:
This workshop is where players become familiarized with the process of video analysis from a professional point of view. SIA Academy coaches will guide them through the video analysis tool and explain why certain cuts are important and when they should be reviewed. Camp participants are then given a chance to analyze clips from different plays done both during the camp and during official matches for themselves and come up with their own conclusions which they can then take out onto the field to improve different aspects of their game.
Meals:
Following the conclusion of the workshops our athletes are taken to SIA Academy’s restaurant where a full course meal awaits them. Meals vary depending on the day and the different dietary requirements specified by our camp participants. Regardless of the dish served, all meals have been previously considered and approved by SIA Academy’s sports nutritionist based on results shown during early testing such as the anthropometric measurements. The meals include a salad bar for players to eat as much as they want, a main dish that provides sufficient carbs and protein to keep our participants alert for the rest of the training day and a desert in the form of a piece of fruit, yoghurt or jelly for a direct injection of glucose to help begin the recovery process from the intense morning training.
Afternoon training:
After lunch our participants are given 2 hours to rest and digest the food before the third training session begins. Having spent the morning focusing on individual skills and technical drills, the afternoon training session tends to involve more gameplay and in-game challenges for our players to focus on their individual points of improvement. During this training SIA Academy coaches will often split up the group into different teams and allow the teams to compete in different games and matches for the duration of the training to determine that days winning team at the end of the training session.
Following the end of the training session there is a second snack time to replenish all nutrients lost during the last intense training session and our participants are given free time to relax and clean up before dinner. Dinner begins at 8:30pm and our participants are expected to be in bed by 11:00pm in order to get enough rest to begin everything again the next day.
Extra Services
Aside from all the services already included in the camp package, our participants are also given the option to request extra services which include:
- An extra night stay before the camp
- An extra night stay after the camp
- Pick up or drop off at the Valencia airport
- Pick up or drop off at the Alicante airport
