There are a few of important steps involved to get prepared for a football match and the following post will outline what I do every week to get into the mindset of the game and what I need to do. It took me years to develop this set of rules and regulations, it may seem like common sense but you’ll be surprised to see that many players don’t take these things into account

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What Are The Different Things To Consider?

First and foremost, don’t have a big night before the game because you’re just asking for trouble and playing a bad game. That means going out drinking with your mates and having a late night. You then deprive yourself of sleep and dehydrate yourself, giving your opposition the edge even before you’ve reached the field. The best way to counter this is to drink plenty of sports drink. I unfortunately have done this on one too many occasions and so I have had to go down to the nearest shop to buy some Gatorade or something along the lines. Why sports drink? Because they replenish lost electrolytes and fluids much more effectively. Did you know that?

Breakfast?

Eat a good breakfast in the morning. I don’t care what anyone thinks they know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and when you deprive yourself of breakfast, you deprive yourself of energy and fitness on the field. Another pointer, keep it light, you do that with cereal, piece of fruit and juice filled with vitamins. I’ll talk more about nutrition later on down the track. The main point here is that don’t go eating bacon, sausages and other heavy food fit for a king, in the morning before a game.

Warming Up Before The Game

The third most important thing to consider for a game is to warm up your muscles and to stretch afterwards. I cannot stress this enough. Before you head out on the field, you need to warm up your muscles because you are about to use them a lot harder and much more frequently, so therefore, without adequate warming up, you can really do your body damage. This brings me to stretching. I place quite a lot of importance on this and dedicate a good amount of time to making sure that I can stretch every muscle I can before I head out, because it allows me to play a flexible game and allows me to run much faster than if I were to go out there all stiff and tight.

Some of this stuff may seem a little obvious but I won’t be surprised to see it open the eyes of the Be Like Ronaldinho readers, because even the best of us can forget the importance of doing these simple things. Having said that I have a match tomorrow and I have to say that one of those points will apply to me