In modern football, physical preparation is an extremely important and laborious process, in youth football it is no less vital. From October 2022 Pyunik Football club began this work in its academy. Our club entrusted this task to Hayk Voskanyan, a former football player with international coaching experience. After finishing his career as a footballer, Voskanyan worked as a coach at Urartu (ex. Banants) Academy. As a physical training coach, his first stop was Atyrau from Kazakhstan, then the specialist returned to Armenia and worked at Alashkert and Ararat Yerevan.
A few months after joining our club, the media team of Pyunik spoke with Voskanyan, the coordinator of the physical training programs, and discussed the physical and psychological abilities of our alumni and the expected results.
Mr. Voskanyan, please, tell us about general physical training and its characteristics in youth football?
Physical training in professional football prepares the team for a specific game or championship, while in youth football the main emphasis is on strengthening the child physically as a footballer.
Apart from physical data, does the child acquire other qualities?
Of course, first of all, the child acquires discipline, after its volitional qualities are formed, because there are exercises that require hard work to achieve the desired result.
However, the children's perception can be completely different depending on their age.
Yes, you are right. That is why we integrate children in this process from the age of 13 up to moving to the Pyunik Academy team. But I must say that there are exceptions, for example, the team of children born in 2011 is also included in this program, the thing is that they compete with older teams in the championship.
Did you use or do you use foreign experience when coordinating the programs?
Yes, I have studied various foreign programs, I use many of them, but I have partly changed them, taking into account the physical data, genetics, development of the children of our academy and many other factors.
Would you detail what factors you are talking about?
Of course, first are age and puberty, because biological development can be different for every child, for one it starts at 12 years, for another at 14. Then, second are the perception and reaction of the club's children to the process. If something doesn't work, we start using other options until we reach our goal.
It has been some time since you got involved in this process, have you already formed an opinion?
Yes, there is already a certain image. Now I can say that technically most of our young footballers are not inferior to their peers training in foreign academies. However, there are no little problems in football and today we have problems with physical preparation and in order to train perfect players, we need to balance technical and physical characteristics. We have much work to do in this direction, and when we achieve such results, we will at least reach the level of the top academies.
And do we have sufficient technical resources in our sports base to achieve these goals?
Yes, at the moment we have no technical problems, the funds are sufficient to carry out a full training. As I mentioned, intensive and laborious work is required. In the near future we will have new equipment in Armenia, which we have ordered according to our upcoming plans.
The process may be long, but what do you think, when will the results be tangible?
I can't give exact dates, maybe after 2-3 years, when they start playing at an older age, then I think the results will be visible, and the older ones should improve their game physically over time.
