How do 4:00 WABA sessions supercharge club practice? WABA’s 4:00 PM weekday sessions were intentionally designed to serve two important purposes. First and foremost, every session is built to develop the player. The training varies throughout the week and across the season so athletes continue to develop different technical, neurological, cognitive and athletic qualities. The second purpose is equally important. We wanted to create a training window that could work extremely well before a player’s club practice. For athletes who practice with their club at 5:15, 5:30, 5:45 or later, depending on travel distance, the 4:00 PM WABA session can become an extremely productive way to activate, prepare and excel in the club training that day. For most of our 4:00 PM sessions, think of WABA as a combination of skills development, muscle activation & ball calibration before club training. Rather than arriving at club practice cold and spending the opening portion of training trying to find their touch, rhythm, speed and concentration, the athlete arrives already switched on. They have already been moving, thinking, touching the ball and solving technical challenges. Their feet are awake, their brain is engaged and their technical skills are calibrated. When the first whistle blows at club practice, who looks sharp immediately? Ideally, it is the WABA player who has already completed a deliberate technical session and arrives prepared to perform from the first minute rather than needing the first 20 minutes to get in the groove. This fits directly into WABA’s 30/40/30 Development Philosophy. Club soccer is extremely important, but club training alone cannot provide every repetition, every technical challenge and every individualized developmental experience a player needs. Purposeful self-practice and supplemental development fill those gaps. The 4:00 PM sessions allow athletes to add high-quality developmental work without necessarily creating another completely separate training event later in the evening. When scheduled intelligently, WABA becomes part of the preparation for club training rather than simply another activity competing with it. Tuesday’s Xtreme Athleticism™ Exception There is one important exception to how families should think about the 4:00 PM schedule. Tuesday’s Xtreme Athleticism™ session is different. At the beginning of the season, our primary XA emphasis is helping athletes restore match readiness after summer schedules, vacations and periods when consistent conditioning may have fallen by the wayside. We place a greater early-season emphasis on stamina, endurance, repeated high-intensity effort and the ability to continue performing as fatigue accumulates. The objective is not simply to make players tired. The objective is to progressively improve their capacity to maintain quality movement, decision-making and technical execution deeper into practices and matches. We intentionally scheduled this more demanding XA session on Tuesday because periodization matters. Assuming most matches are played Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Tuesday generally provides a better position within the weekly training cycle for a significant athletic stimulus while still allowing recovery before competition. During the competitive season, WABA offers far less Xtreme Athleticism™ than we do during our major athletic development periods. The season is generally not the ideal time to pursue a major athletic transformation because athletes are already carrying substantial loads from club practices and matches. We prefer to make our largest athletic investments during the winter and summer, including our seven weeks of Xtreme Athleticism™ Transformation Camps, then use the competitive season more strategically. That does not mean every player should automatically attend Tuesday XA. Training load must be individualized. A player who is joining a new club, playing for a new coach or fighting for a position should be particularly thoughtful about combining a demanding XA session with an intense club practice immediately afterward. There is tremendous developmental value in learning to perform while fatigued and increasing the body’s ability to sustain effort. However, there is also a difference between productive struggle and influencing a coach’s early assessment of your performance. A new coach does not necessarily know what an athlete did before arriving at practice. If the player is completely depleted during the final portion of club training, the coach may simply see a player who cannot maintain the required intensity. This is part of load management and how to influence and manage perception. School PE workload matters as well. If an athlete completed the PACER test or another demanding fitness test earlier Tuesday, that needs to be considered part of the athlete’s total training load for the day. In that situation, we would generally recommend skipping Tuesday XA rather than stacking another major conditioning stimulus on top of it. Players should also learn how to communicate appropriately with their club coaches. If an athlete had a demanding fitness test at school and performs extremely well throughout club practice, there may be no reason to make an issue of it. If fatigue becomes obvious, however, communicating that context to the coach can be appropriate and helpful to their ongoing player evaluation: “Coach, I pushed through the best I could tonight, we had the PACER test today and I pushed myself extremely hard on it.” Part of becoming a serious athlete is learning to understand, manage and communicate your total training load. This is an integral part of WABA’s teachings on how to influence your coach and all stakeholders in your soccer journey. As the season progresses, the emphasis of WABA’s Tuesday XA will also evolve. Early in the season, stamina, endurance and match readiness receive greater attention. Later, we will gradually shift more of the emphasis toward explosiveness, acceleration, deceleration, change of direction, balance, coordination and efficient athletic movement while continuing to maintain an appropriate amount of conditioning. We will introduce many of these qualities from the beginning, but their proportion within the session will change as the needs of the athlete and the demands of the competitive season change. This is intentional periodization rather than repeating the same workout every Tuesday regardless of where players are in their season. Ultimately, the 4:00 PM weekday schedule is designed to give WABA athletes another tool for becoming more complete players and performing and developing beyond their peers. On most days, it is an opportunity to develop, activate and calibrate before club practice so the athlete arrives technically sharp, mentally engaged and ready to perform from the opening whistle. Tuesday XA requires a little more planning because the physical load is greater. Families should consider school activities, club training intensity, match schedules, recovery and where the athlete is within his or her competitive season. At WABA, more is not automatically better. Better is better. The goal is to create the right amount of Struggle, at the right time, followed by enough recovery for the athlete to adapt, improve and ultimately bring a higher level of performance onto the field. As always, questions are welcome. WABAON!