‘This is the Nike SPARQ version of the Yo-yo intermittent recovery test, level two.’ For most players (thankfully, not myself), this one line of dialogue is enough to cause cold sweats, shivers, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. It’s the kind of side effects that you usually only hear at the end of a pharmaceutical advertisement, when you think to yourself, why would anyone want to take that willingly. At its best, the beep test can scare players into running their butts off a

Recently I’ve adopted a new motto along the lines of 'Train Smarter, Not Harder'. This is a change for me, because I’ve always been the type of person who believed “more is always better”. For instance, if the coach told us to do 2 full field sprints after training, I’d do 10. Well, maybe not 10, but you get the idea. Around Christmas of my sophomore year back in 2012, I decided I was going to really dedicate myself to becoming more “technical”. I had frequently been told tha