In May 2020 Wayne Rooney wrote an article in the Sunday Times Sport section. The heading of the article caught our eye. It was “If you want to reach the top, you have to make sacrifices- it’s not just about ability.”  

He goes on to say, “From the age of 14 I changed my mindset. My whole focus was now on becoming a player. But I knew lads who couldn’t make that commitment, who said ‘I’m good enough to make it anyway.’ Well, they didn’t.”   

So there you have it. A very clear message from England’s leading goal scorer and an all-time great.  

The chances are you are someone who would like to find time to do some extra training. How do you find the extra time? Looking at things you do at the moment, how could you do things differently? It’s time to ask yourself some questions and be honest with yourself.  

What time do you wake up at weekends? Perhaps 10am? Could you wake instead at 8am, and spend those extra two hours training? What time do you wake on weekdays? Ten minutes before you have to set off for school or college or work? What about at night. Before you go to sleep, do you get on your phone and go through social media and lots of Instagram or Tik Tok videos? If so, could you not do that, and go to sleep an hour earlier?  In that way you could wake an hour earlier the next morning, and use that hour for extra training, and not miss out on any sleep. 

Are you a gamer? Do you spend a few hours a week playing ‘FIFA’ or ‘Fortnite’? Ask yourself, “is that a constructive use of my time?” We all know it’s fun, but are you strict about how many hours you play on it each week? Is there something you could change there? Try changing your routine, so that in the hours you free up you are able to fit in a bit more training.  

Now here’s the thing. Let’s say, for a couple of weeks, you trained for an extra hour a day at your fitness, speed and agility, which is a metric that is easy to measure in an objective way. We absolutely guarantee you that if you trained properly, and then looked at your results, after 14 extra hours of training over those two weeks, your times would be significantly better than they were before. That improvement would have a major, positive impact on your game. 

Do you watch a fair amount of TV? Box sets, random series, or loads of sport. We don’t want to criticise your behaviour. If that’s what you choose to do, then that is fine, but every hour you spend watching TV you could be training, especially in the summer months with the light evenings. Again, we absolutely understand that there is a happy medium. We enjoy doing these things too, but everything needs to be in moderation. That is why, when players tell us they haven’t got time to train more, we are a bit doubtful if that is actually the case. What it usually means is that they do not structure their life in a way that makes time to do the extra training.  

We could tell you loads of stories about the extraordinary lengths that some of our players go to improve their game. At the end of the day, it’s up to the individual how serious you want to be about becoming a pro. However, be honest with yourself and know that if you aren’t training properly, there will be somebody else looking for the same opportunity as you, who is putting the hours in, and who will have the edge on you because of the extra hours of practice he is putting in.