ch9 - The JFA Physical Fitness Project
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Injury prevention and training content
Sixteen hamstring exercises, fourteen mini-band exercises. The order of the list is itself a difficulty ladder, and where each item sits in the session is the prescription.
Hamstrings — why this muscle group
The JFA identifies the hamstrings as a frequent site of injury, muscle strain in particular, and lists five causes.
- Loss of strength
- Imbalance of strength
- Insufficient flexibility
- Insufficient neuromuscular facilitation
- Fatigue
It also specifies when the work goes in: activation before the warm-up. Stimulating the hamstrings at that point is where the preventive effect can be expected — not inside the warm-up, but ahead of it. The JFA adds that training the hamstrings also carries over into performance, in speed and power. Prevention and improvement are treated as the same lever.
| Part | Exercises | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 1–6 |
1. Two-leg hip lift 2. Single-leg hip lift 3. Hip lift on a BOSU 4. Stretching 5. Barbell hip lift 6. Sliding hip lift | Starts on the floor. Two legs, then one, then an unstable surface, then external load, then an eccentric element — difficulty rises step by step |
| Part 2 7–11 |
7–8. Movement preparation 1 and 2 9. Deadlift variations 10. Squat variations 11. Lunge variations | Base power from standing (stage 1 in chapter 4). Note that movement prep is placed first |
| Part 3 12–16 |
12. Two-leg leg curl 13. Single-leg leg curl 14. Roman chair variations 15. TRX variations 16. Nordic hamstring curl | Heavily eccentric. The Nordic curl is placed last |
Each part is provided as a separate video.
The placement of the Nordic hamstring curl at number sixteen, the end of the list, matters. It is the exercise with the strongest evidence behind it for prevention, but the load on a beginner is very high. The mistake commonly made at junior level is to read the evidence and start there. The JFA's ordering says: start with hip lifts and arrive at the Nordic curl fifteen steps later.
Mini-bands — built around the hip musculature
Introducing the mini-band exercises, the JFA notes that although upper-body work exists too, what it presents here is centred on strengthening the muscles around the hip.
| Region / family | Exercises |
|---|---|
| Upper body · upper back | 1. Lat pull 2. Single-arm row 3. Bent-over row |
| Lower body · glutes | 4. Wide-stance squat 5. Hip rotation |
| Balance | 6. Knee-up 7. Single-leg squat with side swing 8. Single-leg squat with back kick 9. In pairs: swings, front, back and lateral |
| Stepping | 10. Knee-bent walk 11. Lateral knee-bent walk 12. Straight-leg side walk |
| Jumping | 13. Open–close jumps 14. Single-leg open–close jumps |
The rule for choosing intensity is equally clear: because mini-bands come in many strengths and types, players should select a resistance suited to their own capability, one they can work with without the movement breaking down. It is the phase 2 principle from chapter 4 — learn the correct movement first — extended into the choice of equipment.
The muscles around the hip, the glutes above all, govern stability in changing direction, decelerating and supporting on one leg. That is precisely the phase the CMJ's single-leg condition — single-leg take-off, single-leg landing — reads in chapter 6. The test items and the prevention program are aimed at the same function.
Band work — movement correction, not power
Shooting
This is used at the striker camps among others. The aim is to develop the feel of striking the ball hard without lifting it. The key points are stabilising the trunk and being able to shift bodyweight forward, and the JFA states explicitly that the exercise is used for movement correction rather than as power training.
The original illustrates the faulty shooting patterns.
- Bodyweight left behind, back over the standing foot
- The planted standing leg unstable, wobbling side to side
- Dropping the centre of mass by bending the knee and striking hard from a fixed position, with no forward transfer of weight
Jump heading
Used at centre-back camps and elsewhere. With the trunk stable, the player learns to push against the ground to the very end and jump using the whole body, consciously extending the hip, knee and ankle fully against the band's resistance. Players often report that hang time feels longer than usual and that their body position in the air is more stable, and the exercise is also aimed at improving heading for players whose jump timing is late.
These two are the concrete instances of stage 3, football power from chapter 4. Load is applied, but the goal is not added strength — it is correcting how force is expressed inside a match action, which is what marks it off clearly from stage 1 in the weights room.
Self-conditioning program for secondary-school players
The fitness program for the development years — junior and senior secondary age — has four components. It is designed as a menu a player can complete alone when ground time is short or a ball is not available, and it was published as video with repetition counts and hold times specified for each of the two age groups.
| Component | When | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Core exercises | Any time | Settles whole-body balance and strengthens the trunk |
| 2. Movement preparation | Before training or a match | Aimed at performance and injury prevention: warms the body while loosening the muscles around each joint in turn |
| 3. Individual training | As required | Strengthens each player's own weak points, combining whatever the goal requires |
| 4. Regeneration stretching | After training or a match | Returns the muscles to their original state. The first step towards the next session or match, and important training in its own right |
The four sit along the timeline of a day: before, any time, individual, after. And the note attached to the fourth sums up the attitude of the whole program — it frames the work not as a cool-down but as the start of the next session.
The presence of component 3 is worth noting too. Rather than a menu common to the whole squad, a slot for combining work around an individual's weaknesses is built into the structure from the outset. It is where the goal from chapter 1 — improvement suited to the individual — becomes visible at the level of content.
Sources
- Japan Football Association, 'Physical Fitness Project training examples' — the sixteen hamstring exercises in three parts, the five causes and the timing of activation, the fourteen mini-band exercises and the rule for choosing intensity, and the banded shooting and jump-heading work with the illustrations of faulty technique.
https://www.jfa.jp/coach/physical_project/fitness_example.html - Japan Football Association, 'Mini-band exercises for injury prevention and performance' (22 June 2022, video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EpBP4mjWU - Japan Football Association, 'Conditioning program for the development years' — the four components and their definitions.
https://www.jfa.jp/coach/physical_project/conditioning_programme.html - Japan Football Association Medical, 'Injury prevention and management'.
https://www.jfa.jp/medical/injury_prevention.html