Train Like Aston Villa | Premier League Runs

Aston Villa’s lead sports scientist Jack Sharkey has shared some of his favorite drills to help his athletes improve their aerobic capacity that you can try at home. The ‘Premier League Runs’, originally devised at Bolton Wanderers in the 1990’s have stood the test of time and are regularly used as a fitness drill to test footballers across the leagues. Also known as 320’s, 120’s they can be performed using a 60 metre track. Although for convenience there is also an adaptation that uses the width of a football pitch.

The aim is to run 320 metres in a shuttle fashion with 5 turns in under 70 seconds. After 70 seconds rest you must repeat the run again six times in total. The aim is to keep your times consistent. Following a 3 minute break the second set is to run 120 metres with one turn in under 21 seconds. Commonly used as a return to play fitness test following injury, if a player can complete these runs in the set times, they are considered fit enough to return to group training.

The sequence is as follows:

SET 1

– Run 320m in under 70, rest 70s

– Repeat 6 times Rest for 2 minutes

SET 2

– Run 120m in under 21s, rest 40s

– Repeat 6 times

Give it a go yourself, and see if you have the basic fitness required to train with the first team. Don’t forget to tag @playrbycatapult on Instagram or Facebook to let us know how you performed.

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Want to see how well you did with these drills? Track your performance with the PLAYR Football GPS Tracker.