Is five-a-side good for fitness?
For your heart, yes. One direct measurement comes from a study of 12 untrained men, average age 33, who played four 12-minute games of 5v5 with 80 square metres of pitch for each player. Their heart rate averaged 84.5% of maximum. On average, each man made 459 intense accelerations and covered about 3.5 km, roughly 400 m of it at high intensity, and blood lactate was high, at about 6 mmol/L. That is hard, stop-start work, not a jog.
It is not one lucky group, either. A 2010 review of recreational small-sided football in young and middle-aged men put typical heart rates at 80 to 85% of maximum, close to what elite players record, with repeated high-speed runs, sprints, turns, jumps and tackles. A 2015 meta-analysis of recreational football found that after 12 weeks of games at 78 to 84% of maximum heart rate, in trials that played two to three times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, healthy untrained men raised their VO2max, the usual lab measure of aerobic fitness, by 8 to 13%.
It also feels easier than it is. The same meta-analysis notes that heart rate in recreational football sits above 90% of maximum for about a fifth of the time, yet players rate the effort lower than continuous running and much lower than interval training. Our view: that is the game's best argument, because the training you enjoy is the training you keep doing.
Is five-a-side harder than three or four-a-side?
Two small studies give different answers, most likely because of how they were run.
- On one fixed pitch, five-a-side came out hardest. Twelve recreationally active male college students, average age 21, played 3, 4 and 5-a-side on the same 40 x 20 m pitch, two 20-minute bouts each time. Mean heart rate was 85.4% of maximum in 5-a-side against 81.5% in 4-a-side and 80.9% in 3-a-side, and 5-a-side brought more accelerations and decelerations than 4-a-side. The authors put it down to the ball changing hands more often. Blood lactate, though, tended to be higher in 3-a-side.
- With the same space per player, the number made no difference. In the study of 12 untrained men, every format had 80 square metres per player. Heart rate was 84.1% of maximum in 3v3, 84.5% in 5v5 and 82.8% in 7v7, with no difference between them, and 3v3 brought the most intense accelerations: 500 against 459 in 5v5.
So whether five-a-side is the hardest depends on the pitch you book and how the game flows, not only on the number of players. What both studies agree on matters more: every format averaged above 80% of maximum heart rate. Three, five or seven a side, you are doing hard intermittent work.
How does a game compare with interval training?
In pattern, closely, if a step below in intensity. Interval training means repeated hard efforts with recovery between them. A 2015 meta-analysis of 28 controlled trials in 723 healthy adults aged 18 to 45 counted work bouts as interval training when they were all-out or at 90 to 95% of maximum heart rate, and found it raised VO2max by about 5.5 ml/kg/min against doing nothing. A recreational game, averaging 80 to 85% and spending about a fifth of its time above 90%, is the same kind of stop-start effort.
On effect, nobody has shown it is the same. The 2010 review described the aerobic gains in untrained men as similar to those from interval training, but when the recreational football meta-analysis pooled the trials in 2015, it found no study that had compared football with interval training at the same training volume. The interval meta-analysis also found signs of publication bias, so its pooled figure may be on the generous side.
| Session | Heart rate | Sprints and accelerations | Strength stimulus | Who was measured | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Five-a-side, 80 square metres per player | 84.5% of maximum on average over 4 x 12 minutes | 459 intense accelerations; about 400 m at high intensity | Your body weight, which does not rise as you get stronger | 12 untrained men, average age 33 | Randers 2014 |
| Five-a-side, fixed 40 x 20 m pitch | 85.4% of maximum over 2 x 20 minutes, above 3 and 4-a-side | 613 accelerations, more than in 4-a-side | Your body weight | 12 recreationally active male students, average age 21 | Stojanovic 2021 |
| Interval session | Hard bouts all-out or at 90 to 95% of maximum, as the meta-analysis defined them | Planned in advance: you set the number and length | Not the aim; trials that added strength training were left out | 28 trials, 723 healthy adults aged 18 to 45 | Milanovic 2015 |
| Strength session | Not reported | None planned | Strength rose more with loads of 80% of one-rep maximum or more; continued progress needs the challenge raised as you adapt | 137 systematic reviews of trials in healthy adults, over 30,000 people | ACSM 2026 |
Our view: if you already play most weeks, your heart is getting hard intermittent work. The row your week is missing is the last one.
What does five-a-side not train?
Progressive strength. That needs a caveat first: football is not nothing for your legs. The 2010 review reported muscle growth and higher bone mass in untrained men who took up recreational football, more than in men who did interval or continuous running. A small study listed in the 2015 meta-analysis found thigh strength rose too, in 7 untrained women who played for 70 weeks. But those players started from no training, and they were compared with runners, not with people who lift.
The bigger gap is load. In a game, the weight you move is your own body, and it does not go up as you get stronger. Strength training works the other way. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand, built on 137 systematic reviews of trials in healthy adults with more than 30,000 people, found that strength rose more with loads of 80% of your one-rep maximum or more, and told healthy adults to train progressively: raising the challenge as you adapt is what keeps strength climbing over the longer term. No pitch does that for you.
Health guidelines treat the two as separate jobs too. The World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines ask adults for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week and, on top of that, muscle-strengthening activities for all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week. Five-a-side covers a good share of the first. The second needs sessions of its own.
Strength work also has the strongest general evidence for fewer sports injuries, which is not the same as a guarantee. A 2014 review of 25 randomised trials with 26,610 people across a mix of sports found that strength training programmes cut injuries to under a third, while stretching showed no effect, and a 2018 follow-up of six trials with 7,738 people aged 12 to 40, adolescents included, found that more strength training volume went with lower risk.
Why do five-a-side players get hurt?
The 2015 recreational football meta-analysis called the injury picture in adults still unclear, so treat these as clues rather than a forecast. At an amateur small-field tournament, 694 medical students (423 men and 271 women, average age 23) were followed through the event: the men were injured more often than the women, and they had also slept less the night before and warmed up less often before matches, which the authors read as poor preparation. Playing several games in a day has its own page.
A structured warm-up such as the FIFA 11+ has trials behind it. Across four trials in recreational and sub-elite football, some of them in youth players, it cut injuries by 39%. One of those four was in 265 male veteran players aged about 44 who did it at the start of training about once a week: overall injuries did not fall, only severe ones did, and the authors put that down to how rarely the teams trained.
None of this diagnoses anything. If something hurts during or after a game, or keeps coming back, see a physio or doctor.
How do you get fit for five-a-side?
Keep the game for your heart and add what it leaves out. This is our view, built on the evidence above:
- Lift on days you do not play. A short, general session covers it: a squat or lunge, a hip hinge such as a Romanian deadlift, a hamstring exercise, calf raises, an upper-body push and pull, and something for your trunk. Start light enough to learn the movements, then add load over the weeks towards the heavy sets that build maximal strength. Keep the day before a game light; whether the gym belongs there at all is on the day before a match. If you also play eleven-a-side, leg day covers where leg work fits around training and matches.
- Warm up before every game. Arrive with time for a few minutes of easy running, then the movements the game asks for: side steps, turns, and short accelerations building to full speed. A structured programme such as the 11+ is built for this, though in the one trial of veterans who did it about once a week, overall injuries did not fall.
- Build back gradually. Muscle soreness is most common at the start of a season, when people return after time off, and when an activity is new, and it can reduce range of motion, shock absorption and peak torque. A 2003 review advised bringing in new or eccentric work progressively over one to two weeks. Treat your first strength sessions and your first games after a break the same way: fewer sets, lighter loads, shorter games.
- Keep playing. The game is already doing the hard intermittent work. Swapping it for a treadmill would trade training you enjoy for training you might not keep up.
More on football and the gym, from training nights to match day, is on the football page.
Add your game as Football, which in the app means soccer. On You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD, then set how it fits your week: Flexible, where the app picks the days, or Fixed days, where you pick them. A game on the same night every week suits Fixed days. With Pro or during your trial, your coach plans your strength work around it instead of on top of it (add a sport or a class, sport settings).
Play now and then? Log each game after you play it. Tap the plus at the top of Home or Agenda, choose to log a past session, and give it a length, how hard it felt and, if it helps, a note for your coach. It goes into your history and what your coach knows about you; the week ahead is left alone (log a workout you already did).
In the gym, workout mode takes you through a session a step at a time, counting your sets and rest, and a move done one side at a time runs as a LEFT step and then a RIGHT one. It works on the free plan. Exercises are shown as clean illustrations: the movement on a plain background, with nothing extra. The team is exploring video and moving images (exercise illustrations).