Paco Seirul·lo's Structured Training
- Paddy King
- Sep 5
- 7 min read
Introduction: Why Paco Seirul·lo Matters
Francisco “Paco” Seirul·lo Vargas is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential thinkers in modern sports training, particularly within the world of football.
At FC Barcelona, his ideas shaped a generation of coaches and players, inspiring figures such as Pep Guardiola and influencing the very fabric of the club’s methodology.
His philosophy, known as Structured Training, moves decisively away from the mechanistic, reductionist models of physical preparation that dominated the twentieth century.
Instead, Seirul·lo situates sport within the paradigm of complexity, seeing athletes not as machines that respond predictably to stimuli, but as complex, adaptive beings who develop through non-linear, interdependent processes.
This article presents Seirul·lo’s framework in a systematic manner. It describes the theoretical basis for Structured Training, its application in the sports of DIEC (Deportes de Interacción en un Espacio Compartido — interaction sports in a shared space), and the methodological tools needed to design training that mirrors the unpredictability of competition.
The work is at once deeply philosophical and immediately practical, and its ambition is to offer a holistic model of preparation where physical, cognitive, coordinative, and socio-affective dimensions are fused into a single, indivisible whole.
This article provides a very high-level view and King Knight will expand upon the subject matter in their upcoming Structured Training course.
The Paradigm of Complexity in Sport
Seirul·lo contrasts two scientific worldviews:
The Paradigm of Simplification — the mechanistic approach inherited from Newtonian science, which reduces systems into isolated parts, studies them in linear cause-effect relations, and then reassembles them. Applied to sport, this leads to compartmentalized training (physical, technical, tactical, psychological) that assumes improvements in one isolated domain transfer neatly into game performance.
The Paradigm of Complexity — grounded in contemporary systems theory, thermodynamics, and the science of dissipative structures. Here, the athlete is understood as an open, dynamic system who self-organizes in relation to context. Training does not produce simple, predictable outcomes; rather, it fosters adaptability, creativity, and emergent behaviors.
For Seirul·lo, the human athlete is a dissipative structure: a system that maintains order by interacting with disorder. Performance arises not from the summation of parts but from the interaction of multiple structures — conditional, coordinative, cognitive, socio-affective — all of which are in constant dialogue.
This shift from simplification to complexity has profound consequences for training. It means that linear planning models, such as classical periodization, are inadequate for team sports. It means that the coach must design environments that respect the non-linear, interdependent nature of performance. And it means that the essence of preparation is not the accumulation of isolated capacities, but the design of situations that simulate and stimulate the game itself.
DIEC: Sports of Interaction in a Shared Space
Football is not an individual sport. It belongs to the category Seirul·lo calls DIEC — sports of interaction in a shared space. Unlike athletics or swimming, where athletes compete parallel to one another in separate lanes, in DIEC sports the very presence and actions of others transform the conditions of performance. Opponents interfere directly; teammates collaborate dynamically; space is both shared and contested.
This reality renders traditional training models — which treat athletes as if they were preparing for individual, repeatable tasks — obsolete.
In football, no two actions are ever identical. The game is an open system in constant flux. For this reason, Structured Training insists that practice must reproduce the interactional, collective, and emergent qualities of competition. Training is no longer about transferring isolated gains (e.g., more leg strength means faster sprints). Instead, it is about cultivating complex capacities — perception, anticipation, coordination, creativity, decision-making — in situations that mirror the demands of the game.
The Four Core Structures of Structured Training
Seirul·lo organizes the athlete’s preparation around four fundamental structures, which together define the multidimensional nature of performance:
1. The Conditional Structure
This corresponds roughly to what classical training called “physical.” It includes strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility, but Seirul·lo interprets these not as abstract capacities but as conditions that emerge in interaction.
Conditional preparation must therefore be specific, embedded in game contexts, and designed to support the athlete’s role within the collective.
He proposes a 3D/4D universe of strength training, where exercises are organized not by isolated muscle groups but by planes, dimensions, and the athlete’s movement ecology.
2. The Coordinative Structure
This is the foundation of movement control and motor creativity. Coordination is not just executing pre-learned techniques but being able to reorganize movement solutions in unpredictable situations. It includes perceptual-motor skills, fine adjustments, and the capacity to vary and adapt actions under dynamic pressure.
3. The Cognitive Structure
The cognitive domain covers perception, memory, anticipation, decision-making, and problem-solving. For Seirul·lo, cognition cannot be separated from action. To think is to act; to act is to think. Training must therefore embed cognitive challenges within physical and tactical situations.
4. The Socio-Affective Structure
Perhaps Seirul·lo’s most original contribution is to foreground the socio-affective dimension: relationships, emotions, trust, and cultural bonds. Football is a collective game, and its performance depends on how players connect with one another. Training must create not just individual improvement but collective cohesion, shared emotion, and a culture of togetherness.
Integration of Structures
The crucial insight of Structured Training is that these four structures are inseparable. They do not add together like ingredients in a recipe. Instead, they interact simultaneously, producing emergent qualities. A sprint, for example, is not merely conditional; it is coordinated, cognitively guided, and socio-affectively meaningful. Training must therefore target the integration of structures, never their isolation.
Levels of Training
Seirul·lo defines a progression of training levels, moving from generic to specific, always oriented toward the complexity of the game:
Level 0: General Preparation — Generic physical activity, often foundational.
Level 1: General Training — Broader work, not yet sport-specific.
Level 2: Directed Training — Exercises that begin to approximate the sport’s demands.
Level 3: Reduced Games — Small-sided situations where interaction is central.
Level 4: Simulated Preferred Situations (SSP) — Carefully designed tasks that replicate the essential dynamics of the real game.
Level 5: Full Competition — The game itself, the ultimate training environment.
The higher the level, the more structures are integrated. Structured Training privileges the upper levels, where tasks most resemble competition, though lower levels remain useful for rehabilitation, injury prevention, or targeted development.
Methodological Concepts
Seirul·lo introduces a series of methodological concepts that operationalize Structured Training.
Simulated Preferred Situations (SSP)
The SSP is the cornerstone of his methodology. These are training tasks designed to simulate game conditions with a preference for certain dynamics (e.g., playing out from the back, pressing in midfield). SSPs are not drills; they are living situations where players must perceive, decide, and act under realistic constraints.
Configurational Strategies
Rather than rigid periodization, Structured Training uses configurational strategies. These are flexible, adaptive planning tools that allow coaches to respond to the team’s state, competition demands, and contextual factors. Training loads are not predetermined in linear fashion but configured dynamically, like tuning an instrument.
Conjectures
Seirul·lo proposes several guiding conjectures:
Synergetic Conjecture: Structures work synergistically, not additively.
Hologramatic Conjecture: Each part reflects the whole, and the whole reflects each part.
Synchronous Efficiency: Optimal training is when multiple structures are developed simultaneously.
Athlete’s Universe
Strength and movement are conceived in terms of universes — 3D (space) and 4D (time). This allows for a nuanced classification of exercises, emphasizing specificity and adaptability rather than universal prescriptions.
Practical Applications
How does this theory translate into practice?
Seirul·lo emphasizes the design of training tasks. Each task includes:
Nuclear Subtasks: the core problem to be solved (e.g., progress the ball into midfield under pressure).
Secondary Activities: additional demands layered on (e.g., time limits, overloads).
Thresholds of Difficulty: adjustable parameters to scale complexity.
Tasks must be varied, unpredictable, and representative of competition. Coaches should avoid repetition for its own sake; instead, they should generate environments where players continuously adapt and create.
The Socio-Affective Dimension
Structured Training insists that performance in team sports is irreducibly social. Cohesion, trust, emotion, and collective identity are not peripheral; they are central. Training should therefore cultivate shared experiences, emotional intensity, and team bonds.
For Seirul·lo, the joy of playing together is itself a performance resource. The culture of the team is part of its training load. When players experience positive socio-affective engagement, their conditional, coordinative, and cognitive performances are elevated.
Prevention and Load Management
A central claim of Structured Training is that classical load concepts fail in team sports.
The idea that load is transferable — that gains in isolated exercises (e.g., squats) transfer neatly into game performance — is, for Seirul·lo, a myth.
Instead, training load must be understood as contextual and emergent. The best injury prevention is not isolated corrective exercises but integrated, variable, game-like tasks that continuously challenge the athlete across all structures. Preventive training is therefore not something separate, but something embedded in the entire methodology.
Seirul·lo’s Legacy
The Structured Training model has profoundly influenced modern football. At FC Barcelona, it underpinned the philosophy of positional play, inspiring Guardiola and others. Its emphasis on complexity, integration, and creativity has become a cornerstone of contemporary coaching discourse.
Seirul·lo’s legacy is not a fixed method but a philosophical framework.
It challenges coaches to move beyond mechanistic routines, to embrace complexity, and to design environments that foster adaptability and creativity. The ultimate goal is the creation of the Free Man — the player who emerges in space, at the right time, able to progress play and create superiority.
Conclusion
Structured Training is a new way of understanding sport.
By situating training within the paradigm of complexity, by defining athletes through multiple interacting structures, by privileging simulated preferred situations, and by embedding socio-affective bonds at the heart of performance, Seirul·lo offers a comprehensive, systemic, and deeply human model of preparation.
Structured Training redefines the very meaning of training. It is not the mechanical accumulation of capacities but the design of contexts where players learn to adapt, decide, and create. It is not about building machines but about nurturing human beings who thrive in collective, dynamic, and unpredictable games.
In this, Seirul·lo’s work stands as a milestone in sports science — a bridge between philosophy and practice, between complexity theory and football, between the individual and the collective.
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