You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that weight training soccer is a major part of sports training these days as it creates stronger and faster muscles. The soccer fitness plan discussed in this article will help you prepare your players for playing soccer at a higher level.
The new theory of soccer weight training is to have strong and fast muscles with higher stamina rather that to keep on adding pounds of muscle bulk. Upper body weight training for soccer is not as important as is for the legs, but we still do it for overall conditioning and strength.
My suggestion is to focus your fitness training beginning with the legs. Begin with the squatting exercises. Now place the bar with which your players can make 20 reps. Assuming that they are quite strong, therefore they should begin with 220 pounds. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.
Instruct them to step back out of the racks and stand with their feet, shoulder width apart or wider. After that they must lower their body while holding on to the bar till their hips are a little bit below the top of their knee. When they reach this level in weight training soccer, they should stand up quickly and exhale. Encourage them to repeat this for 20 reps even when they are dead tired.
A 5-10 minutes break should be taken before moving on with the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. They are required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps each. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.
The leg exercises will be completed with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.
Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
Now when the they are warmed up they must go on by including enough weights so that the next set of 10 reps is harder to do. The players must repeat the 5 sets 10 times with weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders and at the end of each set stop and relax for 2 minutes.
The second exercise for this portion of the soccer strength training is pull-ups. They should work out on their biceps and back by making their palms facing their body. The last phase of upper body exercises is to concentrate on the abdominals and leg raises of about 5 sets of 20 or more repetitions. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.
We would say in the end that to make quality players of soccer, weight training soccer is only a small fragment of the entire training program. To know more about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that has videos, articles, pod casts, and newsletters available for you.
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Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer