Soccer Training Tips

You might disagree, but hear me out on this. You can greatly benefit from weight training soccer when coaching your players in a sport that requires a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. If player do not need strength and power to a large extent even for them, strong abdominal and lower back muscles are helpful.

This article explains the basic principles of weight training for soccer using common activities for demonstrating those principles.

During soccer strength training, Specificity is a very important concept. The concept of this is to coach the players to put more time in working out in a way resembling their play on the field. Take for example running and swimming, a great exercise for runners and swimmers respectively.

To improve power, speed is an important aspect in training. A number of thing which are important while planning weight training programs are the players role in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress, and the level at which they are to play.

Soccer Fitness

When this kind of information is available to a coach while planning a fitness training program, it ensures a good start.

For over all physical conditioning you should arrange those exercises which develop specific training. For instance, to improve the aerobic and strength and power fitness, swimmers also run and perform weight lifting.

Injury prevention is another aspect of weight training soccer that is often overlooked. Injury prevention even though not directly contributing to the play, is important as it ensures that the players are fit to play at the most critical times of the year.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. To develop strength, stability and power the chain of muscles titled as the “anterior and posterior chain,” involved in these activities should be given attention.

The best exercises for developing these muscles are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts. The normal soccer fitness program should useful if special importance is given to these two core lifts that are crucial for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

You may also include a swimming program to focus added attention on the shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few repetitions. You know by now that soccer is a sport which requires sufficient strength with mobility, speed and stamina not just building bulk and mass like other sports.

Strengthening highly vulnerable muscle groups could also add to the performance benefits in the absence of primary strength, power or endurance gains. These include the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.

So this is it. Always remember these points while weight training soccer since in sport like soccer weights may not give much advantage. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society that has a plethora of informative articles, weekly newsletters, and videos to help you better understand the concepts of youth coaching.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Tips.

What if I told you that weight training soccer is aimed at enhancing strength rather than the building of muscle mass, especially the growth of muscle groups that support the joints? It calls for special fitness training sessions off the field and off the ball with a view to segregate and concentrate on certain muscle groups.

Focusing on these target areas will generate superior movement and flexibility causing higher velocity and strength.

Core: Technically the first area to focus on is the abdominals, commonly known as the core. The area of the body ranging from under the breast bone up till the end of the pelvic region is called the “core”. This part of the body is responsible for power generation, maintain the center of gravity and balancing the body.

Hence all the physical actions are initiated from the core A powerful and sound abdominal core also confirms a well-balanced back, particularly the Lumbar area. It also improves the posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps pump the heart. Therefore they are the largest muscle groups of the human body and supply vast amount of blood to the heart. Even walking is a beneficial exercise in weight training soccer because blood is pumped through the body by each leg.

The hips, knees and the ankles need balanced and strong leg muscles in order to endure all the force and energy produced in hitting the ground.

Back, Chest and Neck: This portion of the body provides relationship between the core and the ends (legs, arms and the head). During soccer strength training, these parts should be given a lot of importance as their development is directly proportional to the growth of the body.

Arms: The arm plays a vital part in soccer to help maintain balance while you jump to head a ball or when you suddenly change directions. Keeping your arms in the air makes a forceful jump.

Plyometric: You should combine weight training with well-organized plyometric program for great results. They work alongside to create an individual and a team that will show improvements well within the first half of the season.

Special attention must be given to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to improve the core will definitely target these zones.

Program: Normally such a program should be designed which is measureable and specific to an individual’s requirement and used at the introduction of the season. Concentrating on specific areas of the body starting with the core and searing outwards to each section of the body is vital to the total development of an individual.

Finally it should be said that weight training soccer can be useful by first preparing the players; as it requires the players and the team to own the program. You should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society and find an answer to all questions as the site offers loads of information in form of articles, videos, and newsletters.

Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Kids Soccer Drills.

Let’s face it. If you train your team with weights there’s no reason why should not fine-tune their weight training soccer routine as the year progresses. And if you don’t, you’re giving up some great benefits of soccer-specific fitness.

Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.

The players are supposed to be speedy in their actions along with the upper body strength to meet challenges. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. One would be destroying his players, the game and even himself if he just tells his players to lift weights like any body builder.

The sports requiring strength mainly in addition to body building, workout to enhance size, bulk and maximum strength. If it really reduces their aerobic endurance levels and even their speed and flexibility they will not be bothered much.

Soccer Fitness

If you also tend do is follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you’re far from getting the best from your fitness training sessions.

Let’s look upon the reasons.

While playing soccer, lower body strength is very important. It is required for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also helpful in enhancing speed. Upper body strength, on the other hand, is needed for shielding the ball, and keeping the opponents off.

“Strength” can be divided into three categories, when we talk about weight training soccer.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.

During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. Most essentially, it is the basis for muscular pace and potential.

Muscular Power: Power is a result of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.

A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. But even those generalized soccer fitness programs can be improved if you deliberately enhance the speed of contraction.

Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.

If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.

Do yourself a favor and invest some time to plan your weight training soccer program correctly and it will certainly pay off ten-fold on the field. You are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up with brand new methods and techniques it has thousands of relevant articles, videos and periodic newsletters.

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Weight training soccer.

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.

Soccer Fitness

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.

Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Practice.