Soccer Fitness

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: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. The part of the body below the breast bone till the lowest part of the pelvis area is referred to as the “core”. This area is the source of power, the center of gravity, and the balancing center of the body.

In other words, the core is where all physical actions of the body are initiated from. A powerful and sound abdominal core also confirms a well-balanced back, particularly the Lumbar area. As a result a better posture is developed.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping 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.

Powerful and stable leg muscles are vital for the hips, knees and the ankles to hips, to bear all the power and energy produced in hitting the ground.

Back, Chest and Neck: These parts of the body work as a connection between the “core” and the ends (legs, arms and the head). Thus these portions should never be ignored in soccer strength training, since they will strengthen with the development of the rest of the body.

Arms: Arms facilitate in the balancing of the body through weight distribution, especially when jumping to head a ball or changing directions. A powerful jump is made by throwing the arms in the air.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully planned plyometric program. With this method you will see progress within the first half of the season.

The key again is going back to the core, because only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will naturally bring these areas into focus.

Program: Typically a program which is measureable and precise to an individual’s requirement should be functional at the opening of the season. The comprehensive development of the player comprises of directing attention to specific areas of the body initiating with the core till each section of the body.

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 are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community 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.

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.

Here are the basic principles of weight training for soccer displaying simple activities to describe those principles.

One of the key principles of soccer strength training is, Specificity. It means that if you can train your players in a way that emulates their activity when playing on the field, then you must spend the majority of your time training in that way. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

To improve power, speed is an important aspect in training. Weight training programs should be designed in a manner that takes in to account the individuals role in team sports, their age, physical and mental ability to take pressure, and the level at which they are to play.

Soccer Fitness

All this information is useful for a trainer in designing a fitness training program, to make 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.

One more feature in weight training soccer often ignored is prevention of injury.Another area of weight training soccer which is commonly neglected in is injury prevention. The effects of injury prevention are not evident directly but  they are essential in player’s performance and confirm that the player is fit to play at the most important occasions of the calendar.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. The “anterior and posterior chain,” are the chain of muscles which are required to perform these actions must be given importance to develop strength, stability and power.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. The general soccer fitness program may be used commonly but these two core lifts are very essential for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

The program can also consist of swimming to highlight the areas of shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. Some sports require bulk and strength while some others have to ensure they combine adequate strength with mobility, speed and stamina like a mid-fielder in soccer.

Even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent, developing particular muscle groups would also help to increase performance. They are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that help knee joint function.

So there you have it. Keep these points in mind when weight training soccer since football is a sport for which you may not initially consider weights to be an 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.

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. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

The youth player of today needs to have the upper body strength to struggle with challenges and besides that he must always be quick and speedy. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. If you get your players to simply lift weights just like the bodybuilders, you are doing yourself, your team and your game a great harm.

The sports requiring strength mainly in addition to body building, workout to enhance size, bulk and maximum strength. It does not matter much to them if it harms their aerobic endurance levels or even their speediness and flexibility.

Soccer Fitness

One would miss out a great deal from your fitness training sessions if he/she also uses the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the entire year.

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. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

In weight training soccer, “strength” can be divided into three categories.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the ultimate level of force that your muscle group can apply in one speedy motion. For example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.

A good absolute power is useful in soccer to keep the opponents off and defending the ball. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.

Muscular Power: Absolute strength and the speed of action both add up to produce power. If you increase either of these, without lowering the other, the explosive power of players will increase.

Only power will be enhanced if you just simply use the common trainings that almost all of the popular fitness magazines advocate. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.

Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. The game of soccer requires strength endurance which has similar importance as power.

At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. If you follow the simple 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, traditional weight programs are not very useful for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

If you just put some time in altering your weight training soccer accurately you will see that it will improve your game 10 times . You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society to gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community.

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. Though the importance of upper body weight training for soccer is not as much as the legs, we still go on with it for general conditioning and strength.

I think fitness training should start with the legs. Start with squats. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Assuming that they are quite strong, therefore they should begin with 220 pounds. The technique is to get under the bar and standing up with it resting it across the upper back.

Now they must stand keeping their shoulders and feet width apart. 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. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.

Soccer Fitness

They should be given a break of 5-10 minutes before switching to the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. They are required to do 15 repetitions of 4 sets each. In between each set of Leg Curls, they’ll also be doing 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift. Hamstrings are vital for players speed, thus we would want them to be strong enough.

Finish the leg workouts on Standing calf-raise machine and doing 3 sets of 25 reps

Now for the upper body work out begin with the Incline bench press.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. A total of 5 sets of 10 repetitions are required with the weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders, yet pausing to relax for 2 minutes in the middle of each set.

In this segment of soccer strength training the second exercise is the pull-ups. They should work out on their biceps and back by making their palms facing their body. The final part of the upper body work out involves working on abdominals and doing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. Then finish with 5 sets of 50 or more crunches or sit-ups.

In short weight training soccer is only a small portion of the complete training program required to make great soccer players. You are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up more information about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; it also 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.