Soccer Practice Games

You may not agree, but check this out. While coaching players on games that involves great strength, and, or explosive power weight training soccer is very useful. Strong abdominal and lower back muscles are also essential for players for whom strength and power is not the main issue.

In this article you will find the basic concept of weight training for soccer using simple techniques for applying those concepts.

Specificity is a common principle in soccer strength training. 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.

With a view to develop power, the speed of the training or exercise is vital. Weight training programs should be prepared explicitly for individuals taking into consideration their role in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress, and the level at which they are to play.

Soccer Fitness

While developing a fitness training program, all this information is helpful for a coach to ensure a good start.

Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve 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.

Soccer is a sport which involves running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and setting for an attempt. 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.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. 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.

To concentrate on the shoulders, arms and back muscle areas the program should also include swimming.

Typically strength programs involve heavy masses with only some repetitions. 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.

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

Now having equipped with knowledge always keep in mind that in weight training soccer doing weights might not give much benefit. You should consider joining 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.

How about if you get to learn that weight training soccer targets improving strength instead of just increasing muscle mass, particularly the development of muscle groups that support the joints? For this purpose special fitness training programs should be designed to let the players have some time, away from both the field and the ball to work on target muscle groups.

By this technique those areas will give better movement and flexibility resulting in increased pace and strength.

Core: The area that is first to be targeted are the abdominals, which is usually called the core. The area of the body below the breast bone up till the groin or the base of the pelvic region is considered 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 strong and a well developed abdominal core also ensures a well-balanced back, especially the Lumbar region. This in turn creates and enhances a better posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps are leg muscles which are essential in increasing blood flow to the heart. This means that these are the biggest muscle groups of the body and are responsible for pumping a huge amount of blood volume. 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 areas of the body serve as a link 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: You should combine weight training with well-organized plyometric program for great results. Using this technique such players will be produced who will show good results in 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: Usually a program that is calculable and particular to an individual’s requirement should be applied at the start of the season. The complete development of the player involves targeting specific areas of the body starting with the core and then toward each section of the body.

We conclude the session by saying that weight training soccer can be better comprehended by mentally preparing the players and the team where both of them motivate each other to own the program. You are invited to become a member of 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.

It is very commonly heard nowadays that weight training soccer is a major factor of sports training in today’s times as it creates tougher and quicker muscles. Your players will have a chance to play at a higher level if they develop themselves using this soccer fitness plan discussed as follows.

During soccer weight training the aim is to improve the strength, speed and stamina of the muscles instead of just increasing the muscle weight. Although the lower body strength is more important in soccer but we still carry on with the upper body weight trainings for overall conditioning and strength.

I recommend you begin your fitness training 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. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. They have to get under the bar, with it resting across their upper back, and stand up with it.

Next tell them to stand having their shoulders and feet width apart. They must hold it as they go down until their hips are slightly lower than the top of their knees. 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

Give them a break for about 5 to 10 minutes and then start with the leg curl machine to work on the 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.

The leg exercises will be completed with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. They are supposed keep on doing weights for a total of 5 sets of 10 reps, while stretching their chest and shoulders, however taking a break of 2 minutes between each set.

Next are the pull-up exercises in this section of soccer strength training. This exercise should be done with the palms facing their body so that their biceps and back can become strong. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. Then finish with 5 sets of 50 or more crunches or sit-ups.

In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop great soccer players. 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.

It’s very true, that while training your players with weights you should also consider improving their weight training soccer practices as the year goes by. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.

Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. A young soccer player of today should be a “complete athlete”.

They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. 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.

Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost strength. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.

Soccer Fitness

If you are also thinking of implementing 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the whole year, you should know that you’ll be missing out a lot from your fitness training sessions.

Let’s understand why

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.

When it comes to weight training soccer, we can divide “strength” into three broad 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. Most essentially, it is the basis for muscular pace and potential.

Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. If you increase either of these, without lowering the other, the explosive power of players will increase.

By just following the traditional weight training program that many popular fitness magazines promote; only power will be increased. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.

Strength Endurance: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.

At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. Going back to the basic 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, general weights programs are unproductive for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

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.