Soccer Fitness

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. These players are required to have exceptional level of aerobic and anaerobic resistance to last that period. 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. They will not worry if it destroys their aerobic endurance levels or their quickness 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 understand why

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

Three broad categories can be made to divide “strength” in weight training soccer.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. For instance, a person who can do 250lbs leg press has greater power than the other player having the ability of doing 200lbs leg press.

This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.

Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. Increasing any one of them, without reducing the other will generate a value added power called explosive power.

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. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.

Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. 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 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.

Weight training soccer is vital for sports training in today’s soccer world; you might be aware of that already, as it is required for creating tougher and faster muscles. The program of soccer fitness talked about in this article will aid you make your players ready for playing soccer at an advanced level.

During soccer weight training the aim is to improve the strength, speed and stamina of the muscles instead of just increasing the muscle weight. 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.

You should start your fitness training with the legs first. It should be started with the crouching exercises first. 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. This practice is performed by getting below the bar, and putting it across their upper back and then stand up with it.

Now they must stand keeping 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. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. The players must be encouraged to continue even when they are worn-out till they do 20 reps.

Soccer Fitness

Next is working on hamstrings, but before that have a 5-10 minutes break. They are required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps each. They will be required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift between each set of Leg Curl exercises. It is important for the hamstrings to be strong as the speed is significantly enhanced by them.

Then conclude your leg workout with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
When they are done with the warm ups, they should continue with extra weights so that the next set of 10 reps becomes tougher. 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. 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. The final exercise is sit-ups, complete 5 sets of 50 or more.

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.

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. Weight training soccer is very essential while coaching the player on sports that needs a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. Strong abdominal and lower back muscles are also essential for players for whom strength and power is not the main issue.

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

A vital principle in soccer strength training is, Specificity. The idea is that to train your players to practice in a manner which is similar to that when they play on the fields. Take for example running and swimming, a great exercise for runners and swimmers respectively.

To improve power, speed is an important aspect in training. The role of players in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress and their player’s level must be considered when coaching them in weight training programs.

Soccer Fitness

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

Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve specific training. You see workouts like running and weight exercises are also performed by swimmers to enhance their aerobic and strength and power fitness.

Injury prevention is also something which is commonly overlooked although it is an important part of weight training soccer. It is necessary to prevent injury although it is not the direct factor to contribute towards to the play however it enables the players to maintain their fitness in order to perform their best at the special times of the season.

A sport like soccer includes activities such as running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, going for a hit. 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.

So for creating these muscles core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are important exercises. A comprehensive soccer fitness program giving due stress upon these two core lifts should work miracles for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

Swimming can also help to add strength to shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few 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.

Working on very special muscle groups can also enhance the performance even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are lacking. These muscle groups are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.

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

You would be surprised to find out that the objective of weight training soccer is to develop the muscles that support the joints instead of just focusing on growing muscle mass. This requires special fitness training program without the ball and off the field in order to give time to focus on particular muscle groups.

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

Core: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. “Core” is the portion of the body which starts from the breast bone till the lowermost part of the pelvis area. This area is the basis of strength, the gravitational center, and the balancing point of 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. This also generates a good posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping 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. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

A lot of energy is exerted in hitting the ground, thus it is very important to have powerful and well-balanced leg muscles required by the hips, knees and the ankles.

Back, Chest and Neck:The linking relationship between the core and the ends is provided by these parts of the body. 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: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting directions. A good tip for power jump is to throw your arms in the air while you jump.

Plyometric: For best results, weight training should go together with a well-planned plyometric program. Using this technique such players will be produced who will show good results in the first half of the season.

The significant point is to give importance to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will certainly target these areas.

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 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.