Soccer Training Drills

You may not agree, but check this out. The play which requires excessive power, and, or explosive power, Weight training soccer is vital while coaching these players. For player who do not require strength and power that much can also take advantage of strong abdominal and lower back muscles.

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

One of the key principles of soccer strength training is, Specificity. The theory is to design your training sessions to match the player’s activity on the field. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

Speed is the main factor to put effort to when training, so as to develop power. 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

Having this information when preparing a fitness training program, can lead to a good start.

Such exercises should be planned for physical conditioning which improves specific training. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.

Injury prevention is also something which is commonly overlooked although it is an important part of weight training soccer. 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.

A sport like soccer includes activities such as running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, going for a hit. It is therefore necessary that the chains of muscles used in these activities, called the “anterior and posterior chain,” are worked upon for strength, stability and power.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

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

Strength programs normally consist of heavy loads and a small number of repetitions. You should be knowing by now that unlike other sports requiring bulk and weight soccer is a sport that requires strength with mobility, speed and stamina.

Establishing strong muscle groups can also improve to the performance even if the primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent. Thus the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that aids the knee joint function are such muscle groups.

This is it. Please try to consider these areas while weight training soccer as you know now that football unlike other sports do not require weights essentially. 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.

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. Using this soccer fitness strategy discussed in this article, your players will have an opportunity to play soccer at higher level.

Soccer weight training requires muscles to be strong, speedy and resistant instead of adding pounds of useless bulk in muscles. 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.

I think fitness training should start with the legs. You can start the warm up session with squats. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Supposing they are strong enough, so let them go with 220 pounds first. This practice is performed by getting below the bar, and putting it across their upper back and then stand up with it.

They should then get out of the stands and stand with their feet and shoulder width apart. Next they move downwards keeping hold of the bar up until their hips are just below the upper part of their knees. Coming up to this point in weight training soccer, they are supposed to stand up fast and exhale. Encourage them to repeat this for 20 reps even when they are dead tired.

Soccer Fitness

Next is working on hamstrings, but before that have a 5-10 minutes break. 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. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.

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.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. 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.

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 last phase of upper body exercises is to concentrate on the abdominals and leg raises of about 5 sets of 20 or more repetitions. 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. 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 very true, that while training your players with weights you should also consider improving their weight training soccer practices as the year goes by. One might be missing out great benefits of soccer-specific fitness if he/she overlooks it.

Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.

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. Players need to build their aerobic and anaerobic at the highest level to carry on until the game is over. 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.

When we talk about such sports like body building and players whose sports involve strength, we would say that they should try to increase in size, bulk and extreme strength. They will not worry if it destroys their aerobic endurance levels or their quickness and flexibility.

Soccer Fitness

In case you are planning to follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you are not going to get the best from your fitness training programs.

The reasons are as follows:

Lower body strength is vital in soccer as it is necessary in for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also useful in improving speed. Upper body strength, on the other hand, is needed for shielding the ball, and keeping the opponents off.

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

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.

During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. 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. If you increase either of these, without lowering the other, the explosive power of players will increase.

A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. 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. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.

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.

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.

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 reason fitness training session should be arranged off the field and away from the ball so that the players pay attention to some special muscle groups.

This will result in improved mobility and flexibility for enhanced swiftness and power.

Core: Technically the first area to focus on is the abdominals, commonly known as the core. The part of the body below the breast bone till the lowest part of the pelvis area is referred to as the “core”. This portion of the body is the origin point of power, gravity and balance in the body.

In other words, the core is where all physical actions of the body are initiated from. Great abdominal cores also results in a well-balanced back, most essentially the Lumbar area. This also generates a good posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps are helpful in pumping the heart. Thus being the biggest muscle groups of the body pump great volumes of blood. So, in weight training soccer walking can be useful as it helps to increase blood circulation inside the body with each step.

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:The linking relationship between the core and the ends is provided by these parts of the body. 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. Keeping your arms in the air makes a forceful 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 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: 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. 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 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.