Soccer Tactics

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. The play which requires excessive power, and, or explosive power, Weight training soccer is vital while coaching these players. 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.

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 Example: Runners practice through running and swimmers through swimming.

In order to enhance strength an essential thing to be stressed upon while exercising is speed. 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

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. 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 another aspect of weight training soccer that is often overlooked. 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.

The movements executed in soccer are running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, preparing for a goal. The muscle chain that is required in these movements named as the “anterior and posterior chain,” should be exercised to build strength, stability and power.

So for creating these muscles core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are important exercises. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders 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.

Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. 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. 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.

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. Using this soccer fitness strategy discussed in this article, your players will have an opportunity to play soccer at higher 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. 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 think fitness training should start with the legs. You can start the warm up session with squats. This session should be followed by putting the bar to a weight with which the players can perform 20 reps with. Considering that they have good strength, hence give them 220 pounds to start with. The technique is to get under the bar and standing up with it resting it across the upper back.

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. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.

Soccer Fitness

A 5-10 minutes break should be taken before moving on with the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. 4 sets of 15 reps each should be completed by them. They will be required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift between each set of Leg Curl exercises. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.

Then conclude your leg workout 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. They should continue with that weight for 5 sets of 10 repetitions total, while stretching their chest and shoulders, and resting for around 2 minutes between each set.

Next are the pull-up exercises in this section of soccer strength training. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. 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. You should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society to know more about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; the community also provides 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.

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. 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.

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 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.

So, the core is the place from where all the physical activities start from. A good and established abdominal core also leads to a well-balanced back, mainly the Lumbar part. As a result a better posture is developed.

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. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

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: This portion of the body provides relationship between the core and the ends (legs, arms and the head). These areas must never be neglected in soccer strength training because their growth is linked with the rest of the body.

Arms: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting directions. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: For best results, weight training should go together with a well-planned plyometric program. 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.

Programs: Generally, a program that is quantifiable and specific to an individual needs to be applied at the beginning 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.

In conclusion, this concept of weight training soccer can be better understood through mental training of the team where both the team and individual players encourage 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.

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. One might be missing out great benefits of soccer-specific fitness if he/she overlooks it.

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

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. You are harming yourself; your players and your game if you make your players to do weight lifting like body builders.

In body building and the sports which need strength primarily, players struggle to develop themselves in terms of size, bulk and ultimate strength. It does not matter much to them if it harms their aerobic endurance levels or even their speediness 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:

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. 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.

In soccer, good maximal strength is advantageous in holding off the opponents and defending the ball. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.

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.

But, if you just follow a generalized weight training routine that most of the popular fitness magazines advocate, you will increase power. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.

Strength Endurance: Strength or muscular stamina is the ability of a muscle group to carry out repeated and high-intensity movements. 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.

Make a favor to yourself and put some time in improving your weight training soccer program correctly and I assure you that it will pay back 10 times in the game. 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.