The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. And if you don’t, you’re giving up some great benefits of soccer-specific fitness.
Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.
The players are supposed to be speedy in their actions along with the upper body strength to meet challenges. These players are required to have exceptional level of aerobic and anaerobic resistance to last that period. 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.
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.
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.
Let’s understand why
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. Whereas the upper body strength is required for stopping the ball and keeping the opponents away.
“Strength” can be divided into three categories, when we talk about weight training soccer.
Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the greatest force that a muscle group can exert in a quick, single contraction. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.
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: Power is a result 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. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.
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. 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.
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 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.
Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer