Drill 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 soccer fitness plan discussed in this article will help you prepare your players for playing soccer at a 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.

My suggestion is to focus your fitness training beginning with the legs. It should be started with the crouching exercises first. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 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. They must hold it as they go down until their hips are slightly lower than the top of their knees. Coming up to this point in weight training soccer, they are supposed to stand up fast and exhale. Tell them to continue this practice for at least 20 reps even when they are completely exhausted.

Soccer Fitness

A 5-10 minutes break should be taken before moving on with the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. Your players will be doing 4 sets of 15 reps each. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. 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.

Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
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.

In this segment of soccer strength training the second exercise is the pull-ups. 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 short weight training soccer is only a small portion of the complete training program required to make 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 not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. You can greatly benefit from weight training soccer when coaching your players in a sport that requires a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. 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.

During soccer strength training, Specificity is a very important concept. The idea is that to train your players to practice in a manner which is similar to that when they play on the fields. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

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.

Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve specific training. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.

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. 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.

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.

So for creating these muscles core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are important exercises. 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.

The program can also consist of swimming to highlight the areas of shoulders, arms and back muscles.

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.

Even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent, developing particular muscle groups would also help to increase performance. These muscle groups are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.

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 can also join our youth soccer coaching community 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. It calls for special fitness training sessions off the field and off the ball with a view to segregate and concentrate on certain 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 area of the body ranging from under the breast bone up till the end of the pelvic region is called the “core”. This area is the basis of strength, the gravitational center, and the balancing point of the body.

In other words, the core is where all physical actions of the body are initiated 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. This means that these are the biggest muscle groups of the body and are responsible for pumping a huge amount of blood volume. So, in weight training soccer walking can be useful as it helps to increase blood circulation inside the body with each step.

Strong and balanced leg muscles are required for the hips, knees and the ankles to stand 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). In soccer strength training, these areas should not be neglected or thought of as irrelevant, as they will develop as the rest of the body grows.

Arms: The arm plays a vital part in soccer to help maintain balance while you jump to head a ball or when you suddenly change 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. They work alongside to create an individual and a team that will show improvements well within 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 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.

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.