Soccer Practice

If you get to know that weight training soccer does not encourage on adding to muscle mass rather it stresses upon the strength of muscle groups that support the joints. 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: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. 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 source of power, the center of gravity, and the balancing center of the body.

So, the core is the place from where all the physical activities start from. 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. Even walking is a beneficial exercise in weight training soccer because blood is pumped through the body by each leg.

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: 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: 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. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully planned plyometric program. Using this technique such players will be produced who will show good results in the first half of the season.

Always remember to give importance to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will positively aim these areas.

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 complete development of the player involves targeting specific areas of the body starting with the core and then toward 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 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.

Probability you might not believe this, but just hear me out on 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.

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

During soccer strength training, Specificity is a very important concept. It means that if you can train your players in a way that emulates their activity when playing on the field, then you must spend the majority of your time training in that way. For Example: Runners practice through running and swimmers through swimming.

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. For instance, to improve the aerobic and strength and power fitness, swimmers also run and perform weight lifting.

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. Injury prevention even though not directly contributing to the play, is important as it ensures that the players are fit to play at the most critical times of the year.

A sport like soccer includes activities such as running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, going for a hit. The “anterior and posterior chain,” are the chain of muscles which are required to perform these actions must be given importance to develop strength, stability and power.

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.

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

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few repetitions. You know by now that soccer is a sport which requires sufficient strength with mobility, speed and stamina not just building bulk and mass like other sports.

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

So this is it. Always remember these points while weight training soccer since in sport like soccer weights may not give much advantage. You are welcomed to 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.

You should know how true it is to work on your team’s weight training soccer program, while they are being trained 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. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

The players are supposed to be speedy in their actions along with the upper body strength to meet challenges. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. You are harming yourself; your players and your game if you make your players to do weight lifting like body builders.

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

While playing soccer, lower body strength is very important. It is required for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also helpful in enhancing speed. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

“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. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.

In soccer, good maximal strength is advantageous in holding off the opponents and defending the ball. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.

Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. A valuable power will be created that is “explosive power”, if you improve one of them without lowering the other.

A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.

Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.

A great significant should be given to include strength endurance in your program. However if you don’t alter your training programs and continue with 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, your training programs will not reap much of productive results.

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.

In soccer training weight training soccer plays an important role in creating tougher and quicker muscles, this you might have heard a lot of times. 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. 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.

My suggestion is to focus your fitness training beginning with the legs. Start with squats. This session should be followed by putting the bar to a weight with which the players can perform 20 reps with. 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. When they reach this level in weight training soccer, they should stand up quickly and exhale. The players must be encouraged to continue even when they are worn-out till they do 20 reps.

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. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.

Finish the leg workouts on Standing calf-raise machine and doing 3 sets of 25 reps

Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
Once the players have performed the warm ups, tell them to carry on by putting more weights such that the next set of 10 reps get harder. 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.

Next are the pull-up exercises in this section of soccer strength training. They should work out on their biceps and back by making their palms facing their body. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. The last in this work out are the crunches do 5 sets of 50 or more.

As a final point weight training soccer is only a minor portion of the comprehensive training program required. 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.