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. Youth soccer players are required to be “complete athletes” now.
They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. A coach should know that he is hamming himself, his team and the game if he just insists his players to do weight lifting as the body builders do.
Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost strength. It does not matter much to them if it harms their aerobic endurance levels or even their speediness and flexibility.
If you are also thinking of implementing 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the whole year, you should know that you’ll be missing out a lot from your fitness training sessions.
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. 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. 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.
During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.
Muscular Power: Power is a result 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.
Only power will be enhanced if you just simply use the common trainings that almost all of the popular fitness magazines advocate. While those traditional soccer fitness programs can also be altered increasing the speed of contraction.
Strength Endurance: Muscular stamina is the potential of a muscle group to perform continues and high-power activity. Strength endurance, similar to power is very vital to the game of soccer.
If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. 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 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.
Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer
Enjoying the information. Thanks Coach!
Coach Carl Parker
Athletic Dir/Head Coach Womens Basketball
Takoma Academy