Coaching High School Soccer

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 number one part to be focused named as “core”, refers to abdominals. “Core” is the portion of the body which starts from the breast bone till the lowermost part of the pelvis area. This part of the body is responsible for power generation, maintain the center of gravity and balancing the body.

Thus the core is the center point from where all the physical action originates. A strong and a well developed abdominal core also ensures a well-balanced back, especially the Lumbar region. As a result a better posture is developed.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps are leg muscles which are essential in increasing blood flow to the heart. Thus being the biggest muscle groups of the body pump great volumes of blood. 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: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting directions. Keeping your arms in the air makes a forceful jump.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully 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 key again is going back to the core, because only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will naturally bring these areas into focus.

Program: Typically a program which is measureable and precise to an individual’s requirement should be functional at the opening of the season. The thorough improvement of an individual consist of aiming specific parts of the body first with the core and then heading for every section of the body.

In the end we say that weight training soccer can be applied by mentally preparing the players; because it is needed that the players and the team help each other to own the program. You can subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community 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.

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. For overall conditioning and strength we still continue with the upper body weight training however its significance is not as much as the leg strength.

You should start your fitness training with the legs first. Begin with the squatting exercises. When you are done with this warm up activity players are supposed to do 20 reps, so bar to be loaded should be according to their capacity. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. The technique is to get under the bar and standing up with it resting it across the upper back.

Next tell them to stand having their shoulders and feet width apart. Next they move downwards keeping hold of the bar up until their hips are just below the upper part 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. They will be required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift between each set of Leg Curl exercises. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.

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

Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. A total of 5 sets of 10 repetitions are required with the weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders, yet pausing to relax for 2 minutes in the middle of each set.

Now we move to the second workout of this session of soccer strength training which are the pull-up exercises. Their palms must be facing their body so that they can exercise their biceps and back muscles. The last part of the upper body portion of this workout is to work out the abdominals and 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises would do well. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.

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.

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.

Soccer Fitness

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.