Let’s face it. If you train your team with weights there’s no reason why should not fine-tune their weight training soccer routine as the year progresses. One might be missing out great benefits of soccer-specific fitness if he/she overlooks it.
Very few coaches get the soccer strength training right. A young soccer player of today should be a “complete athlete”.
They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. 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.
When we talk about such sports like body building and players whose sports involve strength, we would say that they should try to increase in size, bulk and extreme 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.
Let’s look upon the reasons.
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 example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.
This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.
Muscular Power: It is the product of both maximum strength and the quickness in movement. Increasing any one of them, without reducing the other will generate a value added power called explosive power.
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: Strength or muscular stamina is the ability of a muscle group to carry out repeated and high-intensity movements. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.
At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. 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.
Your game is about to improve 10 folds if you just put a little time in planning your weight training soccer program correctly. 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.
