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. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.
Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. 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.
In body building and the sports which need strength primarily, players struggle to develop themselves in terms of size, bulk and ultimate strength. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.
If you also tend do is follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you’re far from getting the best from your fitness training sessions.
We will now see the reasons
In soccer, lower body strength is needed for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also lays the foundation for great speed. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.
In weight training soccer, “strength” can be divided into three categories.
Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. For example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.
During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. Principally, it establishes muscular quickness 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.
But, if you just follow a generalized weight training routine that most of the popular fitness magazines advocate, you will increase power. But even those generalized soccer fitness programs can be improved if you deliberately enhance 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. Strength endurance, similar to power is very vital to the game of soccer.
At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.
Your game is about to improve 10 folds if you just put a little time in planning your weight training soccer program correctly. You should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society for you can 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.
Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer