Soccer Drills

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. “Core” is the portion of the body which starts from the breast bone till the lowermost part of the pelvis area. This area is the basis of strength, the gravitational center, and the balancing point of the body.

In other words, the core is where all physical actions of the body are initiated from. Great abdominal cores also results in a well-balanced back, most essentially the Lumbar area. This in turn creates and enhances a better posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping the heart. Therefore they are the largest muscle groups of the human body and supply vast amount of blood to the heart. Even walking is a beneficial exercise in weight training soccer because blood is pumped through the body by each leg.

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: These parts of the body work as a connection 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: Arms facilitate in the balancing of the body through weight distribution, especially when jumping to head a ball or changing directions. Keeping your arms in the air makes a forceful jump.

Plyometric: A mixture of weight training with well-organized plyometric program must be practiced for quality results. They work alongside to create an individual and a team that will show improvements well within the first half of the season.

Special attention must be given to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to improve the core will definitely target these zones.

Program: Usually a program that is calculable and particular to an individual’s requirement should be applied at the start 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 should consider joining 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.

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.

You should start your fitness training with the legs first. It should be started with the crouching exercises first. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Supposing they are strong enough, so let them go with 220 pounds first. They have to get under the bar, with it resting across their upper back, and stand up with it.

Now they must stand keeping their shoulders and feet width apart. After that they must lower their body while holding on to the bar till their hips are a little bit below the top of their knee. When they reach this level in weight training soccer, they should stand up quickly and exhale. Tell them to continue this practice for at least 20 reps even when they are completely exhausted.

Soccer Fitness

They should be given a break of 5-10 minutes before switching to the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. Your players will be doing 4 sets of 15 reps each. In between each set of Leg Curls, they’ll also be doing 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.

After completing 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine your leg exercises will be over.

Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
Now when the they are warmed up they must go on by including enough weights so that the next set of 10 reps is harder to do. They are supposed keep on doing weights for a total of 5 sets of 10 reps, while stretching their chest and shoulders, however taking a break of 2 minutes between each set.

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. The last phase of upper body exercises is to concentrate on the abdominals and leg raises of about 5 sets of 20 or more repetitions. Then finish with 5 sets of 50 or more crunches or sit-ups.

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.

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.

They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. These players are required to have exceptional level of aerobic and anaerobic resistance to last that period. If you get your players to simply lift weights just like the bodybuilders, you are doing yourself, your team and your game a great harm.

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. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even 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 look upon the reasons.

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. Whereas the upper body strength is required for stopping the ball and keeping the opponents away.

In weight training soccer, “strength” can be divided into three categories.

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.

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. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.

By just following the traditional weight training program that many popular fitness magazines promote; only power will be increased. 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. 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.

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 can gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community. So subscribe today.

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.