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You should know how true it is to work on your team’s weight training soccer program, while they are being trained with weights. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

The youth player of today needs to have the upper body strength to struggle with challenges and besides that he must always be quick and speedy. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. 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.

Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost strength. If it really reduces their aerobic endurance levels and even their speed and flexibility they will not be bothered much.

Soccer Fitness

In case you are planning to follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you are not going to get the best from your fitness training programs.

Let’s understand why

In soccer, lower body strength is needed for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also lays the foundation for great speed. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

“Strength” can be divided into three categories, when we talk about weight training soccer.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. For example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.

A good absolute power is useful in soccer to keep the opponents off and defending the ball. Most essentially, it is the basis for muscular pace and potential.

Muscular Power: Absolute strength and the speed of action both add up to produce power. A valuable power will be created that is “explosive power”, if you improve one of them without lowering the other.

A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely 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. The game of soccer requires strength endurance which has similar importance as power.

Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. Going back to the basic 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, general weights programs are unproductive for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

If you just put some time in altering your weight training soccer accurately you will see that it will improve your game 10 times . 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.

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. This requires special fitness training program without the ball and off the field in order to give time to focus on particular muscle groups.

Focusing on these target areas will generate superior movement and flexibility causing higher velocity and strength.

Core: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. The part of the body below the breast bone till the lowest part of the pelvis area is referred to as the “core”. This area is the source of power, the center of gravity, and the balancing center of the body.

In other words, the core is where all physical actions of the body are initiated from. A strong and a well developed abdominal core also ensures a well-balanced back, especially the Lumbar region. It also improves the posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps are helpful in pumping the heart. This means that these are the biggest muscle groups of the body and are responsible for pumping a huge amount of blood volume. So, even walking is good exercise in weight training soccer as each leg helps the heart push a lot of blood through the entire body.

Powerful and stable leg muscles are vital for the hips, knees and the ankles to hips, to bear 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). During soccer strength training, these parts should be given a lot of importance as their development is directly proportional to the growth of the body.

Arms: Arms facilitate in the balancing of the body through weight distribution, especially when jumping to head a ball or changing directions. A powerful jump is made by throwing the arms in the air.

Plyometric: You should combine weight training with well-organized plyometric program for great results. With this method you will see progress within the first half of the season.

Always remember to give importance to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will positively aim these areas.

Program: Normally such a program should be designed which is measureable and specific to an individual’s requirement and used at the introduction of the season. Concentrating on specific areas of the body starting with the core and searing outwards to each section of the body is vital to the total development of an individual.

In conclusion, this concept of weight training soccer can be better understood through mental training of the team where both the team and individual players encourage each other to own the program. You are welcomed 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 program of soccer fitness talked about in this article will aid you make your players ready for playing soccer at an advanced level.

The new theory of soccer weight training is to have strong and fast muscles with higher stamina rather that to keep on adding pounds of muscle bulk. 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.

I think fitness training should start with the legs. Start with squats. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.

They should then get out of the stands and stand with their feet and shoulder width apart. They must hold it as they go down until their hips are slightly lower than the top of their knees. At this point in weight training soccer, players should quickly rise to the full standing position and exhale. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.

Soccer Fitness

A 5-10 minutes break should be taken before moving on with the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. They are required to perform 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. Hamstrings are vital for players speed, thus we would want them to be strong enough.

The leg exercises will be completed with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Now for the upper body work out begin with the Incline bench press.
Once the players have performed the warm ups, tell them to carry on by putting more weights such that the next set of 10 reps get harder. The players must repeat the 5 sets 10 times with weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders and at the end of each set stop and relax for 2 minutes.

The second exercise for this portion of the soccer strength training is pull-ups. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. The final part of the upper body work out involves working on abdominals and doing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. The final exercise is sit-ups, complete 5 sets of 50 or more.

In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop great soccer players. You are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up more information about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; it also 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.