Soccer Rules

You might disagree, but hear me out on this. While coaching players on games that involves great strength, and, or explosive power weight training soccer is very useful. Strong abdominal and lower back muscles are also essential for players for whom strength and power is not the main issue.

Here are the basic principles of weight training for soccer displaying simple activities to describe those principles.

Specificity is a common principle in soccer strength training. It means that if you can train your players in a way that emulates their activity when playing on the field, then you must spend the majority of your time training in that way. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

With a view to develop power, the speed of the training or exercise is vital. A number of thing which are important while planning weight training programs are the players role in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress, and the level at which they are to play.

Soccer Fitness

While developing a fitness training program, all this information is helpful for a coach to ensure a good start.

For over all physical conditioning you should arrange those exercises which develop specific training. You see workouts like running and weight exercises are also performed by swimmers to enhance their aerobic and strength and power fitness.

One more feature in weight training soccer often ignored is prevention of injury.Another area of weight training soccer which is commonly neglected in is injury prevention. It is necessary to prevent injury although it is not the direct factor to contribute towards to the play however it enables the players to maintain their fitness in order to perform their best at the special times of the season.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. The “anterior and posterior chain,” are the chain of muscles which are required to perform these actions must be given importance to develop strength, stability and power.

The most useful workouts are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts for forming these muscles. The normal soccer fitness program should useful if special importance is given to these two core lifts that are crucial for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

The program can also consist of swimming to highlight the areas of shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. As we have talked earlier some sports require mass and power but some others like soccer requires a good combination of strength with flexibility, speed and resistance; especially the midfielder.

Even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent, developing particular muscle groups would also help to increase performance. These muscle groups are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.

This is it. Please try to consider these areas while weight training soccer as you know now that football unlike other sports do not require weights essentially. You should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society that has a plethora of informative articles, weekly newsletters, and videos to help you better understand the concepts of youth coaching.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Tips.

What if I told you that weight training soccer is aimed at enhancing strength rather than the building of muscle mass, especially the growth of muscle groups that support the joints? For this purpose special fitness training programs should be designed to let the players have some time, away from both the field and the ball to work on target muscle groups.

By this technique those areas will give better movement and flexibility resulting in increased pace and strength.

Core: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. The area of the body below the breast bone up till the groin or the base of the pelvic region is considered 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 leg muscles which are essential in increasing blood flow to the heart. Therefore they are the largest muscle groups of the human body and supply vast amount of blood to the heart. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to 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:The linking relationship between the core and the ends is provided by these parts of the body. These areas must never be neglected in soccer strength training because their growth is linked with the rest of the body.

Arms: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting directions. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: A mixture of weight training with well-organized plyometric program must be practiced for quality results. This will create individual or teams who will show growth during 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: 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.

We conclude the session by saying that weight training soccer can be better comprehended by mentally preparing the players and the team where both of them motivate 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.

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. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.

Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

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. 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

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.

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

Three broad categories can be made to divide “strength” in weight training soccer.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. 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.

In soccer, good maximal strength is advantageous in holding off the opponents and defending the ball. Principally, it establishes muscular quickness and power.

Muscular Power: It is the product of both maximum strength and the quickness in movement. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.

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: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. Strength endurance, similar to power is very vital to the game of soccer.

Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. 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 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.

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that weight training soccer is a major part of sports training these days as it creates stronger and faster muscles. Your players will have a chance to play at a higher level if they develop themselves using this soccer fitness plan discussed as follows.

During soccer weight training the aim is to improve the strength, speed and stamina of the muscles instead of just increasing the muscle weight. 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 recommend you begin your fitness training 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.

Next tell them to stand having 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. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.

Soccer Fitness

Next is working on hamstrings, but before that have a 5-10 minutes break. 4 sets of 15 reps each should be completed by them. They will be required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift between each set of Leg Curl exercises. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.

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

The Incline bench press would be used to start the upper body exercises.
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. 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. This exercise should be done with the palms facing their body so that their biceps and back can become strong. 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. The final exercise is sit-ups, complete 5 sets of 50 or more.

We would say in the end that to make quality players of soccer, weight training soccer is only a small fragment of the entire training program. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society to gain more about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; The society 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.