Soccer Tryout

Probability you might not believe this, but just hear me out on this. Weight training soccer is very essential while coaching the player on sports that needs a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. For player who do not require strength and power that much can also take advantage of strong abdominal and lower back muscles.

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. Like running is a good drill for runners and swimming for swimmers.

To improve power, speed is an important aspect in training. The role of players in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress and their player’s level must be considered when coaching them in weight training programs.

Soccer Fitness

All this information is useful for a trainer in designing a fitness training program, to make a good start.

Such exercises should be planned for physical conditioning which improves 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. Although it does not contribute directly to an increase in a player’s performance, injury prevention can positively support a player’s performance by ensuring that he or she is fit to play at crucial times in the event calendar.

The movements executed in soccer are running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, preparing for a goal. The muscle chain that is required in these movements named as the “anterior and posterior chain,” should be exercised to build strength, stability and power.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. The general soccer fitness program may be used commonly but these two core lifts are very essential for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

You may also include a swimming program to focus added attention on the shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Strength programs normally consist of heavy loads and a small number of repetitions. You know by now that soccer is a sport which requires sufficient strength with mobility, speed and stamina not just building bulk and mass like other sports.

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

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 are invited to become a member of 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.

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.

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. 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.

Thus the core is the center point from where all the physical action originates. A powerful and sound abdominal core also confirms a well-balanced back, particularly the Lumbar area. This also generates a good posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping the heart. Thus being the biggest muscle groups of the body pump great volumes of blood. 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: These parts of the body work as a connection between the “core” and the ends (legs, arms and the head). Thus these portions should never be ignored in soccer strength training, since they will strengthen with the development of the rest of the body.

Arms: Arm is a useful part in playing soccer as they help in maintaining balance like when you jump to head a ball or when you suddenly alter 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.

The significant point is to give importance to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will certainly target 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.

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 are invited to become a member of 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.

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.

Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. 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. 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.

The sports requiring strength mainly in addition to body building, workout to enhance size, bulk and maximum strength. They will not worry if it destroys their aerobic endurance levels or 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.

The reasons are as follows:

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.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the ultimate level of force that your muscle group can apply in one speedy motion. A player for example doing 250lbs leg press has mightier strength than another doing 200lbs only.

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. Increasing any one of them, without reducing the other will generate a value added power called explosive power.

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: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.

At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. Going back to the basic 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, general weights programs are unproductive for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

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.

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.

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.

I recommend you begin your fitness training with the legs. Start with squats. When you are done with this warm up activity players are supposed to do 20 reps, so bar to be loaded should be according to their capacity. Assuming that they are quite strong, therefore they should begin with 220 pounds. This practice is performed by getting below the bar, and putting it across their upper back and then stand up with it.

Now they must stand keeping their shoulders and feet width apart. Next they move downwards keeping hold of the bar up until their hips are just below the upper part of their knees. 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

They should be given a break of 5-10 minutes before switching to the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. They are required to do 15 repetitions of 4 sets each. The Stiff-Legged Dead lift with 4 sets of 15 reps should be completed between each set of Leg Curls. 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.
When they are done with the warm ups, they should continue with extra weights so that the next set of 10 reps becomes tougher. 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. This exercise should be done with the palms facing their body so that their biceps and back can become strong. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. Then finish with 5 sets of 50 or more crunches or sit-ups.

In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop great soccer players. 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.