Coaching Soccer

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. You can greatly benefit from weight training soccer when coaching your players in a sport that requires 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.

This article explains the basic principles of weight training for soccer using common activities for demonstrating those principles.

A vital principle in soccer strength training is, Specificity. The theory is to design your training sessions to match the player’s activity on the field. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

Speed is the main factor to put effort to when training, so as to develop power. 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.

In order to develop physical conditioning such activities should be planned which improves specific training. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.

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.

Soccer is a sport which involves running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and setting for an attempt. 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.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders 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.

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.

Working on very special muscle groups can also enhance the performance even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are lacking. These include the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.

Now having equipped with knowledge always keep in mind that in weight training soccer doing weights might not give much benefit. 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.

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them 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. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.

They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. Players need to build their aerobic and anaerobic at the highest level to carry on until the game is over. 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 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.

We will now see the reasons

Lower body strength is vital in soccer as it is necessary in for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also useful in improving speed. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

When it comes to weight training soccer, we can divide “strength” into three broad categories.

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

In soccer, good maximal strength is advantageous in holding off the opponents and defending the ball. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.

Muscular Power: It is the outcome 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.

By just following the traditional weight training program that many popular fitness magazines promote; only power will be increased. While those traditional soccer fitness programs can also be altered increasing 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.

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

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.

Weight training soccer is vital for sports training in today’s soccer world; you might be aware of that already, as it is required for creating tougher and faster muscles. 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. Upper body weight training for soccer is not as important as is for the legs, but we still do it for overall conditioning and strength.

You should start your fitness training with the legs first. You can start the warm up session with squats. 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. 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. Then they should come down while holding it till their hips are only marginally lower than the top of their knees. Coming up to this point in weight training soccer, they are supposed to stand up fast and exhale. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.

Soccer Fitness

Give them a break for about 5 to 10 minutes and then start with the leg curl machine to work on the hamstrings. They are required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps each. The Stiff-Legged Dead lift with 4 sets of 15 reps should be completed between each set of Leg Curls. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.

Then conclude your leg workout with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. 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.

Now we move to the second workout of this session of soccer strength training which are the pull-up exercises. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. 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.

As a final point weight training soccer is only a minor portion of the comprehensive training program required. 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.

You would be surprised to find out that the objective of weight training soccer is to develop the muscles that support the joints instead of just focusing on growing muscle mass. 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: Technically the first area to focus on is the abdominals, commonly known as the core. “Core” is the portion of the body which starts from the breast bone till the lowermost part of the pelvis area. This portion of the body is the origin point of power, gravity and balance in 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 also generates a good posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping the heart. Hence they are the major muscle groups of the body and provide enormous amount of blood volume. So, in weight training soccer walking can be useful as it helps to increase blood circulation inside the body with each step.

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 areas of the body serve as a link 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: 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. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: For best results, weight training should go together with a well-planned plyometric program. Using this technique such players will be produced who will show good results in the first half of the season.

The key again is going back to the core, because only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will naturally bring these areas into focus.

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

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 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.