Soccer Passing 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. For this reason fitness training session should be arranged off the field and away from the ball so that the players pay attention to some special 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. 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.

Hence all the physical actions are initiated from the core A good and established abdominal core also leads to a well-balanced back, mainly the Lumbar part. It also improves the posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps pump the heart. Hence they are the major muscle groups of the body and provide enormous amount of blood volume. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

The hips, knees and the ankles need balanced and strong leg muscles in order to endure all the force 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). These areas must never be neglected in soccer strength training because their growth is linked with the rest 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. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully planned plyometric program. 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: Typically a program which is measureable and precise to an individual’s requirement should be functional at the opening of the season. The comprehensive development of the player comprises of directing attention to specific areas of the body initiating with the core till each 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.

You should know how true it is to work on your team’s weight training soccer program, while they are being trained with weights. One might be missing out great benefits of soccer-specific fitness if he/she overlooks it.

Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.

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. One would be destroying his players, the game and even himself if he just tells his players to lift weights like any body builder.

In body building and the sports which need strength primarily, players struggle to develop themselves in terms of size, bulk and ultimate 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 also tend do is follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you’re far from getting the best from your fitness training sessions.

We will now see the reasons

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. Upper body strength, on the other hand, is needed for shielding the ball, and keeping the opponents off.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. For example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.

In soccer, good maximal strength is advantageous in holding off the opponents and defending the ball. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed 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.

Only power will be enhanced if you just simply use the common trainings that almost all of the popular fitness magazines advocate. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.

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.

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.

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.

Probability you might not believe this, but just hear me out on this. The play which requires excessive power, and, or explosive power, Weight training soccer is vital while coaching these players. 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.

One of the key principles of soccer strength training is, Specificity. 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. Take for example running and swimming, a great exercise for runners and swimmers respectively.

In order to enhance strength an essential thing to be stressed upon while exercising is speed. 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

When this kind of information is available to a coach while planning a fitness training program, it ensures a good start.

In order to develop physical conditioning such activities should be planned 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. The effects of injury prevention are not evident directly but  they are essential in player’s performance and confirm that the player is fit to play at the most important occasions of the calendar.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. It is therefore necessary that the chains of muscles used in these activities, called the “anterior and posterior chain,” are worked upon for strength, stability and power.

The best exercises for developing these muscles are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

To concentrate on the shoulders, arms and back muscle areas the program should also include swimming.

Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. 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.

Strengthening highly vulnerable muscle groups could also add to the performance benefits in the absence of primary strength, power or endurance gains. Thus the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that aids the knee joint function are such muscle groups.

So there you have it. Keep these points in mind when weight training soccer since football is a sport for which you may not initially consider weights to be an advantage. You can also join our youth soccer coaching community 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. For this reason fitness training session should be arranged off the field and away from the ball so that the players pay attention to some special 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. 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.

Hence all the physical actions are initiated from the core A good and established abdominal core also leads to a well-balanced back, mainly the Lumbar part. It also improves the posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps pump the heart. Hence they are the major muscle groups of the body and provide enormous amount of blood volume. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

The hips, knees and the ankles need balanced and strong leg muscles in order to endure all the force 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). These areas must never be neglected in soccer strength training because their growth is linked with the rest 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. Throwing your arms in the air adds force to a jump.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully planned plyometric program. 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: Typically a program which is measureable and precise to an individual’s requirement should be functional at the opening of the season. The comprehensive development of the player comprises of directing attention to specific areas of the body initiating with the core till each 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.

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. Using this soccer fitness strategy discussed in this article, your players will have an opportunity to play soccer at 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.

I think fitness training should start with the legs. Start with squats. Now place the bar with which your players can make 20 reps. Considering that they have good strength, hence give them 220 pounds to start with. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.

Instruct them to step back out of the racks and stand with their feet, shoulder width apart or wider. Then they should come down while holding it till their hips are only marginally lower than the top of their knees. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. Encourage them to repeat this for 20 reps even when they are dead tired.

Soccer Fitness

They should be given a break of 5-10 minutes before switching to the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. 4 sets of 15 reps each should be completed by them. In between each set of Leg Curls, they’ll also be doing 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.

Finish the leg workouts on Standing calf-raise machine and doing 3 sets of 25 reps

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. 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.

In this segment of soccer strength training the second exercise is the pull-ups. 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. 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 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.