Fun Soccer Drills

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.

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.

They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. 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.

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

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.

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. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

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

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.

This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.

Muscular Power: It is the product of both maximum strength and the quickness in movement. 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. 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.

A great significant should be given to include strength endurance in your program. If you follow the simple 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, traditional weight programs are not very useful for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

Make a favor to yourself and put some time in improving your weight training soccer program correctly and I assure you that it will pay back 10 times in the game. 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.

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.

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.

They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. 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.

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

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.

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. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

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

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.

This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.

Muscular Power: It is the product of both maximum strength and the quickness in movement. 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. 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.

A great significant should be given to include strength endurance in your program. If you follow the simple 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, traditional weight programs are not very useful for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.

Make a favor to yourself and put some time in improving your weight training soccer program correctly and I assure you that it will pay back 10 times in the game. 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.

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. 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.

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 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 part of the body is responsible for power generation, maintain the center of gravity and balancing the body.

Thus the core is the center point from where all the physical action originates. 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 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. So, in weight training soccer walking can be useful as it helps to increase blood circulation inside the body with each step.

A lot of energy is exerted in hitting the ground, thus it is very important to have powerful and well-balanced leg muscles required by the hips, knees and the ankles.

Back, Chest and Neck:The linking relationship between the core and the ends is provided by these parts of the body. 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. A good tip for power jump is to throw your arms in the air while you jump.

Plyometric: For excellent result you should use both weight training with carefully planned plyometric program. This will create individual or teams who will show growth during 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. 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.

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. While coaching players on games that involves great strength, and, or explosive power weight training soccer is very useful. If player do not need strength and power to a large extent even for them, strong abdominal and lower back muscles are helpful.

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. The concept of this is to coach the players to put more time in working out in a way resembling their play on the field. Like running is a good drill for runners and swimming for swimmers.

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

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. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.

Injury prevention is also something which is commonly overlooked although it is an important part of weight training soccer. 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.

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

Typically strength programs involve heavy masses with only some 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.

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 this is it. Always remember these points while weight training soccer since in sport like soccer weights may not give much advantage. 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.