Soccer Coaching

You may not agree, but check this out. 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.

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

During soccer strength training, Specificity is a very important concept. The theory is to design your training sessions to match the player’s activity on the field. Take for example running and swimming, a great exercise for runners and swimmers respectively.

Speed is the main factor to put effort to when training, so as to develop power. Weight training programs should be prepared explicitly for individuals taking into consideration their role in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress, and the level at which they are to play.

Soccer Fitness

Having this information when preparing a fitness training program, can lead to a good start.

For over all physical conditioning you should arrange those exercises which develop specific training. For instance, to improve the aerobic and strength and power fitness, swimmers also run and perform weight lifting.

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 “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. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

Swimming can also help to add strength to shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Strength programs normally consist of heavy loads and a small number of repetitions. Some sports require bulk and strength while some others have to ensure they combine adequate strength with mobility, speed and stamina like a mid-fielder in soccer.

Strengthening highly vulnerable muscle groups could also add to the performance benefits in the absence of primary strength, power or endurance gains. 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 are welcomed to 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.

It’s very true, that while training your players with weights you should also consider improving their weight training soccer practices as the year goes by. 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. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.

The players are supposed to be speedy in their actions along with the upper body strength to meet challenges. Players need to build their aerobic and anaerobic at the highest level to carry on until the game is over. One would be destroying his players, the game and even himself if he just tells his players to lift weights like any body builder.

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’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.

Soccer Fitness

In case you are planning to follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you are not going to get the best from your fitness training programs.

Let’s look upon the reasons.

While playing soccer, lower body strength is very important. It is required for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also helpful in enhancing speed. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

“Strength” can be divided into three categories, when we talk about weight training soccer.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the greatest force that a muscle group can exert in a quick, single contraction. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.

During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.

Muscular Power: Absolute strength and the speed of action both add up to produce power. If you increase either of these, without lowering the other, the explosive power of players will increase.

But, if you just follow a generalized weight training routine that most of the popular fitness magazines advocate, you will increase power. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.

Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. The game of soccer requires strength endurance which has similar importance as power.

A great significant should be given to include strength endurance in your program. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.

If you just put some time in altering your weight training soccer accurately you will see that it will improve your game 10 times . You can gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community. So subscribe today.

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.