Expert Soccer Coach

Probability you might not believe this, but just hear me out on 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.

In this article you will find the basic concept of weight training for soccer using simple techniques for applying those concepts.

A vital principle in 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

While developing a fitness training program, all this information is helpful for a coach to ensure a good start.

Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve 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. It is necessary to prevent injury although it is not the direct factor to contribute towards to the play however it enables the players to maintain their fitness in order to perform their best at the special times of the season.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. To develop strength, stability and power the chain of muscles titled as the “anterior and posterior chain,” involved in these activities should be given attention.

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.

Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. You should be knowing by now that unlike other sports requiring bulk and weight soccer is a sport that requires strength with mobility, speed and stamina.

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

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

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 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. Although the lower body strength is more important in soccer but we still carry on with the upper body weight trainings for overall conditioning and strength.

You should start your fitness training with the legs first. 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.

Next tell them to stand having their shoulders and feet width apart. They must hold it as they go down until their hips are slightly 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

Next is working on hamstrings, but before that have a 5-10 minutes break. They are required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps each. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. It is important for the hamstrings to be strong as the speed is significantly enhanced by them.

After completing 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine your leg exercises will be over.

Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
Once the players have performed the warm ups, tell them to carry on by putting more weights such that the next set of 10 reps get harder. 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. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. The last phase of upper body exercises is to concentrate on the abdominals and leg raises of about 5 sets of 20 or more repetitions. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.

In short weight training soccer is only a small portion of the complete training program required to make 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.

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. 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: The area that is first to be targeted are the abdominals, which is usually called the core. “Core” is the portion of the body which starts from the breast bone till the lowermost part of the pelvis area. 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 are leg muscles which are essential in increasing blood flow to the heart. This means that these are the biggest muscle groups of the body and are responsible for pumping a huge 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:The linking relationship between the core and the ends is provided by these parts of the body. 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: The arm plays a vital part in soccer to help maintain balance while you jump to head a ball or when you suddenly change directions. A good tip for power jump is to throw your arms in the air while you jump.

Plyometric: A mixture of weight training with well-organized plyometric program must be practiced for quality results. Using this technique such players will be produced who will show good results in 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. 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.

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 should consider joining 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. 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. A young soccer player of today should be a “complete athlete”.

They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. 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 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 understand why

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.

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

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

This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. Principally, it establishes muscular quickness and power.

Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of 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. But even those generalized soccer fitness programs can be improved if you deliberately enhance 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. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.

If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. 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.

Your game is about to improve 10 folds if you just put a little time in planning your weight training soccer program correctly. 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.