Posts Tagged: soccer fitness

You should know how true it is to work on your team’s Weight training soccer program, while they are being trained with weights. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. 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. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. 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

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.

We will now see the reasons

In soccer, lower body strength is needed for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also lays the foundation for great speed. Upper body strength, on the other hand, is needed for shielding the ball, and keeping the opponents off.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. 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. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.

Muscular Power: Absolute strength and the speed of action both add up to produce power. A valuable power will be created that is “explosive power”, if you improve one of them without lowering the other.

Only power will be enhanced if you just simply use the common trainings that almost all of the popular fitness magazines advocate. While those traditional soccer fitness programs can also be altered increasing the speed of contraction.

Strength Endurance: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. Strength endurance and power both are essential for 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 should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society for you can gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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: Coaching Youth Soccer

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.

The new theory of soccer weight training is to have strong and fast muscles with higher stamina rather that to keep on adding pounds of muscle bulk. 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 recommend you begin your fitness training with the legs. Start with squats. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. The technique is to get under the bar and standing up with it resting it across the upper back.

They should then get out of the stands and stand with their feet and shoulder width apart. After that they must lower their body while holding on to the bar till their hips are a little bit below the top of their knee. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. The players must be encouraged to continue even when they are worn-out till they do 20 reps.

Youth Soccer Coaching

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. 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.

The leg exercises will be completed with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
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.

Now we move to the second workout of this session of soccer strength training which are the pull-up exercises. Their palms must be facing their body so that they can exercise their biceps and back muscles. The final part of the upper body work out involves working on abdominals and doing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.

In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop great soccer players. You are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up more information about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; it also has videos, articles, pod casts, and newsletters available for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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 training fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Coaching Tips

In Soccer conditioning, it sounds good that the concentration on workouts be changed on days following a competition. It helps in producing a quality effort in a match or equally a workout. Whenever a competition is forthcoming, coaches have a tendency to be indecisive in their approach.

Talking about training, follow the policy of “less is more” whenever a competition is close. Bring down the number and the length of drills but keep the level of intensity high. It conveys the required motivation to keep up with the performance. Coach’s performance is an exact contradiction.

They tend to increase both the amount and intensity leading to over training and pressure. As such, the players are not in their fittest state on the day of competition.

It applies to post match soccer fitness as well. The players feel exhausted, sore, and stiff after the match, based on for how long the match lasted. So it’s essential to carry out a workout session, the very next day, aimed at helping players recuperate. This will allow them to become their usual self with their muscles getting to relax.

Again ensure that these sessions are not extensive. Usually, 15-30 minutes is what is required to do these workouts. The target should be to oppose the pressure that crops up through the competition.

It’s a good idea to do some cool down workouts after the match to recuperate. This type of soccer conditioning is a way to help the body slow down while at the same time keeping the blood flow normal through the muscles. Include light exercises such as such as shuffling, skipping, and carioca as supplements to static stretching.

When the players get back home, taking a hot or cold shower is a good idea which relaxes the muscles and helps them recover.

Soccer conditioning

To lessen the training stress, plan specific recovery sessions that must be undertaken during, between, and after the soccer exercises. If the sessions are long and weary, it will lead to less quality in performances and exhaustion.

As the training session progresses, the intensity of the activities should come down. This will help the body get conditioned for the next session.

On days that the players do heavy training or soccer workouts, follow it up with light training. There should also be a rest day in between. The stretching sessions must conclude the training sessions. Make the players do light movement drills, self-massage, as well as body stretches in this session. This will have a soothing effect on the soreness of the muscles that is a result of tissue breakdown.

Now, you know it! Add these post match/workout soccer conditioning tips to the sessions and you will have a winnable team that is fit in every respect. Our soccer coaching community is full of such valuable knowledge in the form of articles, newsletters, videos etc. Take advantage of them by subscribing today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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 Training Tips

The coaches fail to appreciate the magnitude of Soccer conditioning of players which is very disappointing. The kids must be taught this from the very beginning. In addition to this, make them practice the soccer exercises regularly to make it big in this game.

Let’s look at it like this. You team members could not practice for a while because of some unforeseen circumstances. The players are not even in the mode of going out on walks, small jogs, or running for a considerable time period.

Now is the day when they are required to get back into the mode of playing again. Isn’t it a terrible thought to start from the very beginning? Their body will also not support them to exercise at the same pace initially because the muscles become stiff and weak.

Here, some soccer workouts are available which will relieve the player’s strain of starting from scratch again. Soccer has the ability to draw from all forms of energy systems that are used throughout the game.

Soccer Conditioning

Here you have the high-speed anaerobic structure for high concentration work. Conversely, it’s the aerobic system which offers an unbiased basis of energy for a long period of time. These soccer conditioning workouts will therefore do away with the need for the players to start from scratch in building endurance.

Being the team’s coach, you must work on designing a plan incorporating both these energy systems in it. Make sure the plan is an evolutionary plan that transits from one part to the next in a series. This will aid you in working out the entire conditioning part of your program.

The anaerobic energy system makes use of the power in the muscles along with lactic acid, which is the energy metabolism by-product. It facilitates quick supply of energy but for a very short duration of time. The position at which the player plays as also the team’s playing style determines how much anaerobic energy is used by the player.

For example: a goalie spends a very limited amount time in running around the field. So, he has the capacity and the opportunity to store energy for a long time.

For so long as the body’s demand for energy is being met, energy will be sustained. In the event of lack of sufficient energy, the player does not feel energetic. This is why players need oxygen to continue when the training goes beyond a particular time.

In this form of soccer fitness, the aerobic system works in tandem with the anaerobic system. Their capacity to keep going even at the end of the match will help them when the opponents are weak.

Make no mistake about it! Fitness through soccer conditioning is the only way to achieve great results. Being the coach this should at the top of your priority list when coaching the kids. You can benefit a lot from our youth soccer coaching community that offers ton of resources targeted at youth soccer. Become a member now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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: Youth Soccer Drills