Coach Youth Soccer

You may not agree, but check this out. Weight training soccer is very essential while coaching the player on sports that needs a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. 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 will teach you the basic theories of weight training for soccer using simple methods for presenting those theories.

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.

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

All this information is useful for a trainer in designing a fitness training program, to make a good start.

Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve specific training. You see workouts like running and weight exercises are also performed by swimmers to enhance their aerobic and strength and power fitness.

Injury prevention is another aspect of weight training soccer that is often overlooked. 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. 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.

So for creating these muscles core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are important exercises. A comprehensive soccer fitness program giving due stress upon these two core lifts should work miracles for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

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

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few 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.

Working on very special muscle groups can also enhance the performance even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are lacking. Thus the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that aids the knee joint function are such muscle groups.

This is it. Please try to consider these areas while weight training soccer as you know now that football unlike other sports do not require weights essentially. 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.

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. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Youth soccer players are required to be “complete athletes” now.

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.

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

One would miss out a great deal from your fitness training sessions if he/she also uses the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the entire year.

Let’s understand why

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.

When it comes to weight training soccer, we can divide “strength” into three broad categories.

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the ultimate level of force that your muscle group can apply in one speedy motion. For instance, a person who can do 250lbs leg press has greater power than the other player having the ability of doing 200lbs 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: 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.

But, if you just follow a generalized weight training routine that most of the popular fitness magazines advocate, you will increase power. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.

Strength Endurance: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. 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. Going back to the basic 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, general weights programs are unproductive 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 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.

How about if you get to learn that weight training soccer targets improving strength instead of just increasing muscle mass, particularly the development of muscle groups that support the joints? This requires special fitness training program without the ball and off the field in order to give time to focus on particular muscle groups.

Focusing on these target areas will generate superior movement and flexibility causing higher velocity and strength.

Core: The number one part to be focused named as “core”, refers to abdominals. 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. 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 leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping 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. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

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: These areas of the body serve as a link between the “core” and the ends (legs, arms and the head). 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: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting 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. With this method you will see progress within 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.

Programs: Generally, a program that is quantifiable and specific to an individual needs to be applied at the beginning 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.

We conclude the session by saying that weight training soccer can be better comprehended by mentally preparing the players and the team where both of them motivate 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.