Weight Training Soccer: 5 Sure-fire Tips
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.
Very few coaches get the soccer strength training right. Youth soccer players are required to be “complete athletes” now.
The youth player of today needs to have the upper body strength to struggle with challenges and besides that he must always be quick and speedy. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. 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.
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.
The reasons are as follows:
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. Whereas the upper body strength is required for stopping the ball and keeping the opponents away.
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. 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.
During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. Most essentially, it is the basis for muscular pace and potential.
Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.
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: The capability of a muscle group to carry out frequent and high-power actions. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.
If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. Going back to the basic 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, general weights programs are unproductive 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.