Coach Youth Soccer

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. Weight training soccer is very essential while coaching the player on sports that needs 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.

Here are the basic principles of weight training for soccer displaying simple activities to describe those principles.

Specificity is a common principle in soccer strength training. 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.

With a view to develop power, the speed of the training or exercise is vital. 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

When this kind of information is available to a coach while planning a fitness training program, it ensures a good start.

In order to develop physical conditioning such activities should be planned which improves 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.

Soccer is a sport which involves running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and setting for an attempt. 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.

Hence the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are essential working out for building these muscles. 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.

Typically strength programs involve heavy masses with only some repetitions. You know by now that soccer is a sport which requires sufficient strength with mobility, speed and stamina not just building bulk and mass like other sports.

Establishing strong muscle groups can also improve to the performance even if the primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent. 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 are invited to become a member of 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.

Weight training soccer is vital for sports training in today’s soccer world; you might be aware of that already, as it is required for creating tougher and faster muscles. The program of soccer fitness talked about in this article will aid you make your players ready for playing soccer at an advanced level.

Soccer weight training requires muscles to be strong, speedy and resistant instead of adding pounds of useless bulk in muscles. Though the importance of upper body weight training for soccer is not as much as the legs, we still go on with it for general conditioning and strength.

I recommend you begin your fitness training with the legs. You can start the warm up session with squats. Now place the bar with which your players can make 20 reps. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. They have to get under the bar, with it resting across their upper back, and stand up with it.

Instruct them to step back out of the racks and stand with their feet, shoulder width apart or wider. Then they should come down while holding it till their hips are only marginally lower than the top of their knees. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. Tell them to continue this practice for at least 20 reps even when they are completely exhausted.

Soccer Fitness

Give them a break for about 5 to 10 minutes and then start with the leg curl machine to work on the hamstrings. Your players will be doing 4 sets of 15 reps each. In between each set of Leg Curls, they’ll also be doing 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift. 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.
Now when the they are warmed up they must go on by including enough weights so that the next set of 10 reps is harder to do. 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.

In this segment of soccer strength training the second exercise is the pull-ups. Their palms must be facing their body so that they can exercise their biceps and back muscles. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. The last in this work out are the crunches do 5 sets of 50 or more.

As a final point weight training soccer is only a minor portion of the comprehensive training program required. 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.

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.

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Soccer strength training is only understood correctly by selected coaches. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy 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.

Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost strength. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.

Soccer Fitness

If you also tend do is follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you’re far from getting the best from your fitness training sessions.

We will now see the reasons

Kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting and turning as well as good speed during soccer comes from lower body strength. Whereas the upper body strength is required for stopping the ball and keeping the opponents away.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the greatest force that a muscle group can exert in a quick, single contraction. For example, a who can leg press 250 lbs has greater strength than another player who can leg press only 200 lbs.

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. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.

A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.

Strength Endurance: Muscular stamina is the potential of a muscle group to perform continues and high-power activity. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.

A great significant should be given to include strength endurance in your program. 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.

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.

You would be surprised to find out that the objective of weight training soccer is to develop the muscles that support the joints instead of just focusing on growing muscle mass. This requires special fitness training program without the ball and off the field in order to give time to focus on particular muscle groups.

This will result in improved mobility and flexibility for enhanced swiftness and power.

Core: The abdominals, titled as the ‘core’ is the area first area to concentrate upon. 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 portion of the body is the origin point of power, gravity and balance in the body.

Hence all the physical actions are initiated from the core A strong and a well developed abdominal core also ensures a well-balanced back, especially the Lumbar region. This in turn creates and enhances a better posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The quadriceps pump the heart. Hence they are the major muscle groups of the body and provide enormous amount of blood volume. Walking can also be helpful in weight training soccer as each step pumps blood supply to the entire body.

Strong and balanced leg muscles are required for the hips, knees and the ankles to stand 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). In soccer strength training, these areas should not be neglected or thought of as irrelevant, as they will develop as the rest of the body grows.

Arms: Arms facilitate in the balancing of the body through weight distribution, especially when jumping to head a ball or changing 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.

Special attention must be given to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to improve the core will definitely target these zones.

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. 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.

In the end we say that weight training soccer can be applied by mentally preparing the players; because it is needed that the players and the team help each other to own the program. You are invited to become a member of 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.