Coaching Youth Soccer

It’s not necessary that you agree, but you should listen to this. While coaching players on games that involves great strength, and, or explosive power weight training soccer is very useful. Strong abdominal and lower back muscles are also essential for players for whom strength and power is not the main issue.

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 theory is to design your training sessions to match the player’s activity on the field. Like running is a good drill for runners and swimming for swimmers.

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

Such exercises should be planned for physical conditioning which improves specific training. For example: swimmers also run and lift weights to improve their aerobic and strength and power fitness.

Injury prevention is also something which is commonly overlooked although it is an important part of weight training soccer. 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.

Running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, and getting ready for a shot are all the exercises performed in soccer. The “anterior and posterior chain,” are the chain of muscles which are required to perform these actions must be given importance to develop strength, stability and power.

The best exercises for developing these muscles are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts. The normal soccer fitness program should useful if special importance is given to these two core lifts that are crucial for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

To concentrate on the shoulders, arms and back muscle areas the program should also include swimming.

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few repetitions. 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. They are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that help 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.

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. For this purpose special fitness training programs should be designed to let the players have some time, away from both the field and the ball to work on target muscle groups.

By this technique those areas will give better movement and flexibility resulting in increased pace 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 portion of the body is the origin point of power, gravity and balance in the body.

Thus the core is the center point from where all the physical action originates. A strong and a well developed abdominal core also ensures a well-balanced back, especially the Lumbar region. It also improves the posture.

Soccer Fitness

Legs: The leg muscles called quadriceps are vital in pumping the heart. Thus being the biggest muscle groups of the body pump great volumes of blood. So, even walking is good exercise in weight training soccer as each leg helps the heart push a lot of blood through the entire body.

The hips, knees and the ankles need balanced and strong leg muscles in order to endure all the force 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). These areas must never be neglected in soccer strength training because their growth is linked with the rest 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. Keeping your arms in the air makes a forceful jump.

Plyometric: For best results, weight training should go together with a well-planned plyometric program. With this method you will see progress within 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: Typically a program which is measureable and precise to an individual’s requirement should be functional at the opening of the season. The complete development of the player involves targeting specific areas of the body starting with the core and then toward each section of the body.

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 are welcomed 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.

The truth is that if that you should concentrate on enhancing your team’s weight training soccer sessions when you train them with weights. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.

Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. 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. Players need to build their aerobic and anaerobic at the highest level to carry on until the game is over. 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.

Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost 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.

The reasons are as follows:

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.

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

Absolute or Maximum Strength: The highest level of power your muscles can exert in a single, quick motion. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.

During soccer, this kind of strength is helpful in keeping the opponent off and defending the ball. More importantly, it forms the foundation of muscular pace and power.

Muscular Power: Absolute strength and the speed of action both add up to produce power. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.

Only power will be enhanced if you just simply use the common trainings that almost all of the popular fitness magazines advocate. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.

Strength Endurance: Strength or muscular stamina is the ability of a muscle group to carry out repeated and high-intensity movements. The game of soccer requires strength endurance which has similar importance as power.

Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. 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 are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society to gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community.

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.

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. Your players will have a chance to play at a higher level if they develop themselves using this soccer fitness plan discussed as follows.

During soccer weight training the aim is to improve the strength, speed and stamina of the muscles instead of just increasing the muscle weight. For overall conditioning and strength we still continue with the upper body weight training however its significance is not as much as the leg strength.

I recommend you begin your fitness training with the legs. You can start the warm up session with squats. When you are done with this warm up activity players are supposed to do 20 reps, so bar to be loaded should be according to their capacity. Let’s say they are pretty strong, so tell them to begin with 220 pounds. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.

Now they must stand keeping their shoulders and feet width apart. Next they move downwards keeping hold of the bar up until their hips are just below the upper part of their knees. At this point in weight training soccer, players should quickly rise to the full standing position and exhale. Encourage them to repeat this for 20 reps even when they are dead tired.

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. 4 sets of 15 reps each should be completed by them. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.

Then conclude your leg workout with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.

Now for the upper body work out begin with the Incline bench press.
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. A total of 5 sets of 10 repetitions are required with the weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders, yet pausing to relax for 2 minutes in the middle of each set.

Next are the pull-up exercises in this section of soccer strength training. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. 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. The final exercise is sit-ups, complete 5 sets of 50 or more.

In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop 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.