Weight Training Soccer: 5 Simple Steps To Getting Started
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. And if you don’t, you’re giving up some great benefits of soccer-specific fitness.
Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. A young soccer player of today should be a “complete athlete”.
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.
Bodybuilders, and athletes whose sports are mainly strength based, train to increase size, bulk and utmost strength. It does not matter much to them if it harms their aerobic endurance levels or even their speediness and flexibility.
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
In soccer, lower body strength is needed for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also lays the foundation for great speed. 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. A player for example doing 250lbs leg press has mightier strength than another doing 200lbs only.
A good absolute power is useful in soccer to keep the opponents off and defending the ball. Fundamentally it’s the foundation for muscular speed and power.
Muscular Power: Power is a result of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. A valuable power will be created that is “explosive power”, if you improve one of them without lowering the other.
A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. While those traditional soccer fitness programs can also be altered increasing the speed of contraction.
Strength Endurance: Strength or muscular stamina is the ability of a muscle group to carry out repeated and high-intensity movements. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.
Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. If you follow the simple 3 sets of 8-12 reps each, traditional weight programs are not very useful for developing soccer-specific strength endurance.
Do yourself a favor and invest some time to plan your weight training soccer program correctly and it will certainly pay off ten-fold on the field. 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.
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.
Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer