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. Even players for whom strength and power is not a main attribute tend to benefit from strong abdominal and lower back muscles.

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

One of the key principles of soccer strength training is, Specificity. It means that if you can train your players in a way that emulates their activity when playing on the field, then you must spend the majority of your time training in that way. For instance: Runners run and swimmers swim.

Speed is the main factor to put effort to when training, so as to develop power. Weight training programs should be designed in a manner that takes in to account the individuals role in team sports, their age, physical and mental ability to take pressure, and the level at which they are to play.

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

Weight training soccer

In order to develop physical conditioning such activities should be planned which improves specific training. For example: swimmers also run and lift weights to improve their aerobic and strength and power fitness.

Injury prevention is another aspect of weight training soccer that is often overlooked. The effects of injury prevention are not evident directly but they are essential in player’s performance and confirm that the player is fit to play at the most important occasions of the 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.

The best exercises for developing these muscles are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts. The general soccer fitness program may be used commonly but these two core lifts are very essential for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.

You may also include a swimming program to focus added attention on the shoulders, arms and back muscles.

Usually strength enhancing programs include heavy weight lifting with few repetitions. As we have talked earlier some sports require mass and power but some others like soccer requires a good combination of strength with flexibility, speed and resistance; especially the midfielder.

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.

So there you have it. Keep these points in mind when weight training soccer since football is a sport for which you may not initially consider weights to be an advantage. You are welcomed to 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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: Weight training soccer

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