Weight Training Soccer: A Guide To Winning Strategies
You might disagree, but hear me out on this. You can greatly benefit from weight training soccer when coaching your players in a sport that requires a lot of strength, and, or explosive power. 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.
Specificity is a common principle in soccer strength training. The concept of this is to coach the players to put more time in working out in a way resembling their play on the field. For Example: Runners practice through running and swimmers through swimming.
With a view to develop power, the speed of the training or exercise is vital. 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.
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. 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.
A sport like soccer includes activities such as running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, going for a hit. 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. An all-round soccer fitness program may also help, but these two core lifts work wonders 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. 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.
Even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent, developing particular muscle groups would also help to increase performance. These muscle groups are the lower back and hamstrings, and the quadriceps muscles that direct knee joint function.
Now having equipped with knowledge always keep in mind that in weight training soccer doing weights might not give much benefit. You can also join 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.
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.
