You should know how true it is to work on your team’s weight training soccer program, while they are being trained with weights. You will be losing numerous advantages of soccer-specific fitness if you ignore it.
Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.
They are required to have swift movements plus the strength of upper body to resist challenges. Both aerobic and anaerobic stamina are needed at an extra ordinary level to keep going till the end. If you get your players to simply lift weights just like the bodybuilders, you are doing yourself, your team and your game a great harm.
When we talk about such sports like body building and players whose sports involve strength, we would say that they should try to increase in size, bulk and extreme strength. It does not matter much to them if it harms their aerobic endurance levels or even their speediness and flexibility.
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.
Let’s understand why
While playing soccer, lower body strength is very important. It is required for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also helpful in enhancing speed. While the strength of the upper body, is also important. It is used to shield the ball keeping off the opponents.
“Strength” can be divided into three categories, when we talk about weight training soccer.
Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. For instance, a person who can do 250lbs leg press has greater power than the other player having the ability of doing 200lbs leg press.
This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. 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. Increasing any one of them, without reducing the other will generate a value added power called explosive power.
But, if you just follow a generalized weight training routine that most of the popular fitness magazines advocate, you will increase power. But if you put effort to improve your contraction speed, even those types of soccer fitness programs can become useful.
Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. Strength endurance and power both are essential for soccer.
If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.
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 are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up with brand new methods and techniques it has thousands of relevant articles, videos and periodic newsletters.
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