Let’s face it. If you train your team with weights there’s no reason why should not fine-tune their Weight training soccer routine as the year progresses. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.

Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.

They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. These players are required to have exceptional level of aerobic and anaerobic resistance to last that period. 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.

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.

Soccer Fitness

In case you are planning to follow the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions all year round, you are not going to get the best from your fitness training programs.

Let’s understand why

Lower body strength is vital in soccer as it is necessary in for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also useful in improving speed. Shielding the ball and making the opponts to stay away, requires upper body strength.

Three broad categories can be made to divide “strength” in weight training soccer.

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.

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.

By just following the traditional weight training program that many popular fitness magazines promote; only power will be increased. 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. Strength endurance, similar to power is very vital to the game of soccer.

Therefore strength endurance should be given importance to in your soccer training programs. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.

If you just put some time in altering your weight training soccer accurately you will see that it will improve your game 10 times . You can gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community. So subscribe today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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: Soccer Coaching