You should know how true it is to work on your team’s weight training soccer program, while they are being trained with weights. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.
Only some of the coaches understand soccer strength training correctly. Players of youth soccer teams are supposed to be “complete athletes” now days.
The youth player of today needs to have the upper body strength to struggle with challenges and besides that he must always be quick and speedy. These players are required to have exceptional level of aerobic and anaerobic resistance to last that period. One would be destroying his players, the game and even himself if he just tells his players to lift weights like any body builder.
In body building and the sports which need strength primarily, players struggle to develop themselves in terms of size, bulk and ultimate strength. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.
If you are also thinking of implementing 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the whole year, you should know that you’ll be missing out a lot from your fitness training sessions.
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. Whereas the upper body strength is required for stopping the ball and keeping the opponents away.
In weight training soccer, “strength” can be divided into three categories.
Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.
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: It is the product of both maximum strength and the quickness in movement. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.
A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. Those traditional soccer fitness programs can also can be amended if you intentionally increase contraction speed.
Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.
At some point in your soccer training routine, as a coach, you must focus on developing strength endurance. 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.
Your game is about to improve 10 folds if you just put a little time in planning your weight training soccer program correctly. 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