Probability you might not believe this, but just 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.
During soccer strength training, Specificity is a very important concept. 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. Like running is a good drill for runners and swimming for swimmers.
To improve power, speed is an important aspect in training. The role of players in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress and their player’s level must be considered when coaching them in weight training programs.
When this kind of information is available to a coach while planning a fitness training program, it ensures a good start.
For over all physical conditioning you should arrange those exercises which develop specific training. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.
One more feature in weight training soccer often ignored is prevention of injury.Another area of weight training soccer which is commonly neglected in is injury prevention. It is necessary to prevent injury although it is not the direct factor to contribute towards to the play however it enables the players to maintain their fitness in order to perform their best at the special times of the season.
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.
So for creating these muscles core lifts, like squats and deadlifts are important exercises. A comprehensive soccer fitness program giving due stress upon these two core lifts should work miracles for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.
To concentrate on the shoulders, arms and back muscle areas the program should also include swimming.
Ordinary strength program comprises of doing pretty heavy weights but only a few times. Some sports require bulk and strength while some others have to ensure they combine adequate strength with mobility, speed and stamina like a mid-fielder in soccer.
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.
Now having equipped with knowledge always keep in mind that in weight training soccer doing weights might not give much benefit. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society 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.
