You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that weight training soccer is a major part of sports training these days as it creates stronger and faster muscles. Your players will have a chance to play at a higher level if they develop themselves using this soccer fitness plan discussed as follows.
Soccer weight training requires muscles to be strong, speedy and resistant instead of adding pounds of useless bulk in muscles. Though the importance of upper body weight training for soccer is not as much as the legs, we still go on with it for general conditioning and strength.
You should start your fitness training with the legs first. Begin with the squatting exercises. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Supposing they are strong enough, so let them go with 220 pounds first. The technique is to get under the bar and standing up with it resting it across the upper back.
Now they must stand keeping their shoulders and feet width apart. Then they should come down while holding it till their hips are only marginally lower than the top of their knees. In weight training soccer, after coming to this point the players should quickly stand up fully and breathe out. Encourage them to repeat this for 20 reps even when they are dead tired.
A 5-10 minutes break should be taken before moving on with the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. They are required to perform 4 sets of 15 reps each. The Stiff-Legged Dead lift with 4 sets of 15 reps should be completed between each set of Leg Curls. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.
The leg exercises will be completed with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.
Begin with using the Incline bench press, for the upper body workout.
After a warm up exercise, guide players to add enough weight so that the next set of 10 reps gets difficult. They are supposed keep on doing weights for a total of 5 sets of 10 reps, while stretching their chest and shoulders, however taking a break of 2 minutes between each set.
The second exercise for this portion of the soccer strength training is pull-ups. They should work out on their biceps and back by making their palms facing their body. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. The last in this work out are the crunches do 5 sets of 50 or more.
In short weight training soccer is only a small portion of the complete training program required to make great soccer players. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society to gain more about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; The society that has videos, articles, pod casts, and newsletters available for you.
Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Practice.
Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer