Weight Training Soccer: 4 Things You Must Know About Conditioning
It is very commonly heard nowadays that weight training soccer is a major factor of sports training in today’s times as it creates tougher and quicker 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.
In soccer weight training, the goal is to have muscles that are strong, fast, and have great stamina rather that to add pounds of muscle mass. Although the lower body strength is more important in soccer but we still carry on with the upper body weight trainings for overall conditioning and strength.
You should start your fitness training with the legs first. Begin with the squatting exercises. This session should be followed by putting the bar to a weight with which the players can perform 20 reps with. Assuming that they are quite strong, therefore they should begin with 220 pounds. They have to get under the bar, with it resting across their upper back, and stand up with it.
Next tell them to stand having their shoulders and feet width apart. They must hold it as they go down until their hips are slightly 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. They should be motivated to do this for 20 reps even when they are totally worked out.
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. In between each set of Leg Curls, they’ll also be doing 4 sets of 15 reps on the Stiff-Legged Dead lift. Since hamstrings are very important to a player’s speed, so you want them to be very strong.
Then conclude your leg workout with 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine.
The Incline bench press would be used to start the upper body exercises.
Once the players have performed the warm ups, tell them to carry on by putting more weights such that the next set of 10 reps get harder. They should continue with that weight for 5 sets of 10 repetitions total, while stretching their chest and shoulders, and resting for around 2 minutes between each set.
Next are the pull-up exercises in this section of soccer strength training. This exercise should be done with the palms facing their body so that their biceps and back can become strong. Finally the upper body exercises include abdominals and performing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.
In short weight training soccer is only a small portion of the complete training program required to make great soccer players. To know more about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that has videos, articles, pod casts, and newsletters available for you.
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