Learn How To Design Soccer Workouts The Right Way

Soccer Strength Training

Although gaining large amounts of muscle mass would be counterproductive, soccer players can gain quite a bit from getting stronger and more powerful through a sound weight training program.

A solid base of 1 leg and upper body strength, plus core stability, should be your primary areas of emphasis for soccer training. From there, Olympic lifting, medicine ball work, and plyometrics can be layered on top of this to build explosive power for enhanced kicking, sprinting, and cutting.

Core stability, in particular, is a key developmental need. It will not only add power to all your athletic skills, but it is also a great injury preventer and helps act against early fatiuge by improving posture. High level core drills work well for soccer players.

As high levels of athleticism are a must for success in the sport, other training concepts should also be sprinkled into the exercise routine. Balance and coordination can be trained, and should be used often. Advanced concepts, such as foot-eye coordination, sports vision drills, and even strength endurance work are also useful additions to your workouts when applied with challenging progressions.

Soccer Speed Training

Just about every movement skill imaginable is needed to become a great soccer player. Although all of these skills are no doubt used during most soccer practices and clinics, there are ways that a targeted sports training program can further enhance what team coaches already focus on.

The finer points of multi-directional agility, speed and quickness skills can be honed and made more efficient with specific skill work. Cutting, sprinting, and reaction speed are all trainable skills that hard-working players can build to even higher levels with the desire to improve, and the right coaching.

Once the underlying movement techniques are refined and become automatic, these same skills can be practiced with a soccer ball to gain even more sport specificity. Adding a ball should not come during the learning stages, it is more for those who have mastered great footwork fundamentals.

Elite conditioning and stamina are also critical for top performance. Although strength training can do some good here, staying in good shape year-round will make it easier to transition to the intense conditioning demands of your competitive season.

Players should focus their conditioning work to the intensity of game conditions, and should work down to the average rest times in between bursts of intensity. Obviously there will be no set time between activity as there is in some other sports, but gradually reducing recovery times will allow soccer players to best adapt to their challenging sport needs.

Long-distance running, in our opinion, should not play a major role in getting in shape for soccer. It should be used as a light-pace recovery activity when athletes need a break from more intense interval work.

This may go against what many coaches believe, but more and more studies are proving that to play fast you must consistently train fast. Aerobic conditioning is useful only as a base to prepare your body for the appopriately challenging anaerobic demands needed in games.

Injury Prevention for Soccer

Muscle pulls can quickly turn a promising season into a frustrating one. Proper mobility in all major joints, plus a solid base of conditioning, can help lessen the odds of straining a hamstring, calf, quad or groin.

In particular, athletes should assess and correct any tightness in the hips and IT band (located on the outer part of your thighs). Lack of flexibility in these muscles can lead to weakness in those surrounding them, and also can lead to knee problems. Targeted flexibility training can correct these problems.

Ankle stability exercises can lessen the severity of potential ankle sprains while simultaneously helping ot improve balance. They are highly recommended for soccer players.

Whem combining all of the running necessary to play soccer with a sports training program, overuse problems in the lower legs are likely to spring up occasionally. Hard working players are susceptible to Achilles tendonitis, shin splints, and other lower-level injuries.

Minor stress can be relieved with soft tissue massage using tools like foam rollers and sticks. Proper cool down techniques can also help here. More serious conditions will require you to cut back on some part of your activity level, whether it be in training or sport participation. The earlier you address overuse injuries, the faster they will go away. A stubborn approach to try and work through the problem almost always leads to much more serious problems down the line.

Youth Soccer Training Considerations

This is one of the best sports a young athlete can play to help improve overall coordination and athletic ability. To further these goals, there are some sport training ideas that can add an even higher level of growth.

Plenty of movement-based games that add variety and fun to exercise would be helpful, as it will continue to add athleticism while improving fitness, too. It will also stimulate an enjoyment and desire to be active, a crucial psychological gain at this impressionable age.

More specific footwork, plus a base of strength and power development can also be very useful. Getting an early jump on proper age-level core work would be wise for the growth of young soccer players.

Additional fun yet challenging hand-eye and foot-eye coordination, balance, and vision training are also useful for younger players to round out their athletic development.

Soccer Position-Specific Concerns

Goalies have different SAQ needs in comparison to everyone else on the field. They must stress reactive quickness, particlarly lateral quickness, and more hand-eye coordination. Sports vision training is highly recommended for them, along with 1st step mechanics development.

Goalies also have less need to develop cutting and sprinting abilities, and should spend a decent percentage of their conditioning time working on the areas mentioned above.

For the other positions in soccer, the training differences are more subtle.

Forwards shoud emphasize more programmed cutting drills, and may need more sprint speed work than other positions. They also must posess great vision if they want to be solid goal scorers.

Defenders should slant towards more reactive-type agility and quick recognition training, although they still need to train straight-ahead speed.

Midfielders are best suited to train a healthy mix of reactive training, sprinting, and programmed agility. They need to be fast in the open field but must also be able to react to an opponent's sudden changes of direction without hesitation.

Soccer Game Intelligence

What if you could consistently dial up the competitive fire of your players?

What if the lines of communication between coaches and players became so clear that it caused your team chemistry to jump through the roof?

These and many more positive changes are possible. There is now a clear path to achieving them, and Power Source can guide you every step of the way.

In Massachusetts, we will become the exclusive provider of a powerful new athletic intelligence program due to be launched in the Fall of 2010.

Soccer Training at Power Source

Central Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire soccer players can train with us in any of our elite programs. We'll tailor your training specifically to target your greatest areas of strength and power needs, as well as help protect you from any potential injury risks. Check our our age 11-14 and age 15+ programs.

Our speed and agility development programs will fully prepare you to enhance all your footworks skills on the pitch, and we also have clinics to get your team in great shape while having fun at the same time.

MA and NH youth soccer teams or players will benefit from our Athlete Springboard Program, designed to focus on all the developmental needs of players in the earliest stages of athletic development.