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. The soccer fitness plan discussed in this article will help you prepare your players for playing soccer at a higher level.
The new theory of soccer weight training is to have strong and fast muscles with higher stamina rather that to keep on adding pounds of muscle bulk. Upper body weight training for soccer is not as important as is for the legs, but we still do it for overall conditioning and strength.
You should start your fitness training with the legs first. Begin with the squatting exercises. Now place the bar with which your players can make 20 reps. Considering that they have good strength, hence give them 220 pounds to start with. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.
They should then get out of the stands and stand with their feet and shoulder width apart. After that they must lower their body while holding on to the bar till their hips are a little bit below the top of their knee. At this point in weight training soccer, players should quickly rise to the full standing position and exhale. The players must be encouraged to continue even when they are worn-out till they do 20 reps.
They should be given a break of 5-10 minutes before switching to the leg curl machine to work on hamstrings. Your players will be doing 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. Hamstrings are vital for players speed, thus we would want them to be strong enough.
Finish the leg workouts on Standing calf-raise machine and doing 3 sets of 25 reps
Now for the upper body work out begin with the Incline bench press.
When they are done with the warm ups, they should continue with extra weights so that the next set of 10 reps becomes tougher. The players must repeat the 5 sets 10 times with weights, while stretching their chest and shoulders and at the end of each set stop and relax for 2 minutes.
Now we move to the second workout of this session of soccer strength training which are the pull-up exercises. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. The last part of the upper body portion of this workout is to work out the abdominals and 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises would do well. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.
We would say in the end that to make quality players of soccer, weight training soccer is only a small fragment of the entire training program. 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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Tags: fitness training, soccer fitness, soccer strength training, Weight training soccer