September 5, 2010
Weight Training Soccer: Secret Strategies Revealed
You may not agree, but check this out. 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. For player who do not require strength and power that much can also take advantage of strong abdominal and lower back muscles.
In this article you will find the basic concept of weight training for soccer using simple techniques for applying those concepts.
One of the key principles of soccer strength training is, Specificity. The theory is to design your training sessions to match the player’s activity on the field. Like running is a good drill for runners and swimming for swimmers.
Speed is the main factor to put effort to when training, so as to develop power. A number of thing which are important while planning weight training programs are the players role in team sports, their age, physical and mental capacity to take stress, and the level at which they are to play.
All this information is useful for a trainer in designing a fitness training program, to make a good start.
Physical conditioning usually requires activities that improve specific training. Like for developing aerobic and strength and power fitness exercises, running and weight lifting are also performed by swimmers.
Injury prevention is also something which is commonly overlooked although it is an important part of weight training soccer. 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.
The movements executed in soccer are running, sprinting, turning and twisting, side-stepping, preparing for a goal. 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.
The most useful workouts are the core lifts, like squats and deadlifts for forming these muscles. The normal soccer fitness program should useful if special importance is given to these two core lifts that are crucial for leg, hip, back and abdominal strength.
You may also include a swimming program to focus added attention on the shoulders, arms and back muscles.
Strength programs normally consist of heavy loads and a small number of repetitions. You should be knowing by now that unlike other sports requiring bulk and weight soccer is a sport that requires strength with mobility, speed and stamina.
Even if primary strength, power or endurance gains are absent, developing particular muscle groups would also help to increase performance. 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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: Weight training soccer
Filed under Workouts by fitnesskahuna
September 4, 2010
A Guide To Weight Training Soccer
How about if you get to learn that Weight training soccer targets improving strength instead of just increasing muscle mass, particularly the development of muscle groups that support the joints? For this purpose special fitness training programs should be designed to let the players have some time, away from both the field and the ball to work on target muscle groups.
This will result in improved mobility and flexibility for enhanced swiftness and power.
Core: The area that is first to be targeted are the abdominals, which is usually called the core. The part of the body below the breast bone till the lowest part of the pelvis area is referred to as the “core”. This portion of the body is the origin point of power, gravity and balance in the body.
Thus the core is the center point from where all the physical action originates. A good and established abdominal core also leads to a well-balanced back, mainly the Lumbar part. As a result a better posture is developed.
Legs: The quadriceps are helpful in pumping the heart. Therefore they are the largest muscle groups of the human body and supply vast amount of blood to the heart. So, in weight training soccer walking can be useful as it helps to increase blood circulation inside the body with each step.
The hips, knees and the ankles need balanced and strong leg muscles in order to endure all the force and energy produced in hitting the ground.
Back, Chest and Neck: These areas of the body serve as a link between the “core” and the ends (legs, arms and the head). Thus these portions should never be ignored in soccer strength training, since they will strengthen with the development of the rest of the body.
Arms: For balancing the body arms are very helpful; example while jumping to head a ball or shifting directions. A powerful jump is made by throwing the arms in the air.
Plyometric: You should combine weight training with well-organized plyometric program for great results. This will create individual or teams who will show growth during the first half of the season.
The significant point is to give importance to the core as only a well-developed soccer fitness program to develop the core will certainly target these areas.
Programs: Generally, a program that is quantifiable and specific to an individual needs to be applied at the beginning of the season. The complete development of the player involves targeting specific areas of the body starting with the core and then toward each section of the body.
Finally it should be said that weight training soccer can be useful by first preparing the players; as it requires the players and the team to own the program. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society and find an answer to all questions as the site offers loads of information in form of articles, videos, and newsletters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Training
Filed under Workouts by fitnesskahuna
September 1, 2010
Weight Training Soccer: 5 Simple Steps To Getting Started
Let’s face it. If you train your team with weights there’s no reason why should not fine-tune their Weight training soccer routine as the year progresses. In case you are not giving much attention to it, you are losing lots of advantages of soccer-specific fitness.
Only a certain number of coaches’ know the correct ideology of soccer strength training. Today’s young soccer players must be “complete athletes”.
They have to be quick off the mark and have to have the upper body strength to defy challenges. They need outstanding levels of both aerobic and anaerobic stamina to last the duration. One would be destroying his players, the game and even himself if he just tells his players to lift weights like any body builder.
When we talk about such sports like body building and players whose sports involve strength, we would say that they should try to increase in size, bulk and extreme strength. They’re not very much troubled if it damages their aerobic endurance levels or even their quickness and flexibility.
One would miss out a great deal from your fitness training sessions if he/she also uses the typical 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions the entire year.
We will now see the reasons
In soccer, lower body strength is needed for kicking, jumping, tackling, twisting, and turning and also lays the foundation for great speed. Upper body strength, on the other hand, is needed for shielding the ball, and keeping the opponents off.
When it comes to weight training soccer, we can divide “strength” into three broad categories.
Absolute or Maximum Strength: It is the maximum energy that your muscle group can exert in a quick, single movement. An athlete who can do 250lbs leg press has more power than the one who can just do 200lb leg press.
This absolute strength helps to defend the ball and to keep off the opponents. Most essentially, it is the basis for muscular pace and potential.
Muscular Power: It is the outcome of both absolute strength and the speed of movement. Explosive power will be produced if one of them is enhanced while keeping the other one the same.
A large number of the magazines promote generalized weight training programs that will merely increase power. While those traditional soccer fitness programs can also be altered increasing the speed of contraction.
Strength Endurance: It is the capacity of a muscle group to make repetitive and high-intensity movements. Like power, strength endurance is also very important to soccer game.
If you are a coach you should concentrate on increasing strength endurance during your soccer routine. General weight programs are not very useful if you use the common 3 sets of 8-12 reps each.
Make a favor to yourself and put some time in improving your weight training soccer program correctly and I assure you that it will pay back 10 times in the game. You are invited to become a member of our youth soccer coaching society to gain more from the reserve of soccer resources like articles, periodic newsletters, and videos at our youth soccer coaching community.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide, visit: Soccer Drills
Filed under Workouts by fitnesskahuna
August 31, 2010
Weight Training Soccer: Uncover Conditioning Drills
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. Using this soccer fitness strategy discussed in this article, your players will have an opportunity to play soccer at higher level.
During soccer weight training the aim is to improve the strength, speed and stamina of the muscles instead of just increasing the muscle weight. For overall conditioning and strength we still continue with the upper body weight training however its significance is not as much as the leg strength.
You should start your fitness training with the legs first. You can start the warm up session with squats. After a light warm-up set, load the bar to a weight you think your players can get 20 reps with. Assuming that they are quite strong, therefore they should begin with 220 pounds. The exercise involves getting under the bar then placing it on the upper back and finally standing up with it.
Next tell them to stand having their shoulders and feet width apart. Next they move downwards keeping hold of the bar up until their hips are just below the upper part of their knees. When they reach this level in weight training soccer, they should stand up quickly and exhale. 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. Your players will be doing 4 sets of 15 reps each. During each set of Leg Curls, Stiff-Legged Dead lift should be performed with 4 sets of 15 reps. As player’s speed is greatly improves by strong hamstrings, so they should be very tough.
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.
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. Players should do this with their palms facing their body to work their biceps as well as the back. The last phase of upper body exercises is to concentrate on the abdominals and leg raises of about 5 sets of 20 or more repetitions. Conclude with 5 sets of 50 or more crunching exercises.
In conclusion, weight training soccer is only a small part of the overall training necessary to develop great soccer players. You are welcomed to our youth soccer coaching community coming up more information about various weight training exercises relevant to the game of soccer; it also has videos, articles, pod casts, and newsletters available for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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 training fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Youth Soccer Drills
Filed under Workouts by fitnesskahuna
August 13, 2010
Want To Know The Soccer Coaching Philosophy
Here’s a really simple way to remember some of the key soccer coaching factors that are required in determining your team philosophy and run with it. This philosophy can be applied to your youth team with relative ease as it is easier than you think.
The elements which are essential for an effective youth coaching philosophy are 6; parents, coaches, excitement, selection, time, and success windows.
Regular communication with Parents: When it comes to soccer training, parental influence is the key influence in the mental and physical well being of your players, especially on the day of the match. “Parental responsibilities”, the brochure supplied when the term starts is not sufficient. Arrange for regular meetings with them so that the key points can be repeated and concerns shared.
Developing soccer coaches: Training of soccer coaches should be an integral part of your philosophy instead of targeting the players. You may try if one of your kid’s parents can become a soccer coach? They would be most suitable and a great option for the future.
Selection: Players with great soccer skills drop out mainly due to non-selection. Studies show that players would rather get selected for a bad team out of the fear of getting rejected for a good team. Therefore, use a logical selection system which gives all players equal game time.
Time: Start the session on time and tell the parents to be on time as well. When the start times and finish times are clearly defined, you can execute the session very well.
Excitement: Is it necessary that every soccer coaching session should be fun? Try to make every session an enjoyable one but also remember that you cannot do it all the time. Therefore, go for a positive attitude as an alternative.
While training the kids, it is natural for every coach to run out of ideas on how to make practice drills exciting and enjoyable. Hence, the biggest challenge is to be so good with your thinking that you can come up with several great ideas to make drills fun for kids.
In soccer drills, it makes sense to keep escalating the difficulty aspect so that kids get skilled. The best way of doing this is to get started with a game, look for a problem, and then rectify it with a drill.
Success windows: Try and include a success window for the season as a vital part of your training sessions. This necessitates for you to determine a lower limit and an upper limit of time with a view to measure the level of success that needs to be achieved.
For example; time frame of minimum four and maximum eight weeks. This can be achieved for both the team members and the individual members.
Do good and adopt a soccer coaching philosophy like this become a part of the development phase of your kid’s training once the basics have been covered. If you would like more such knowledge and resources, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community.
Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Coaching Drills.
Filed under Muscle Building and Toning by fitnessguru
July 24, 2010
Want To Know The Soccer Coaching Philosophy
Here’s a really simple way to remember some of the key soccer coaching factors that are required in determining your team philosophy and run with it. This philosophy can be applied to your youth team with relative ease as it is easier than you think.
The elements which are essential for an effective youth coaching philosophy are 6; parents, coaches, excitement, selection, time, and success windows.
Regular communication with Parents: When it comes to soccer training, parental influence is the key influence in the mental and physical well being of your players, especially on the day of the match. “Parental responsibilities”, the brochure supplied when the term starts is not sufficient. Arrange for regular meetings with them so that the key points can be repeated and concerns shared.
Developing soccer coaches: Training of soccer coaches should be an integral part of your philosophy instead of targeting the players. You may try if one of your kid’s parents can become a soccer coach? They would be most suitable and a great option for the future.
Selection: Players with great soccer skills drop out mainly due to non-selection. Studies show that players would rather get selected for a bad team out of the fear of getting rejected for a good team. Therefore, use a logical selection system which gives all players equal game time.
Time: Start the session on time and tell the parents to be on time as well. When the start times and finish times are clearly defined, you can execute the session very well.
Excitement: Is it necessary that every soccer coaching session should be fun? Try to make every session an enjoyable one but also remember that you cannot do it all the time. Therefore, go for a positive attitude as an alternative.
While training the kids, it is natural for every coach to run out of ideas on how to make practice drills exciting and enjoyable. Hence, the biggest challenge is to be so good with your thinking that you can come up with several great ideas to make drills fun for kids.
In soccer drills, it makes sense to keep escalating the difficulty aspect so that kids get skilled. The best way of doing this is to get started with a game, look for a problem, and then rectify it with a drill.
Success windows: Try and include a success window for the season as a vital part of your training sessions. This necessitates for you to determine a lower limit and an upper limit of time with a view to measure the level of success that needs to be achieved.
For example; time frame of minimum four and maximum eight weeks. This can be achieved for both the team members and the individual members.
Do good and adopt a soccer coaching philosophy like this become a part of the development phase of your kid’s training once the basics have been covered. If you would like more such knowledge and resources, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community.
Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Coaching Drills.
Filed under Muscle Building and Toning by fitnessguru
July 21, 2010
Want To Learn About Soccer Coaching
You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that soccer coaching requires many different traits in a coach. You need patience, determination, humility, and desire to learn more, the ability to lead your team etc in order to successfully coach soccer. You will also require finding out new techniques to transit your players from one stage to another.
Being a soccer coach means being a leader. I would like to share with you some vital elements in soccer training. Good coaching does not mean training young players like the professionals. It means that their training should be according to their age. It translates into long term success both on and off the field and doing it positively.
This article contains valuable tips on helping your kids learn soccer in the best possible manner. What follows is a list of criteria that acts as a key to coaching soccer.
It does not mean that a better knowledge of soccer automatically translates into a better coach. It just makes him or her good soccer technician. At the same time, it is imperative that you have adequate knowledge to be a great soccer coach. If you have no knowledge of the game, it is not possible that you will be able to teach the required soccer skills.
One key attribute of a coach is the ability to teach. If you possess the knowledge but cannot transform that knowledge into concrete action for the players, then it will be of no use.
Just because a team is victorious all the time does not imply that the coach is a genius. The team could already be filled with star players that are exceptionally gifted, so this team could be winning despite your coaching.
The ability to inspire the players is of vital importance if you wish to be a good coach. To talk of soccer coaching, you are supposed to have great soccer abilities, sound physical shape, and mental alertness.
Now and then, you will feel weak and find it hard to win games. As an example, there is dearth of skilled players in the team. But its not your responsibility. Through patience, your knowledge of the game, and your ability to teach by way of essential soccer drills, the soccer team that you inherited is bound to get better.
Understand that soccer is a game and everybody has hopes of winning. But if you are patient, you will be able to help your team to become better skilled.
If any of this is missing, your team will weaken in its ability to win games. It may occur that your team does not have the focus of mind needed to win.
Think again, good soccer coaching is more than just winning. The description of a coach is someone who is in charge of a player or a team. If you join our youth soccer the coaching community has huge number of articles, videos and other multimedia publications across the spectrum of soccer coaching.
Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Soccer coaching.
Filed under Muscle Building and Toning by fitnessguru