You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that [2] weight training soccer is a major part of sports training these days as it creates stronger and faster muscles. The program of soccer fitness talked about in this article will aid you make your players ready for playing soccer at an advanced 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. 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. Start with squats. When you are done with this warm up activity players are supposed to do 20 reps, so bar to be loaded should be according to their capacity. 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.

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. When they reach this level in weight training soccer, they should stand up quickly and exhale. The players must be encouraged to continue even when they are worn-out till they do 20 reps.

[3] Soccer Fitness

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. 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.

After completing 3 sets of 25 reps on the Standing calf-raise machine your leg exercises will be over.

Start the upper body workout with the Incline bench press.
Now when the they are warmed up they must go on by including enough weights so that the next set of 10 reps is harder to do. 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.

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 final part of the upper body work out involves working on abdominals and doing 5 sets of 20 or more reps of leg raises. The final exercise is sit-ups, complete 5 sets of 50 or more.

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. 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.

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: [4] Soccer Practice.