Weight Training Soccer: Discover 4 Stages

To train the players to increase strength, power and muscular durability, use weight training soccer, specifically in the case when you have narrow timelines.

Extensive soccer fitness trainings can lead to players being fatigued.

Here's an example of how you can break a strength training program, into a few convenient phases, each lasting between 4 and 12 weeks.

At top is the off-season phase to enhance the efficiency and power: same as other games, soccer too requires consuming body power. The idea of this phase is to train the muscles to prepare the joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons for more severe work in subsequent phases. Another focus area is to develop power in the less used muscles.

Most of the time should be dedicated to stabilize the core part of the body and stamina. Abdominal muscles, lower back and trunk are the focus of power thus named as core. Every stopping, starting, twisting, and turning movement is supported by your core. The core acts against the shocks and stress, providing your body to act evenly in any circumstances.

All the other phases of soccer strength training program depend upon this phase. This part clearly defines the performance in the following phases. Keeping in mind that avoiding this part of drill, may lead to serious injuries in players.

This part of training, enables players to strengthen themselves in order to enter to the next phase. In weight training soccer, part of training ends with different result sets amongst player.

Utmost power is proportional to remaining parts. The weight that players lift during this phase, is comparatively more than the other phases, but the players have tendency to lift weight less than their full capacity.

This phase should focus to incorporate as much power as possible. Since power is our overall outcome, it makes a lot of sense to build up strength first and then translate it into soccer-specific power.

Late pre-season focusing on muscular power and strength endurance: Now that you've prepared your team physically and have built a solid strength base, it's time to reap the rewards of all your efforts. The objective of this fitness training is to convert the team's strengths into soccer-specific power and muscular endurance.

In-Season to maintain all that's been learnt: To develop balanced players, you have to accept that you'll lose a small amount of strength to develop more competitive types of strength. In the end however it makes quality players.

The in-season period requires you to preserve the advances you've made during a demanding pre-season period without pressurizing your players.

It’s very simple! Have a completive game and assess all your other training sessions with it. This is the best method for weight training soccer and all the other trainings can be based around it. You should consider joining our youth soccer coaching society for more information on conditioning programs which has a mass of material and resources on youth soccer.

Andre Botelho is an expert in Weight training soccer. He influences over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his coaching philosophy, and makes it easy to explode your players' skills and make training fun in record time. Download your free Soccer Fitness guide at: Soccer Practice.