Here’s the long-awaited second part of this excellent article on Soccer Training, taken from the premier Football-Site Champions Soccertraining.com
Soccer Strength Part II
Soccer Strength: why is it so important?
Soccer Speed, Power/Explosiveness, Agility, Quickness and Endurance. All of those are clearly very important for the sport of soccer. So how exactly do we tweak our soccer training for this? Agility training drills? Speed training drills? To improve soccer speed you gotta focus on speed drills, right? Right?!
This kind of training will only take you so far… And then what?! The answer is this: improve soccer strength.
There are several physical sectors, or characteristics, that are important for soccer training and performance. We will quickly cover each one of them here -more detail on their own seperate pages- and then dive right into our main subject : Strength for Soccer, or “Soccer Strength”.
• Strength: We have different strength-qualities, which are listed and explained below.
• Energy Sytems: These are basically the different types of fuel the body can run on, at different levels of performance. Read more…
• Energy Sytems Training: EST, or Energy Sytem Training is Soccer-Specific Endurance Training. This definitely warrants its own site, find it here…
• Prime Movers: The Prime-Movers/Prime-Biokinetic Chains are the “chains of muscle groups” that are mainly used in soccer.
For more on those…
• Speed: And finally! Speed-Work, aka Sprinting, which again is discussed in it’s very own section. All about Speed Training for Soccer…
We will briefly discuss the different strength-qualities here and then right away focus on those important for soccer. On each of the qualities we will first determine which ones are emphasized in the sport of soccer, and are thus to be prioritzed in soccer strength training. Emphasis on, say, a given strength-quality or two does not mean that others are not trained or used at all, but simply this: they are predominantly used above others. Or at least they are the desired end-result of all soccer training efforts.
Strength Qualities:
• Relative Strength: Strength relative to lean body-mass
• Power/Speed-Strength, with it’s three sub-categories: Starting-, Explosive- and Reactive-Strength(read: Plyometrics)
• Power Endurance(Speed-Strength Endurance): The ability to be powerful repeatedly and/or with incomplete rest
• Functional Hypertrophy: Muscle-mass in the right places that delivers
• Hypertrophy: Muscle-mass
• Strength Endurance: The ability to go heavy for long
• Optimal Strength: As in a additional improvement would not further increase soccer performance. At that point you focus more on speed and speed-strength
And now let’s cut to the chase: The strength-qualities emphasized/predominantly utilized in soccer are… Power, read:Speed-Strength and Power-Endurance. We will shortly go into further detail on those…
Individuality needs to be addressed. We do this by paying attention to the following:
• 1-RM/Working-Weight:You max in the major lifts and the weight you handle for each exercise
• Position: A Soccer Goalie trains QUITE different to a Soccer Midfielder
• Training-Age: A beginner does not do the same things an advanced strength trainee does
• Flexibility: Too stiff to do certain exercises? That needs to be fixed right away, and in the meantime we use alternative methods that can be used safely.
• History of Injuries/Medical Clearance/Rehab: Very important. What if the player is diabetic? Has some heart-troubles? You want to know about those. A bad lower back? An injured knee? These might require rehab first and foremost… you get the idea.
• Strength Levels: There is Optimal Strength for Soccer, which -once achieved- does not need to be improved further.
• Bodyweight: Plenty of muscle mass? Don’t want to get too heavy. Here we would concentrate more on relative strength, power and speed-work
• Obesity: Body-Fat to burn? It’s amazing how many soccer players are actually overweight and could well afford to drop some fat. This is something you preferably fix first of all. In english: if you’re fat your speed and overall soccer performance will suffer, not to mention your health
Once you have built up all the soccer strength and power you possibly could in the off- and pre-season, it’s only prudent to keep up your strength-and power-levels with professional maintenance training.
