Soccer players need strength in most real-game situations. Your lower body needs to be strong enough to kick, jump, tackle, twist and turn as well as provide bursts of explosive speed, notes Phil Davies, a U.K.-based certified strength and conditioning specialist, writing on his online Soccer Fitness Advisor site. Your upper body must hold off opponents, shield the ball, manage long throw-ins and contribute to overall speed. Weight training specially fashioned for your needs provides much of the needed strength.
Time Frame
Weight training for soccer players occurs in the off season, the preseason and in season. Davies recommends working in the off-season to strengthen underused muscles and balance the right and left side of the body. You especially want to restore the balance between flexor and extensor muscles. Soccer players often have overdeveloped quads from repetitive kicking, and underdeveloped hamstrings become prone to injuries. In season, your sessions may be only once or twice a week to avoid overtraining, taking off the two days before a game.
Considerations
Your strength training needs to focus on core stability, targeting the abdominal muscles, the lower back and trunk, the powerhouse for soccer players, Davies notes. As early preseason starts, work to build maximal strength in the core. In the late preseason, convert strength gains from the weight room into soccer-specific power and muscular endurance via circuit training, Davies recommends.
Types
Circuit training works well for soccer players. Go from one exercise station to the next, selecting weights at 50 percent of your maximum ability to lift for one repetition, so that you can do 15 to 25 repetitions or whatever you can complete in 30 seconds. Rest 20 to 30 seconds between sections, and two minutes between circuits. Each station needs to work a different body part, ideally alternating upper and lower body muscle groups. You can work on specialized weight machines or do push-ups, side crunches, lunges and similar exercises using your own body weight with or without free weights.
Misconceptions
Female soccer players may fear that weight training will make them bulky and unable to fit into their clothes or move quickly. Personal trainer Dave Patania writing for the Cincinnati Enquirer notes that soccer requires being fast, quick, agile, flexible and strong, and "the only way to improve and maintain those things is by hitting the weights." Strength determines who wins the game, Patania notes, and weight training will create a female form that is lean, well defined and conditioned and just as strong at the end of the game as at the beginning. Strength training also helps women avoid knee injuries, which frequently plague female athletes. He cites Mia Hamm as a female player who was both pretty and worked hard on weight training.
Expert Opinion
Strength training is the only way to dramatically improve speed, notes former Los Angeles Galaxy coach Sigi Schmid in "Complete Conditioning for Soccer." While some people assume strength training slows players down, the opposite is true if you perform the right program. The physiques of the world's fastest sprinters show the beneficial effects of weight training, he states.
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