If you're looking to excel at soccer, building muscle size and strength is an obvious goal. While there are many exercises soccer players use to improve muscular speed, quickness, agility and endurance, strength, or resistance, training is the most effective way to build your leg muscles. Strength programs that use heavier weights and fewer repetitions will help you to build muscle you can train later for top performance on the soccer field.
5 X 5
For decades, the Reg Parks 5 X 5 workout has been a popular program for building muscles. The concept is simple--five repetitions and five sets. Start with one warmup set using 60 percent of your maximal weight, then one set at 80 percent. Finish the workout with three sets using your maximum weight.
Lower-Body Program
To increase the size of your legs, hips and buttocks, use specific exercises to target the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and hip flexors. A program of these exercises would include squats and their different variations, lunges, deadlifts, leg presses, calf raises and hamstrings curls.
Depending on your strength, you can use free weights, weight machines, dumbbells or resistance bands. Weight lifting damages muscle, which then grows bigger after it recovers and repairs itself. Make sure you don't do the same exercises every day in order to give your muscles the important recovery and regeneration periods they need.
Core Program
The core muscles are used in almost all sports, including soccer, which requires many twisting, turning, lateral movements. Include core training in your strength training for soccer. Use sit-ups and the many variations of crunches, such as bicycle crunches and oblique crunches. The Russian Twist is a popular abdominal exercise, and has you moving upward and sideways. You can work your core muscles lying on your stomach or facing downward using a variety of exercises. Add an ab roller and an exercise ball to your program. An exercise ball creates an unstable platform and makes you use more muscle contractions as you try to balance yourself.
Seasonal Programs
You'll want to make your training more specific to your games as you get closer to your season. This means you won't be doing heavy resistance training that uses low-twitch muscle fibers during your season. Use strength workout programs during the offseason. In the pre-season, switch to circuit training workouts that use lighter weights and more repetitions. For a circuit training workout, you'll use 50 percent or less of your maximal weight and perform eight to 12 reps. You'll be training primarily muscular endurance, but the weights will add some muscle building. During your season, you'll want to move away from muscle building and focus on training explosive and reactive muscle power.
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