A little extra weight can quickly feel like a lot of extra flab on the soccer field. If you are a teen soccer player, you may not run the five miles or more per game of an elite professional player. But you do match up against thin, fleet opponents who likely will have a foot-speed advantage on sprints from one end of the field to the other. Set up a strategy to lose a little extra weight quickly to complement the calorie burn built into the endless motion of soccer.
Considerations
You can mix soccer with cross-training on gym machines that don't involve running to lose a little weight, recommends AskTheTrainer.com. Try a 10-minute hill on the stationary bike followed by 10 minutes on the elliptical machine and walking up a low incline on a treadmill. Increase the difficulty each week. And play soccer at least three times a week, be it two-hour practice sessions and a 90-minute outdoor game or scrimmage or 48 minutes on an indoor team or informal pickup games in a park until you get tired. Move up to four times a week to lose weight even more quickly, as confirmed in a 2008 study, the Stanford Sports to Prevent Obesity Randomized Trial, that looked at soccer's effectiveness in increasing the fitness of overweight children.
Time Frame
To manage your weight, eat and drink throughout the day to reload your glycogen or energy stores and burn calories more efficiently, the women's soccer coaches for the University of Arizona suggest. Eat quick, easy-to-transport foods two hours before a game; the coaches suggest carrots, a bran muffin, energy bars or gels, fruit juices, yogurt, pretzels, fresh or dried fruit, trail mix or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Eat a high-carbohydrate snack within 15 to 30 minutes post-workout and a meal of carbs and protein within two hours.
Features
The Arizona coaches advise reducing calories by about 300 per day without going below 1,400 calories, and only do so if you are in the off-season. Focus especially on decreasing your fat intake by reducing dairy products, fatty cuts of meat, cakes, doughnuts, chocolate and fried food, and increasing your carbohydrate consumption. Sleep a good seven hours or more each night and avoid stress to reduce eating triggers related to fatigue and anxiety. Take multivitamins to assure essential nutrient intake, they recommend.
Expert Insight
You don't want to cut calories during the season, especially during the start of the competitive play; you risk decreasing your energy needed to perform on the soccer team and may risk your chance at team selection, notes exercise physiologist Bjorn Ekblom in "Football (Soccer)." Avoid weight-loss pills, teas or laxatives, as these can be hazardous to your sleeping patterns and overall health, advises the University of Arizona Campus Health Service.
Warning
If you coach teen girls on the soccer team, monitor them for excessive dieting, large fluctuations in weight or too much weight loss, recommends coach and Olympic Development staffer John DeWitt in "Coaching Girls' Soccer." These may indicate disordered eating behaviors such as bulimia or anorexia and indicate the player is putting too much pressure on herself to achieve a low weight.
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