The game of soccer demands strength and speed, as well as flexibility, balance, agility and endurance. Players typically have more speed than strength, or the other way around, so cultivating whichever skills you lack makes sense. Coupling soccer-specific strength to speed can improve your game dramatically, making it easier for you to backpedal, shuffle, dive for balls and bounce up for headers, notes Greg Gatz, University of North Carolina strength and conditioning coach, in "Complete Conditioning for Soccer."
Time Frame
Ideally you will start your training and conditioning in the off-season or the preseason. Once your league starts, practices focusing on skills as well as scrimmages and actual matches will demand much of your time. Devote three days a week to conditioning, recommends Phil Davies, the certified strength and conditioning specialist at Sports Fitness Advisor, dropping this to two days when the season starts. Space your sessions so you have one or two days of rest between each one, and allow two days of rest before a match, advises Steve Tashjian, strength and fitness coach for the professional Columbus Crew team.
Types
Davies suggests body weight exercises including push-ups, squat thrusts, lateral raises using dumbbells, crunches, jumping jacks and burpees. Add to this interval running for 20 to 30 minutes total at randomly varying paces, including sprints, slow jogs, cruises and walks. Dan Barlow, head strength and conditioning coach for the pro soccer team Real Salt Lake, endorses a weight-training program designed to increase speed and strength combined with agility training to enable crisp, abrupt direction changes on the field. Sprinting benefits forwards who in real games need to run under or toward balls flighted toward the goal with as much straight-line speed as possible.
Features
Ball work adds a skills dimension to your soccer training. Work on dribbling in tight spaces, having your team work in an area marked by cones about 20 yards square. For 60 seconds, have all of the players dribbling using turns, fakes and tricks and avoiding running in a circle. Decrease the size of the area after each 60 second period.
Considerations
Don't start your cool down immediately after running, Tashjian advises. Take a drink of water and allow your heart rate to drop for a minute. Walk around the field and then jog around the field, followed by stretching. Pay attention to your hamstring, quads, calves and lower back, holding stretches for each muscle group for 20 to 30 seconds. Perform two stretches per muscle group, Davies recommends.
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