Plyometrics Training For Soccer

Plyometrics exercises work to improve your explosive power. This technical-sound term, derived from the Greek words for "measurable increases," refers in fact to playful-looking exercises that resemble the skipping, hopping and jumping of an energetic child. Plyometric soccer training improves your sprinting ability over the first 12 yards of a run -- a critical distance in soccer that allows you to close down on the ball and beat defenders to the goal.

Considerations

Soccer athletes can train for strength and speed at the same time with plyometrics, notes youth coach Debra LaPrath in "Coaching Girls' Soccer Successfully." The training helps with sprinting, jumping, changing direction quickly and, for goalkeepers, diving to stop a shot. Conduct no more than two drills per week, ideally not on days with heavy cardio-respiratory or strength-training work. Start with two-legged movements and progress to one-legged ones, she advises.

Youth Training

For youth teams, direct the players to perform a two-legged sideways hop over a ball and two-legged hops over the front and back of the ball. Proceed to two-legged hops up bleacher steps, one-legged hops side to side and one-legged hops up the bleacher steps, LaPrath recommends. Very young players can start with a tap drill, alternating one foot and then the other on top of the ball, working up to a minute.

Advanced Training

Greg Gatz, power and conditioning coach for soccer at the University of North Carolina, notes how crucial power is to slowing down force and redirecting it in soccer. Plyometric exercises can help you land well after a jump, with feet soft, body balanced, ready to zip off in a new direction. An advanced plyometrics training program for soccer will include landing exercises and jumping up on boxes and down again, as well as over hurdles. Bounding in multiple directions and total-body medicine ball throws also develop explosive power, Gatz writes in "Complete Conditioning for Soccer." The coach recommends jumping rope, on the field or indoors in the gym, including jumping with two feet, with one foot at a time, with high knees and shuffle jumps, and shuffling the feet forward and backward.

Goalkeeper Exercises

Goalies can combine work in stopping balls with plyometric exercises. The authors of "Soccer Goalkeeper Training," Thomas Dooley and Christian Titz, describe several approaches to increasing leaping power. As coach, you can toss a ball underhanded from the side of the penalty box to the area in front of the goal where a cross would land, instructing the goalkeeper to leap powerfully to catch the ball while "owning the box," goalie-talk for patrolling the penalty area with confidence. Have another goalkeeper try to impede the drill goalie to increase the challenge level. Or set a hurdle in front of the goal and throw balls so the keeper has to jump over the hurdle from one side to the other to make the stop.