Soccer, called football outside the United States, is a popular and challenging sport. Played by school children and professional athletes alike, soccer requires a high degree of fitness and skill. Medicine balls are ideal tools for improving the numerous aspects of your fitness necessary for successful soccer. To maximize the effectiveness of medicine ball training and minimize your risk of injury, warm up thoroughly before you start your medicine ball workout.
Increased Muscular Endurance
Soccer is a sport of repeated efforts performed over a relatively long duration. This requires a good level of muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is best developed by performing high repetition exercises using light to moderate loads and utilizing short rests between sets. Medicine ball exercises such as situp throws, chest passes, lunges and squats can all help develop a high level of muscular endurance.
Improved Power
Throwing a heavy medicine ball will develop muscle power. Power is an important fitness component in soccer because players need to be able to change direction rapidly, jump high into the air to challenge for the ball and sprint rapidly. All of these aspects of soccer are tests of muscle power. Medicine ball slams, cleans and thrusters, performed with a heavy medicine ball, as well as chest passes and rotational throws, will improve your muscle power for soccer.
Better Intramuscular Coordination
Your body contains more than 600 individual muscles. While each muscle has been isolated, identified and given an individual name, playing sports requires all of the muscles of the body to work together, and soccer is no exception. Medicine ball exercises use multiple joints and therefore multiple muscle groups, which must work in synergy to lift, push, pull, throw or catch the medicine ball. Medicine ball exercises train your body to work as a single unit rather than as lots of individual parts. This means that medicine ball exercises have a much greater sports-specific carryover than strength-training machines, which tend to target muscles in isolation.
Improved Balance
Medicine ball exercises are multidimensional. Unlike resistance machines, medicine balls can move in any direction. Working out using a medicine ball will improve your balance as you have to work very hard to ensure you keep the ball directly over your base of support. Failure to do so will likely result in dropping the ball. You can further develop your balance by performing standing medicine ball exercises such as chest passes and overhead presses while stood on one leg. Improved balance will improve your ability to maintain your footing while playing soccer --- an important factor in resisting tackles and tackling others.
References
- "Training for Speed, Agility, and Quickness"; Lee E. Brown and Vance A. Ferrigno; 2005
- "Strength Ball Training (2nd Edition)"; Lorne Goldenberg and Peter Twist; 2006
- "Medicine Ball for All Training Handbook"; Patrick Mediate and Avery Faigenbaum; 2004
- "The Complete Guide to Soccer Fitness and Injury Prevention"; Donald T. Kirkendall and William E. Garrett Jr., M.D; 2007
Member Comments