At the recreational level, you are likely to play soccer only once or twice a week to get and stay in shape. Once you try competitive, college, professional or semi-pro soccer, you need to devote one to two hours a day to a get-in-shape workout plan to be ready for the start of the season. A typical exercise plan, such as one the trainer gives college players two months before the start of the season, devotes each day to a specialized part of the workout. Don't forget to take a rest day after any day you actually play a game.
Lower Body Strength
Two nonconsecutive days a week -- Monday and Friday or Sunday and Wednesday, for example -- can involve strength training. Greg Gatz, strength and conditioning coach for the soccer team at the University of North Carolina, recommends devoting one day of strength work to lower-body strength and another to total-body and power training. The lower-body day can include single-leg squats, medicine ball lunges, dumbbell squats, squat jumps and single-leg hops if you have access to the weight room. In "Complete Conditioning for Soccer," Gatz also describes a field alternative to the weight room for lower-body resistance training, including body-weight squats and lunges.
Total Body Strength
You can head to the weight room on your second day of strength training for dumbbell high pulls, dumbbell squats, medical balls squats, and throws and core training, such as medicine ball seated twists to build your core. For a field alternative, try power pushups where you pull your hands briefly off the ground for each pushup; "ice skaters," a series of lateral bounds that look like a racing ice skater; and 90-degree leg raises while lying on your side on the ground.
Cardiovascular Fitness
On a different day, such as Tuesday if you have a game on Saturday, you can focus on conditioning. This doesn't have to be a long session, but it will burn your lungs. Run 60-yard sprints at 80 percent of your maximum speed, with 25-second rests between sets. Take a two-minute rest, Gatz advises, and then run the perimeter of the field twice, with a three-minute rest between sets. Follow with a recovery that mainly involves stretching.
Agility
The final component of your daily exercise plan should be acceleration and agility, slotted to take up two days a week, such as Wednesday and Friday if you have a Saturday match. Fast-step through an agility ladder or plastic practice disks set up to simulate hopscotch squares. Try hopscotch footwork patterns and varying patterns of one or two steps in or outside the squares. Go backward and diagonally through the squares as well as forward. Work on acceleration in an area marked by sticks laid on the ground to indicate a 20-yard distance. Side shuffle three steps, turn and accelerate to complete the sprint to the far stick. Follow with diagonal shuffles forward and diagonal shuffles backward followed by a sprint to the "finish line."
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