Soccer players at the professional level always look sleek and trim. But the addition of weight-training routines has them looking even more buff, displaying defined biceps and deltoids as well as powerful quadriceps and hamstring muscles. Athletes such as LA Galaxy players Robbie Keane and Landon Donovan have the advantage of strength and conditioning coaches who provide them with individualized lifting routines. The good news is, you can duplicate their routines or perform bodyweight exercises instead if you lack access to a glitzy training room.
On the Field
Strength training helps players with kicking distance, tackling the ball and popping the upper body into an assertive header, observes sports journalist Deborah W. Crisfield in "Winning Soccer for Girls." Weightlifting is an obvious avenue to building strength in the legs, back and core, she notes, but bodyweight exercises done right on the field can provide a simple alternative. Players can modify crunches by sitting on the ground with a soccer ball between their feet and raising the ball about six inches above the ground. They can try to touch their foreheads to the ball for a total of 15 repetitions. The rocker, a modification of a core drill called the superman, involves lying on the stomach, soccer ball in the hands, bringing feet and ball off the ground and rocking forward and backward. Hill sprints can combine speed training with strengthening the quads.
At Home
You can take a different approach and perform a strength-training routine with common bodyweight exercises at home. In "Strength Training for Soccer," Ralf Meier, editor of "Sports & Fitness" magazine, describes routines including squats, pushups, calf raises, reverse crunches and twisting crunches that involve no equipment other than a mat. Collaterals build overall strength; to perform these, kneel on all fours. Raise and straighten your right arm and left leg, followed by the left arm and right leg. With the addition of a bar balanced on the backs of two chairs, you can perform pull-ups. Add dumbbells to the routine to perform the bench press.
At the Gym
Once you move to the gym, you can jump on the weight-machine circuit, increasing the resistance overcome by your muscles past that attainable by simple bodyweight exercises. Meier suggests leg extensions, leg curls, lat pulldowns, thigh squeezes on the adductors machine, seated rows and the incline bench press. The shoulders, important in nudging a player off the ball for a legal tackle or for resisting such tackles, can benefit from dumbbell flies and dumbbell lateral raises.
For Elite Players
Donovan performs strength work not only for the LA Galaxy but for the U.S. Men's National Team, under the supervision of fitness coach Pierre Barrieu. Weight work includes hang cleans, dumbbell push presses, dumbbell split jumps and dumbbell lunges. Donovan performs squats and jumps on stability pads, semi-rigid squares that add a challenge because stabilizing muscles need to engage to prevent wobbling. Donovan also does the collaterals mentioned by Meier for core strength.
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