While just playing the game of soccer sharpens your cardiovascular system and creates overall fitness and agility, a separate workout sees to the missing piece of the puzzle: your overall muscular strength. You need more than just trotting along the field to increase strength, which is dependent on exercises that provide resistance greater than everyday running to build the muscle fibers. A good workout for the day to get in shape for soccer doesn't have to be arduous. Professional players such as striker Robbie Keane of the LA Galaxy find time for lighthearted tricks such as neck stalls along with the serious work of strength training.
Legs
Your legs are vital to running, kicking, jumping, tackling and passing, notes Sam Snow, director of coaching education for US Youth Soccer. He recommends a leg circuit including leg presses, toe and heel raises, leg curls and leg extensions. Set weights at a level that enables you to complete 10 repetitions with effort. Or calculate your one-repetition maximum and aim for 50 to 75 percent of this weight. Adapt your circuit to whatever machines are available, Snow recommends.
Core
Your core provides your body's transmission, so to speak, for the changes of speed and direction so essential to soccer. You can do regular situps or more challenging ones on a slant board with a weight held behind your head. Add Roman chair knee-ups, grasping the handles of the elevated chair and raising your legs using your quad muscles as well as your core. Include trunk curls, lying on a mat with your feet flat on the floor and knees bent, contracting your upper ab muscles as you curl your head, neck and upper back up and then relax down again.
Upper Body
A strong upper body enables you to propel yourself for maximum height on jumps, as well as gain distance for throw-ins and fend off challengers trying to nudge you off the ball. The bench press, military press, biceps curls, triceps extensions and lats pull provide you with ways to strengthen muscles of the arms, shoulders and upper back. Dips provide a challenge to the upper body. When you are starting out, use an assisted dip machine -- which adds counterweights so you may dip less than your full bodyweight -- for greater ease than doing regular dips.
Timing
Three strength-building workouts a week work well in your offseason and preseason. These can taper to two sessions during the competition phase of your season. Avoid scheduling strength workouts two days in a row and avoid rest periods between workouts of 96 hours or more, as significant detraining of your hard-won strength may occur.
Goalkeeper Workout
Goalkeepers can follow the general workout for field players or focus especially on pushups to garner needed upper-body strength. Try 20 pushups on the ground and five on the ball, working up to three sets of 15 on the ground and five sets of five on the ball over time.
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