In soccer, speed and agility in part come down to producing high levels of force relative to one's body weight in a short amount of time, applied in a specific vector.
Can bands replace weight training? I wouldn’t look at it that way, both have their place and are effective tools. Weight training is a great way to improve strength and power, but bands offer an alternative way to train movements with speeds closer to what we encounter on the pitch. With weights, you can measure exactly how much load is being used, while bands are a bit harder to quantify. Weights are generally loading against gravity, while bands can be used to load horizontally. In a sport like soccer, this is huge since we must stop and go frequently and the direction of force is horizontal.
Many injuries occur during the deceleration phase of movement such as cutting and/or landing. Bands can also be used to increase the speed at which we must absorb force in the horizontal plane and build internal tolerance to those forces.
I’d say that bands are a great supplement to weight training when you really want to transfer the strength into more explosive and specific soccer movements. In the video below, I present some examples of exercises that contain movements we do while playing soccer that can be loaded with bands. There are ways to progress and regress each exercise and plenty of exercises not show.
If you want to boost your soccer-related athleticism, get in touch about a customized training program. Here are results after one month from Chip, the Father of online client Ella:
"She is clearly stronger and her balance has improved. She had her second cross country meet on Tuesday and her form has improved markedly. Even at the end of the race, her feet weren’t turning out and her knees weren’t turning in - great alignment. And the best part is that she said she “wasn’t thinking about it, just doing it”!
In soccer, she took a free-kick last night from the edge of the center circle and hit the top corner of the crossbar and post. The ball bounced straight into the middle of the 6 yard box, and another girl finished it. Before starting this program she would have had to loft the ball in to get that kind of distance, but she smashed the ball with all 85 pounds that she has. While her power was a big part of that, her balance has also helped her transfer more power to the ball.”
