The dynamic warm up and injury prevention exercises only require 70% effort. That passing exercise before possession doesn’t require your full focus and attention. Just run kinda hard and speed up the time between your touches a little bit more when your coach asks for game speed. No. No. And no. A good coach should know when to tailor training for more relaxed efforts and will tell you. Otherwise, players should be switched on, especially at the start of a training session. Unless you are learning a brand-new skill where slowing down is important, training should involve speeds and pressures similar to what we encounter in a match. Even that passing exercise you’ve done 10 million times.
Soccer Performance Through a Holistic Lens: Interview with Erica Suter
Deadlifts are the movement I call the "ACL reduction powerhouse." They are so great for not just the hamstrings and glutes, but the entirety of the trunk, and ensuring it has the stability, as well strength to handle high amounts load so the lower extremity joints are also stable (knee and ankles). I am also a huge fan of Single Leg RDLs, Pistol Squats, and Lunge variations for single-leg strength as well as trunk stability.
Sh*t Soccer Girls Say: An Interview with SoccerGrlProbs
Carly Beyar, Alanna Locast and Shannon Fay from Soccergrlprobs are blowing up on Instagram with their hilarious posts and empowering content (I mean, their tagline is “Empowering Ladyballers, Daily”). They are former Division 1 College Soccer teammates, and they know what it takes to succeed in soccer and those same characteristics of hard work, passion, and teamwork are paying off for them as they continue to grow. They were cool enough to answer some questions below.
Moving Meditation for Soccer Performance: 4 Simple Techniques
Sometimes caring a lot about playing well in our upcoming soccer game can lead to worse performance if we don’t find a way to stay calm and relaxed. Mental tightness in the form of fear and anxiety can lead to increased injuries and cause us to move with less efficiency on the field. In turn, we end up not playing as well, wasting energy, and the paradox of wanting something (good performance) causing us to not get it prevails.
A Love Letter To The Game of Soccer
Below you will find a love letter written by one of my childhood and best friends, Itzik Rapaport. It is a love letter to the game of soccer. He runs a soccer league in Los Angeles called Directkix, and also hosts Sunday afternoon/evening pick up games for youth players at Calabasas High School where kids can play with no coaches, parents, or anyone telling them what to do. . Pick up, the secret method of development that worked wonders for Zinedine Zidane, Maradona, and countless other amazing soccer players throughout the generations. We need more of it.
Is Jogging or Running Cross-Country Good Training For Soccer Players?
Repetition is No Longer Enough: Improve Your Soccer Performance Even Faster With Differential Learning
Differential Learning (difference- differential…I feel like Sherlock Holmes), which is a training theory in part owed to FC Barcelona, Thomas Tuhel (PSG coach), and Jurgen Klopp’s success. If repetition is the mother of skill, differential learning is your college professor. Developed by Professor Wolfgang Schöllhorn from Mainz University, “differential learning” also contends that players do not learn by repetition, but by making adjustments to their technique to solve new problems. Part of the effectiveness of Differential Learning is that it simply makes things harder. Shooting the ball with your arms grasped behind your back will throw you off balance and require other muscles to function in new ways.
6 Simple Ways to Become a Tougher Soccer Player And Stand Out
A lot of the greatest soccer players are not just skillful and athletic, but they have strong minds and bodies that are resistant to fatigue, quitting, and settling for anything less than their best. They don’t just handle the pressure, the live for it. But what if we are not naturally tough, can we make ourselves tougher? Absolutely. In the last article called “Stop Being a Pussy: Real Talk On Developing Toughness” we took a deep dive into toughness, one of my favorite topics. In this article I will give you some things you can do starting TODAY to get the process going. They are not fun in the short term, but on the
"Stop Being A Pussy": Real Talk On Developing Toughness
Don’t mistake me with Freud or any other trained psychologist, but I think its safe to assume that people’s past experiences shape their reactions to similar experiences in the future. A simple example is a player who decides they don’t like soccer anymore because the parent or a coach was overly critical. The negative experiences create an avoidance behavior. Some of these issues can creep up again later in life when we least expect them.