Bands versus Weight Training for Explosiveness in Soccer
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.
Why Do Some Soccer Players Have Valgus Collapse (aka X Legs) and Some Ways To Fix It
I’m obsessed with how people and soccer players move 👣.
If you look at the top players in the world there is a durability to them. It’s hard to improve if you’re always injured. I wouldn’t know nothing about that 👀.
Yeah a lot of it comes down to favorable genetics or playing barefoot as a kid, but we must take control of what we can and it’s never too late for an upgrade.
Knee Pain from Playing Soccer? Get some quick relief
Playing soccer giving you knee pain? Is it pain on the outside of your knee? Been there, done that, still dealing with that.
Why one gets lateral knee pain can come from a multitude of factors - could be one wrong step, excess body weight or fat, playing on rock solid shitty turf, faulty movement patterns, lack of hip internal rotation and/or crap ankle mobility (videos on that soon), too much of the same movement pattern, etc. and likely a combination of a few.
This article is not the complete solution to a complex problem, but a quick routine and some ideas that should bring your knees some relief.
With lateral knee pain there is often tightness along that side of the body that seems to create compression forces in the knee leading to some grumpy menisici. I mean it was even proven in at least one scientific study by Bozkurt et al., 2004 called The Influence of Lateral Tightness on Lateral Knee Pain
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.
Develop Soccer Speed by Training the Often Neglected Hip Flexors
Soccer players around the world are starting to understand the value of strength training for injury prevention and improving their performance. Everyone seems to be doing some sort of squat, whether it is on one leg or two, and some hamstring work such as Nordics. However, one of the most important muscles to train for soccer players who want to reduce the risk of injuries and run faster are the hip flexors.
A Powerful Way To Prevent Muscle Injuries in Soccer
Getting injured sucks. For many soccer players it seems as if life consists of being sidelined with one injury, returning to play, and shortly thereafter picking up another injury. What can we do to prevent soccer players from getting injured so often?
That is a complicated question that comes down to several factors. Genetics, biomechanics from pre-natal development/inherited structure, lifestyle factors such as narrow shoes or prolonged sitting, hydration status, training volume, weakness, tightness, etc. While I will cover all of those in the book The Ultimate Soccer Body, in this post I go over a two principles and one powerful stretch that incorporates them to give you a huge bang for your buck.
Should Soccer Players Try To Get Bigger Muscles Like Leon Goretza?
While Goretzka looks like he packed on pure muscle, Coutinho looks (especially in the face) like he put on some muscle and some body fat. Nonetheless, he still moved very well and performed on the pitch in the games he came on. I doubt he put on more than 5-10lbs or 2-5kg and for a small guy with low center of gravity who is already explosive and has amazing command of the ball and his body, it is not much. I do wonder had he not come on as a substitute and played the full match how well he would have lasted since carrying around more weight is less efficient.
How To Last The Full 90 Minutes of a Soccer Game Without Getting Tired
Well known throughout coaching circles and backed by studies, most goals are scored or conceded towards the end of each half. This is especially true towards the end of the game from the 75th minute onwards. That is when players are most fatigued, tactics change abruptly, and chaos ensues. In the chart below we see from arguably the top 5 leagues in the world from 2017/2018 season, most goals were scored in the last 15 minutes of play with Spain’s La Liga having the highest number of goals scored in the last 15 minutes (24.4%).
Thierry Henry Never Lifted Weights But You Should: Strength and Conditioning For Footballer Soccer Players
Living in Europe for the last two years has dispelled any misconceptions I had or had heard about European professional soccer players not engage in weight training and strength and conditioning. They definitely do and even use some Olympic weight-lifting. However, depending on the trainer, it can go from circus acts using bosu balls, heavy emphasis on back squats and deadlifting (rare as soccer players do not typically like heavy loads on their spine), to things in between. I used to be a big proponent of heavy ass-to-grass back squats and deadlifts, but I have learned the hard way that the cost (back injury) is high and there are smarter and better ways to load the legs.
Is Jogging or Running Cross-Country Good Training For Soccer Players?
20 Ways To Improve Your Soccer Skills and Athleticism On Your Own
With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, naturally fitness people and soccer players/trainers are talking about training on their own, or at home. While individual training has grown with certain Instagram soccer celebrities who do a good job promoting themselves and their skills, many soccer players who usually rely on their team practice to improve are now scratching their heads about what to do. Hopefully this article inspires you and gives you some ideas to do on your own so when you return to your team, you turn some heads with your great form.
Strength Exercises To Improve Change of Direction for Soccer Players
Changing direction in soccer has several requirements depending on if you are attacking or defending. For example, to change directions well while dribbling the ball (who does it better than Messi?), you better have some command over the soccer ball otherwise it will run away from you. When making runs to get open, changing direction well requires the ability to read the game and anticipate where the ball will be played or how the defense will react. Defensively, changing direction to shut down a dribbler or follow a runner depends on the ability to detect the opponent’s body shape and react to that stimulus. However, none of those things help if your legs do not have the ability to cut explosively in and out of positions.
Are you an Anti-Fragile Soccer Player?
If we take the 3 examples from above: glass, diamond, and bone, we can examine the concept of anti-fragility a little closer. Glass will break if it is dropped, thus, it is fragile. Diamond is nearly unbreakable, but doesn’t get any better from stress and therefore doesn’t care, so it is deemed robust. Human bone on the other hand, gets stronger from the right amount of stress and in fact, needs it, otherwise it atrophies leading to problems such as osteoporosis.
Improving The 30 Meter Sprint And Why It Is Important For Soccer Players
When it comes to assessing how fast an athlete is, in the American football world it is all about the 40 yard dash. Since the rest of the world doesn’t base things on yards and instead uses meters, enter the 30 meter sprint. The 30 meter sprint is actually 32.8 yards, so it is a bit shorter than a 40 yard dash. Track coaches like the flying 10m and flying 30m as well because most events in track and field are won by the athlete with the best top speed or peak velocity, not the athlete with the most explosive start .However, in soccer, we rarely reach our top speeds and most of the time the ability to accelerate well over shorter distances is what will determine success. That is not to say i don’t believe soccer players should not train their top speed- I definitely do and think every soccer player should include top speed sprinting to train the hip flexors, hamstrings, and develop overall athleticism and coordination. Plus, rarely will someone have great top speed and a poor start anyways. But, starting speed is much more trainable and again, more relevant in the sport of soccer. To get even more specific, in soccer we often sprint on a curve and have to do it relative to the context of the match such as the other 21 players and the ball. I am all for including curved sprints and all the like, but if you’re not fast in a straight line then you won’t be very fast on a curve. Furthermore, we are talking about something that all kids and competitors like- an objective way to measure performance.
Overtraining Syndrome Can Sabotage Performance
For athletes, the concept of overtraining might seem odd. You understand a high training load is needed to adapt and get better (known as “supercompensation”). However, too high of a training load with too little recovery is a poor way to achieve proper gains. Recovery is when the actual training adaptations occur, not during the training session. In fact, sometimes overtraining may not even be evidence of training too much, but recovering too little.
Developing Athleticism For The Soccer Pitch: Interview with Track and Bobsled Olympian Craig Pickering
If soccer players want to run quickly, then they need to be producing a lot of force against the ground. There are two ways to do this; firstly, we can produce this force via our muscles when our foot is on the floor, or, secondly, we can have our foot moving at a very high speed once it hits the floor. For elite sprinters, it is, of course, a combination of the two. So, ideally, you want to have a large range of motion in which to accelerate the foot towards to ground (requiring good front side mechanics); you want to be able to accelerate the foot downwards (requiring good hip extensor strength); you want to contact the ground in the optimal position (requiring good sprint mechanics), you want to be able to absorb and reuse much of the force you apply (requiring good foot and ankle stiffness), and you want to be able to produce force quickly (requiring an optimal level of strength and power).
Realities of Speed: Interview with Track Coach Hakan Andersson
Team players gets a lot of acceleration, start&stop and change of direction stimuli in the team practice in general… small sided games in particular. The problem though that it develops a rather restricted movement patterns and poor sprinting mechanics. You often see 12-year-old soccer players moving better than 22-year-olds. Fore obvious reasons, I suggest some time is spent doing linear sprinting of various lengths and intensities at all ages.
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.