strength training for soccer

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A Powerful Way To Prevent Muscle Injuries in Soccer

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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.

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Thierry Henry Never Lifted Weights But You Should: Strength and Conditioning For Footballer Soccer Players

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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.

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Developing Athleticism For The Soccer Pitch: Interview with Track and Bobsled Olympian Craig Pickering

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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).

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Realities of Speed: Interview with Track Coach Hakan Andersson

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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.