Do you feel a lot of pressure in soccer?  I sure as hell did. And guess what, I still do, but I'd like to think I  manage it a lot better than I used to.  These days I both coach and play, and the pressure felt between the two is very different, but there nonetheless. 

Going from soccer player to soccer coach has taught me so much about the game. Stepping back from the mentality of "how am I playing and impacting the game" as an individual to looking at team trends and concepts has been challenging and is affirming why my previous coaches who were successful spent so much time emphasizing certain things. While there are many, here are 4 things that are so important for winning soccer.  

Alfredo Di Stefano was an Argentina-born player who won eight Spanish league titles and was voted European player of the year in 1957 and 1959.  He left Real in 1964 at the age of 38, having scored more than 300 goals across 11 seasons. This is before Pele, before Cruyff, and before Maradona. Definitely before Ronaldo and Messi.

The Total Soccer Player was recently featured on Stack Magazine covering this very topic. Check out the article HERE. 

Coming up with soccer drills to do on your own requires creativity. Actually doing them takes desire and dedication to become the best soccer player possible.  How bad do you freaking want it???  It is not easy being out there alone sometimes, and but trust that in that hard work is where the real growth occurs.

In youth soccer there are many opinions and stances taken about soccer "development" versus winning at all costs.  When a coach or parent places an emphasis on winning, they risk sounding like egotistical assholes and are immediately put into the category of people who dismiss playing beautiful soccer.

If your life consists of cheap dinners, lying around on the couch, over technologized,  interrupted sleep, and an excessive school or work burden - your soccer performance will reflect this. If you eat healthy foods, get ample sunshine and movement, deep and plentiful sleep, have solid relationships, and a more moderate set of school and work burdens – your soccer will reflect this. Recovery techniques are simply choices we make in our life that will give us a greater chance for soccer success.

 Playing to the correct foot allows the player receiving the ball to play forward if they have space and keep possession if they are under pressure. By playing the wrong foot it slows the game down when it shouldn't.  Playing to the correct foot can mean the difference between a striker turning and going to goal or losing the ball to an aggressive defender.   Here are examples of playing to the correct foot

Below is a short presentation I made on leg training for athletes. The slides go over topics such as squats versus leg presses in terms of safety and muscle activation, different types of squats such as back squats versus front squats, leg presses versus squats, and whether we should back squat at all and also how low people can and should squat based on their hip structure. 

Leg strength is a prerequisite for acceleration fast and jumping high off of two legs. I think all soccer players should have a good understanding of how to train to get stronger legs in a safe way that suits them as individuals. This slideshow and the links provided in it will help with that. 

Like the fitness industry, more and more these days I see soccer trainers and coaches claiming to have the soccer training method that cuts the corners and produces amazing results in half the time. Marketed as "1000's of touches per session!" and using fancy names or special equipment, when I see these phrases I immediately think RED FLAG.  More than red flag, I think someone wants us to buy some of their shit. There is nothing wrong with selling something of value to make profit while helping others, but what are we selling? New gimmicky technology? Slick taglines and catch phrases? False hopes? Or is there really a magic sauce to soccer training? 

 From the Wikipedia: "Over 24 million Americans play soccer as of 2006. There are 4.2 million players (2.5 million men and 1.7 million women) registered with U.S. Soccer. Thirty percent of American households contain someone playing soccer, a figure second only to baseball." 

How many of them are going to play in the World Cup, professionally, or even college?  Not a large percentage. Yet many of those millions of kids spend hours (in addition to their parents) upon hours traveling to practices and games, thinking about the game, and watching the game.  Sometimes I wonder whether all of that energy spent on soccer is worth it. Then I turn the mirror on my own life and ask myself whether soccer has been worth it to me?  Undeniably, the answer is yes.  Here is why...

 One obvious reason off the bat is that Crossfit is non-specific cross-training that doesn't take anything other than itself into consideration. Whereas I heard of the French National team including Zidane riding mountain bikes on a recovery day where the fitness trainer probably took into account their next and previous training session and game, etc., the Crossfit programmers only care about Crossfit.  Other reasons depend on genetics and training history. Here are a few reasons why I don't think Crossfit is the answer for soccer players:

The other night I watched a high school game where the score was 2-1 in the dying moments of the match. The team who was down a goal was awarded a free kick just outside of the 18 yard box.  The brilliant strike smashes off the post and the ball is bouncing around before it is cleared. The team who was in the lead had a massive, powerful forward who picks up the cleared ball and dribbles hard to score on an open goal but from an off angle. A defender is chasing just behind him with a straight path to the goal and it is a race between him and the ball, but the ball is winning. The big forward sprints towards the defender and does an NFL style shoulder dive at the knees taking out the defender in an illegal play that injures the player who gave chase. The ref who was shockingly bad all game calls no foul, awards the goal, and the match ends. The forward takes his shirt off and sprints to the far corner flag as his entire team clears the bench and runs over to cheer and chant.  "Fuck (name of school)!!!".  Loud and clear, over and over. Sportsmanship at its finest.  The losing team is in complete disarray and no one does a thing but sulk.  

I am currently reading the latter and in this article I hope to share some of his ideas and selfishly gain a deeper understanding of the material that inevitably comes from trying to teach something.  Below are some of his major concepts but before we begin, here is what Vern Gambetta, a strength coach with the highest pedigree possible, had to say about the book:
“thinking of strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance is a giant step forward. If nothing else it will make us more efficient in utilization of time, along with a greater chance of transfer. We need to challenge ourselves in the area of strength training, to break away from conventional wisdom and seek out new possibilities for improvement. This approach has challenged me.”

I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller, I wish I knew these things sooner so I could be on Barca. That kind of rhymes, doesn't it?