Bodyweight Exercises

Should You Lift Weights During Your Soccer Season?

woman lifting weights

On Soccer Training Solutions and in our soccer training book we advocate strength training including a healthy dose of work on the legs, shoulders and core muscle groups.

But when you’re undertaking weight training for soccer, should you work on it mid-season? Do the demands of regular practices and games mean that weight work will tire you out too much, cause you to lose flexibility, or risk an injury? Should you save lifting weights for the summer or other periods in between your season?

Overall, despite any concerns you might have, you absolutely should continue to lift weights during the season! In fact, if you don’t, you can actually put yourself at risk for injury and you will also miss out on several significant benefits. This article will go over those points in more detail

Benefits of In-Season Strength Training

Having a stronger body helps you to avoid a variety of injuries when coming into contact with other players. This is confirmed by a large body of research including this randomized controlled trial published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Weight lifting the right way can also help with your speed. Simple exercises like free weight back squats help you with lower body strength, and increase your sprinting velocity. (Here’s another study on soccer players confirming this).

How Should You Lift Best for Soccer During the Season?

It is true that you shouldn’t overdo your strength training regimen during the season, since you’re really going for maintenance of strength, not bulking up a significant amount extra.

Think of honing your power and strength, not chasing after bulk or the appearance of taut, rippling muscles.

Because of this, keeping the weight lifting to two sessions a week is ideal. Keep the weight you lift at about 50-75% of your one rep max, and don’t usually go for more than 10 reps per set.

Working on your lower body specifically also has major benefits. Working these muscles help you with your vertical leap, for one. And core work also helps you with everything from throw-ins to headers.

A few specific exercises you might consider include leg press, toe raises, leg curls, triceps extension, overhead press, lat pulldown, side-ups, sit-ups (lumbar flexion), trunk curl, dips, and more.

Finally, a great way to aid in your recovery is to thoroughly stretch after your weight session.

History of Thought on Soccer Weight Training

This question has been an issue for many years, with many who were wary of suggesting strength training for players during the season. Way back in 1988, Charles Hughes addressed the concern in his book Football Tactics and Teamwork:

“There is only one way in which to gain strength and that is by progressive resistance activities which almost invariably take the form of weight training…There is also little doubt that football managers in general do not accept the efficacy of strength training. Fears of the players becoming muscle-bound are completely without foundation.”

Hopefully you agree with us and with Hughes and continue to incorporate strength training into your in-season soccer training regimen.

If you have any questions or soccer weight lifting tips, just let us know in the comment section below.

Additional sources
http://www.nmysa.net/Assets/coach+education/Soccer+Weight+Training.pdf

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What Are the Best Core Exercises for Soccer Players?

By Parker & Walsh 1 Comment

In the game of soccer, it’s important to have a strong core, not just strong abs.

Some might think these terms mean roughly the same thing, but the core includes more muscles than just your abs.

These include your obliques, lower back, and muscles around your pelvis like your hip flexor–all of which come into play over the course of a soccer game.

Developing a strong core will help you accomplish your fitness goals, as well as provide some practical improvements to your game.

Your core is involved in just about every aspect of soccer: jumping up to win a header, shielding and holding off an opponent who is hanging on you, and striking the ball, passing or shooting.

So now that we’ve (hopefully) convinced you on the merits of working on your core, the next question is what exercises to do to strengthen it.

How to Strengthen Your Core (and Abs) for Soccer

For working on abs, some players might think that a healthy diet of crunches is what the doctor ordered.

But enduring endless crunches is repetitive and not a whole lot of fun, and it’s also not very effective when compared to some other exercises you could be doing instead.

Take the following routine as a starting point for a more complete (and interesting) core workout.

The following core exercises are paired together as super-sets to incorporate side to side trunk movements that you use when striking a soccer ball as well as leg movements to strengthen your hip flexors that involve striking the ball.

(A super-set is a series of exercises done back to back to back with little to no rest.)

These super-sets work your whole core, including abs, obliques, lower back, and hip flexors. Another benefit is that you can easily do them either in an indoor or outdoor setting.

Super-Set Core Exercises for Soccer

V-Ups – 25 reps (Use a soccer ball to pass the ball between your feet and your hands.)

Bicycles – 25 each leg pausing for half a second between each rep

REST for 1 minute

Side Plank with Elbow Touches – 15 elbow touches for each side

Alternating Leg Raises – 25 each leg pausing for half a second between each rep.

REST for 1 minute

Seated Side to Side Taps with a soccer ball – 50 total taps

Ab Rows – 25. Pretend that you are heading a soccer ball when you bring your knees to your chest.

REST for 1 minute

Front Plank – 30 seconds

Side Plank plus hip lower and raises – 30 seconds + 10 on each side

Do you have any other exercises that you like to do for working on your core? If so, let us know in the comments below.

Bodyweight vs Weight Lifting: Which Is Better for Soccer?

By Parker & Walsh Leave a Comment

weight training soccer A question recently came up about speed and strength training. Specifically, the question was about bodyweight training vs. weight training. Which one is better for you as a player?

In the context of soccer, both bodyweight training and weight training will help you build strength and speed.

Each, however, has a distinct main benefit. What really matters is how hard you train and when you are training.

This article will go over the details, and you’ll see that it’s not always a one or the other proposition; both can be modified and customized in order to fit your needs best.

Bodyweight Training vs. Strength Training for Soccer

The main benefit for bodyweight training is the convenience of performing the exercises anywhere, so you can continue to accomplish your training goals. There is no equipment needed!

Bodyweight training also helps you to master your form which is really important when strength training.

A lot of the time, bodyweight training is performed first in order to master one’s form. And you can still add strength with bodyweight training by adding in static holds.

You can also add speed training with your bodyweight routine by adding in plyometrics.

So bodyweight training overall can be more flexible than you might have assumed.

Benefits of Weight Training for Soccer

The main benefit for weight training, on the other hand, is that you can really add muscle mass and maximize your strength since you can keeping increasing weight.

It is easy to know how much weight you lifted. If you want to get stronger, then you need to add more weight. You can add strength by adding more weight.

You can add speed training with weights by doing explosive movements or using lighter weights with as faster speeds.

In Season Speed and Strength Training

Overall, it doesn’t matter whether you choose bodyweight or weight training. But you DO need to be consistent in how often you workout and take the proper amount of recovery time to make sure you are performing your best.

For a hard workout that pushes you beyond your current physical capacity, you are going to need 72 hours to recover before your next game.

For a threshold workout that holds you are your current limit, you will need 48 hours to recover before your next game.

For a maintenance workout that holds your fitness level without overextending, you will need to 24 hours to recover before your next game.

Also, since you use your quads so much in soccer, you should concentrate on making sure that you work out your hamstrings more than your quads.

Off Season Speed and Strength Training

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you choose bodyweight or weight training. However, you may want to lean towards weight training because this is the time you can try to add muscle mass.

Weight training allows you to add muscle mass quicker, but again you need to be consistent in how often you are working out.

However, remember you still need to have endurance and be able to sprint and run for the entire game. This will limit your muscle mass. So there is a fine line with adding muscle mass and being soccer fit.

What’s your favorite way to improve your strength and speed through strength training?

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Soccer Workout Challenge: Push-Ups, Abs and Bodyweight Squats Circuit

By Parker & Walsh 1 Comment

4253058200_14bc87db2d_z Working on your fitness is crucial to becoming a complete soccer player. But soccer fitness does not just mean pounding the pavement putting in mile after mile of running.

You need also need to work muscles including your core, shoulders and legs. Push-ups are a great workout. Not only do they work your chest, shoulders and triceps, but you need to engage your core, quads and glutes to keep your body straight as you lower your chest to touch the ground and lock your arms out at the top to achieve perfect form.

Famous NFL player Herschel Walker is one athlete who understood this well: he would routinely do hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups a day instead of lifting weights in the gym. In addition to push-ups, crunches and bodyweight squats are great exercises to add to your routine, and the big benefit is that you can do them at home or anywhere else you have a little space. No need to travel to a gym or buy any equipment.

Your Workout Challenge

Our challenge for you is to perform a circuit of push-ups, crunches and bodyweight squats with a total of 25 reps every day for one month.

A “circuit” means that you perform a chosen number of reps for each exercise (pushups, crunches, bodyweight squats) one after the other in quick succession with no rest, if possible. If you feel you do need to rest, try to keep it under a minute.

This challenge may sound easy to you, but it will give you a mental challenge as well. It takes commitment to stick to any routine for a whole month without slipping even once. Can you commit to accomplish this goal? Once you succeed, you’ll be able to continue that dedication to more advanced workouts. Once you accomplish your goal of 25 reps of push-ups, crunches, and bodyweight squats, you could bump the number of reps up per day to 50, 75 and then 100. But I guarantee you will feel stronger at the end of the month with this challenge.

Here are a couple of circuit routines you could try to help you accomplish your goal of 25 reps a day and eventually 100 reps a day.

Get the reps done any way you want – You can perform as many circuits of the three exercises as you want until you reach the number 25 for each exercise. For example, you can perform 5 circuits of 5 reps. You could perform 2 circuits of 10 reps with one circuit of 5 reps. You can perform one circuit of 15, 10, and then 5 reps. You could even just perform one circuit of 25 reps.

Pyramid circuit – A pyramid circuit is a great way to get in a lot of reps in a short period of time and also allows you to learn to keep proper form while fatigued.

A pyramid circuit will have a top number, such as 5, 6, or 10. You start by performing one rep of each exercise (a pushup, a crunch, and a bodyweight squat in our example). Then you go to two reps for each. Next you do three reps in the circuit. You work your way up to the top number of reps in the pyramid, and then you work your way back down to 1. To total 25 reps, you would do a Pyramid 5 (increase number of reps from 1 up to 5 and then back down to 1.)

No matter the details of your circuits, your challenge is to achieve 25 reps each of bodyweight squats, pushups and crunches every day for a whole month.

Try it out, and let us know in the comments below if you achieve it!

And do you have any other bodyweight exercise routines that you like? We’d love to hear about those too.

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