Buffing Up

Soccer conditioning

It’s a known fact that a soccer conditioning program provides a strong base for a team’s success. Without strength, agility, and endurance, all of which are build as a result of soccer exercises, the players cannot even dream of being fit for a tournament, leave alone winning it.

Nevertheless, situations may arise where you or your team don’t get sufficient time to practice before a match. It’s not an imply that you to make changes and curtail your conditioning exercises. You would not want to see your players down with injuries either previous to the match or in the match.

Any well laid down soccer fitness training plan can lead to training players completely in just 3 days time. All that it takes is seriousness, good preparation, and its implementation. Here are some tips that work fine with short but efficient training programs.

Warming up: Tell the players to kick off with any of these; a five minute jog, heel flicks, high knees, or jumping. Take adequate rest for a few seconds in between. Then do some stretching for another 5 minutes that will tone up the muscles. Be sure to include all the major muscle groups in these soccer workouts.

Soccer Fitness

Running: Some coaches make their players do continuous rounds of running. While that is not bad, I recommend that you make the players do soccer-specific running. This leads to the fact that they do running, jogging, walking, and sprinting in no set order for half an hour.

Running in this manner enables the players to get strong and control their bodies better. And they do not feel exhausted since a walk after a sprint evens things out.

Just let the individual players make a decision as to what they want to do and when. If they wish to do sprints more than light jogging, there is no harm in it. As the players get fitter and their stamina increases, you can increase the duration of your soccer conditioning program by another 5 to 10 minutes.

Stretching: Persuade the players to do stretching exercises both after the training session as well as a match. Concentrate on including the whole body but emphasize on hamstrings, groins, quads, calves and lower back. Keep the stretching positions longer than in the warm-up sessions. In general, 20 to 30 seconds is recommended.

A day before the match, make the players rest. This will allow the muscles to recover and also prevent the possibility of an injury. Also, this is a great time to talk to the players and giving them a high.

Crack jokes so that they get relieved of tension.

Trust me! Once you start to apply this to your training practice sessions, you’ll watch your players perform like hard core professionals on field. If you wish to know more about soccer conditioning, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community and equip yourself with loads of relevant information.

Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Drills For Kids.