Andre Botelho’s Soccer Coaching Blog

“OH! OH! OH! - Santa (Me) Is Coming To Town…”

Before we dive into today’s soccer fitness topic… I want to let you know that next week you should be looking for an email from me regarding a special Christmas GIFT. I’m preparing a special offer for you.

In fact, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this in time but, if you want to be one of the first to know about this special limited gift, just make sure you check your email box at the beginning of next week (this special deal will be available only to the first who respond). I’ll let you know more about this next week… (again - if I can put this together in time - can’t promiss).

With That Said… Let’s Move Into Soccer Fitness!

There are a lot of ways to get your players in shape (and this should NOT be one of them). It’s fun but your players could get seriously hurt…

As a soccer coach, you don’t have a much time to practice for a season. No matter how fine your team’s skills are, but the emphasis should be placed on their fitness and conditioning. In the pre-season and during the season, it comes to you as a challenge to bring the players fitness level up to par even as you focus on team’s strategies and techniques.

Soccer is a very popular game and many people from different age groups are not only interested in watching it but also in learning it. However, soccer is a very demanding sport also. For this reason it is imperative for players to be trained in some workouts that can improve your fitness for soccer. There are a number of techniques available to a coach to help improve his team’s fitness level during practice sessions.

Power Development

Let’s begin with power development . It accounts for the key component of soccer performance. What does power mean in relation to soccer? Basically, power is a combination of strength and speed. Power training is very difficult in terms of neuro-muscular involvement. But if you train with right intensity, your body will not feel the pressure. This is the reason that you should not include power training in your daily schedule unless it involves minimum volume with emphasis on different aspects. For example; one day jumping and next day throwing. Most of the drills in power training involve jumping, heaving, and throwing.

With the player’s strength improving, their capacity to control and generate force more efficiently. The most important thing to know is the technique to generate the power from the ground up through the core and out through the extremities i.e. arms and legs. To begin with, power training should focus on drills and exercises which involve remedial work to increase control and stability when reducing force. Practice taking a simple jump or hop in different directions and concentrate on a soft and quiet landing. This is a great way to start with the process.

The Landing Technique

Always remember that in power development, landing technique precedes the jumping technique. It’s because the most difficult part in jumping up or out is to execute a stable landing. This also gives you a fair basis to assess your player’s current strength level. And once you learn to stabilize while landing, the intensity of your power development can accurately take off. When the kids are being trained on landing techniques, you must instruct them to land as light as a feather. They must be taught to hold the landing for a few seconds without losing their balance. This skill of swiftly stabilizing on each step or landing can greatly help in reducing the force on the body and give the player a better power production. You must also ensure that drills do not progress until the kids can execute this basic drill.

Jumping Down?!

The next technique for the kids to learn and master is to elevate the intensity of landing by increasing the height and distance that they land from. This is also known as the jumping down technique. Keep changing the height as you advance, but be careful to only use such height which you can easily control. You can start by just stepping off the height to a proper landing. Then follow this by actually jumping down and joining the landing in a good posture. After the players have established good control over these drills, a couple of sets can be performed as warm ups for high intensity jump training.

Follow the landing drills with jumping to an elevated surface like a box, a bench, or a step. Just like jumping down, it may seem petty. But again the focus is to correctly perform the basic extension and landing of the body. Try and use a low height as in knee level, medium height like mid thigh, and high height (up to waist level) when progressing in this technique. Focus on projecting the hips up and out at all levels of jumping. This will allow the players to fully expand their body and the get a hold of the center of mass in the right position. As in jumping down, when making contact with the landing surface, attempt to stick and become stable.

The process of creating power in the body begins with the center of the body and it should finish through the legs and the arms in order to create maximum production, and more specifically, through the toes and fingers. When players use their total body, it’ll add quality to power training. The function of the loading aspect is to make the body feel like a loaded spring. The arms are contracted and stiff with the elbows behind the back. The hips, knees, and ankles are bent with the torso tight.

The unloading pose then becomes the opposite of loading. The ankles, knees, and hips are extended with the arms wavering overhead, up and out. This is the most basic concept and can be applied to all the unstable movements like hopping, sprinting, cutting, jumping, and throwing. Having said this, I must make the difference between hopping, jumping, and bounding clear to you.

Hopping means taking off on one foot and landing on that same foot. It can be a high-intensity single-leg hurdle hop or a low-level stability hop. Since single leg strength is important to increasing speed and cutting technicalities, hopping has the potential to provide quick feedback on the single leg strength level.

On the other hand, jumping involves both vertical and horizontal movements. Jumping may mean something as simple as jumping a rope or something as complex as a high level death jump. When performing jumps, all aspects of loading and unloading the body shall apply. But considering that jumping is very demanding in terms of neuro-muscular involvement, a high volume is not important to achieve a good quality training effect.

When compared with hopping and power jumping, bounding is seen as a superior –level polymetric or explosive drill. It requires good amount of hip and leg strength to have a steady ground contact and generate recurring explosive takeoffs. Most of the bounds need horizontal projection of the body. Majority of theses drills will require your players to takeoff with one leg and land on another leg as fiercely as possible. Bounds are applicable to all directions of movement.

Different types of Power Drills
Category	Function/ Rationale	Strength/ Intensity	Recurrence Response	Direction of movement
Rope Jumping	Ankle-foot unthinking response	Low	Single or multiple	Vertical
Stability Landings	Technique of landing and control along with unusual strength	Low to Moderate	Single or multiple	Vertical or Horizontal
Hopping	Immediate response	Low to Moderate	Multiple	Vertical or Horizontal
Jumping Up	Very strong power and immediate response	Moderate to high	Single or multiple	Vertical
Jumping Down	Unusual strength and immediate response	Moderate to high	Single	Vertical
Bounding	Immediate power	High	Multiple	Horizontal

You can also combine the basic strength gain exercises with fast and instant movements in order to build up strong power training programs. The most important reason for soccer players to do explosive weight training is to increase total body power through triple extension of the ankle, knee, and hip. However, to devise a dependable and a complete power program for soccer players, you must first separate the many different forms of power training into activities as per your requirements. It’s a good idea to start with the low intensity drills. But bear in mind that the resistance or load of the power exercises doesn’t need to be heavy to get a good training effect.

When you are drawing your power development program, never forget that these drills have a high stress element. Therefore, the players should be made to do these at low levels to make sure that they execute the speed accurately. Power training should ideally be done in the beginning of training sessions and before any kind of strength training.

So now that the basics have been covered, I’d like to just leave you with a final piece of advice. Like many other things, fitness too is down to determination, strength of mind, and practice. If you get right with the fitness part, then your team’s performance is sure to benefit.

It is a common perception that when it comes to soccer, fitness is a good combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercises. However, it must also be considered that a different fitness and training program may be required to suit individual players. It would depend on their age, total experience of the game, playing abilities, as well as the position they play in the game. And last but by no means the least, as a coach your desire to teach as also a major consideration in designing your training program.

That’s what I wanted to share with you today…

Again don’t forget to be alert for an email from be next week regarding a special christmas gift…

Leave your comments below about this post (I’m looking forward to read what you have to say).

Yours in soccer,

Andre Botelho

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Tags: Soccer Conditioning, Soccer Conditioning Drills, Soccer Fitness, Soccer Fitness Drills, Soccer Fitness Training