While teaching youth soccer, conditioning has to be carefully planned.
Players must understand the importance of warming up before practice and appreciate the need to build stamina for the game.
There are two types of conditioning that are used for soccer players – aerobic and anaerobic. You can decide on how much of this to include, based on your players’ age level.
Anaerobic Routines
These conditioning drills for soccer must bring your players’ heartbeat to their optimum performance level. So, if your player’s heartbeat is 200, deduct the player’s age from this figure to get the target.
This kind of drill is done at intermittent periods, with short periods of work interspersed with four times the period of rest. Gradually, you can progress your players to one period of work and one period of rest.
How fit are your players? You can gauge this by observing, how long your players take to revert to their normal heartbeat, after a really rigorous workout. Over a period of time, if this recovery time reduces, you know your players are making progress.
How To Improve Flexibility In Your Players
As a soccer trainer, use routines that involve the use of a ball for all fitness activities. Some ideas follow:
- Focusing on the heart rate, you can have your players bounce a ball, while jumping in time to its bounce. You can throw up the ball to them, while they on their toes, move and try to control the ball with their instep. Your players can practice passing the ball arms held above their heads from player to player, backward.
- Another set of anaerobic drills that you can use is have your players sit and throw the ball and jump up and catch it before it starts bouncing. Let your players stand and throw the ball up, then sit and immediately stand up to control the ball with their foot. A variation to this can be to do a push up posture and catch the ball.
- Goalkeepers can practice with the ball by sitting back to back with another player. Then, gradually increasing speed, they can pass a ball by twisting sideways to their partner, doing it on alternate sides.
Your players must practice stretching from time to time, juggling, and jogging slowly, when they rest. Teaching youth soccer can be very enjoyable, especially when you see them improve before your eyes, by teaching them the proper soccer techniques and soccer drills.
