Soccer Training - For Improved Fitness and Better Skills

"Better Skills and Improved Fitness"

Complete soccer training covers both of the most important areas to develop a strong soccer player.

Soccer Drills

If you have great fitness levels, but are poor at controlling the ball, you will not be as successful a soccer player as you could be.

Soccer Training - For Improved Fitness and Better Skills

Also, being able to control a ball with ease, and not being able to make it up and down the field, will really prevent you from enjoying this beautiful game.

So there are 2 areas to work on with your soccer training drills:

Ball Control Skills (technique) Soccer Fitness
#1. Ball Control Skills!

Also called technique. Slick moves and precision ball exchange is the mark of an experienced and skilled player. To reach that level there a number of skills that you need to work on to improve your soccer game.

Ball Control - giving and receiving the ball. Kicking the ball. Passing the ball. Dribbling - handling the ball while moving. Heading the ball. Throwing the ball. Tackling your opponent (No, not like American football).
There are many ways to improve the skills portion of your game. Each strategy has its own benefits:

Repetition

Practice a move repeatedly until you can do it without thinking. It will soon become automatic.
Watch and Learn

Observing other more accomplished players on a regular basis will let you see what other can do. Then decide what you want to learn, and do it.
Watch Soccer DVD's or Soccer Videos

Watching soccer dvd's or videos will allow you to visualize what others do. Not only will you be able to learn how to do it. But also how to defend against it. Plus you can replay it as much as you want to!
Visualization

Close your eyes and see yourself making a certain move or making a certain play. Really focus on it. I have used this tactic more then once. It works.

One day I was preparing for a championship game in a tournament. I was in the basement at home focusing on 2 goals that I wanted to score in the game. All I could see was me scoring those 2 goals. When I arrived at the field that day a friend of mine approached me. We talked a little and when he was about to leave he looked at me and said, very matter of factly, "you look like you have a couple in you today." We won the game 5-2 and I had 2 goals. One with each foot! Just like I had visualized.

#2. Soccer Fitness!

Physical fitness is the other extremely important part of soccer training. No matter what position you play, you will be doing a lot of running. Except the goalkeeper. But the soccer goalie has to be fit as well.

Strikers, midfielders, and defenders all are required to run the length of the field many times during a soccer match. Most professional soccer players will run between 4 to 8 miles (6 to 12 kilometers) during a match.

Here are the main areas that you should cover in your soccer fitness training:

Speed & Agility

Continually improve these areas to out-maneuver your opponents.
Flexibility and Warming up

You can have all the speed and moves in the world. If your muscles are not ready and warmed up for the torture that you will put them through, you may injure yourself.
Strength & Muscles

Building your lungs is good. Combine that with weight training for soccer and you will create a winning combination.

Combine these 2 areas of soccer training and you will defeat your opponents any time that you want to.

Soccer Training - For Improved Fitness and Better Skills

3 Steps You Should Follow For Improved Soccer Speed

In this article I'll share something with you that very often is either forgotten or ignored - a proper warm-up. You see, when it comes to improving soccer speed and soccer agility, we are often so caught up in what exercises, skills or drills to perform in order to get quicker on the soccer field.

You see, when it comes to improving speed, there are some things you need to work on with your body if you want maximum results.

Soccer Drills

Let's take an example: You need great hip mobility and strong glutes in order to be able to really fire those muscles when running. In order to continually get faster, you need to be able to produce more force to the ground, and without good hip mobility or strong glutes, you'll never be able to do that!

3 Steps You Should Follow For Improved Soccer Speed

I won't go too deep into science today, instead, I'll give you the 3 steps you must follow if your goal is to become a quicker and faster soccer player. These 3 steps are found in my unique warm-up system - The MAP-System - which is an acronym where each letter stands for one step.

1. Mobility (and Flexibility)

Mobility is according to, a little depending on which dictionary or resource you look at, the quality of moving freely or the state of being in motion. Basically, mobility exercises are where your goal is improved range of motion. Mobility exercises to mainly focus on should be:

- Hip Circuits (most young athletes have tight hips, very important to fix)

- Leg Raises (standing or laying on their backs)

- Ankle Mobility

When it comes to Flexibility, I follow the so often used term nowadays - dynamic stretching. Before practice, you only want to hold a stretch for 3-5 seconds, and then switch. After practice, you want to do passive stretching, where you can hold each position for 20-30 seconds.

According to Stephen Francis, Asafa Powell's Sprint Coach, "a completely stretched muscle is a weak muscle", and there is something to do with it, especially before practice.

So dynamic stretching where you hold for 3-5 seconds at a time, and your goal is only to improve your range of motion and loosen up, then there won't be a problem, but avoid stretching a muscle passively for a long period of time before practice.

A recommended dynamic stretch to include is "Wide Mountain Climbers", by some people called "The World's Greatest Stretch". It has a lot of names, but the easiest way to describe is by saying "Wide Mountain Climbers". Think of a regular Mountain Climber, but instead of keeping your legs at chest level and between your arms, put your right leg as far up and out as possible outside of your right arm, hold for 3-5 seconds, and then switch leg.

2. Activation

The reason you want to do activation exercises is because you want to make sure your muscles are fired before practice - that your muscle groups are activated correctly and ready to do their job. As mentioned earlier in this text, the importance of having strong glutes and especially learn how to fire them properly will make a huge difference for a players ability to get faster.

Examples of exercises to use are Squats, Lateral Lunges, Hip-Bridges, Planks, Side Planks, and Pushups. You could do a few reps of each and everyone of these since they all target different muscle groups and different movements. Don't perform these exercises for more then 3-6 reps per side (depending on age group and level). It should not be like strength training where the athlete gets tired from doing it!

3. Pre-competition

Some people like to refer to some of these drills as Movement Preparations, but I like to think that Movement Prep is basically what the whole MAP-System is all about, and the name Pre-competition really shows what this step is about - the final step for getting the players ready for competition.

So in this phase you'll do some:

- Skipping
- Jogging
- Heel Walk
- Toe Walk
- Side Shuffling
- Cariocas
- Frankenstein Kicks
- Step-Overs
- 1-leg Hops, etc.

As a last part in this phase, place all the players along the side line and perform different quickness drills to really get their nervous system going and improve their soccer footwoork. Drills includes quick feet over the line (back and forth), side jumps, etc. Important to remember is that these drills are being performed with low and quick contact, so the players should go as fast as they possible can for 3-7 seconds per rep.

After these 3 steps, the players have increased their core temperature, their muscles are warm and loosen up, and their nervous system has turned on. They are now basically ready to go into full contact exercises.

So the importance of getting the players prepared for practice is really what matters in terms of speed improvement.

If you can keep your players on the pitch instead of off the pitch, don't you think they'll get both faster and better overall soccer players? Of course they will.

NOTE: The MAP-System should take between 7-15 minutes to go through.

3 Steps You Should Follow For Improved Soccer Speed