Football is one of those sports where a variety of physical skills are needed, and the objective with any strength training and weight training for football routine should be on increasing your overall performance level. A simple bodybuilding program is not good enough, as you require functional muscles, not just big ones.
In this respect, a weight training for football routine can be split into 3 major areas that will focus on building strength and power, increasing speed and agility, and increasing explosiveness. Depending on which position you play, there may be a slight bias to one area more than another.
Build Strength and Power
Strength and power are essential for blocking opponents and holding your own, and can make all the difference late in the game.
To build strength and power your weight training for football program should focus on high intensity low volume training - which is where you are lifting as heavy as possible for low numbers of reps. Stick to compound exercises like Squats and Bench Press, as these will maximise your time in the gym and help you to gain muscle quickly. This type of training is the best for building solid slabs of muscle mass
Increase Speed and Agility
To increase your speed and agility you need to be focusing on exercises that have a large range of movement and allow you to perform them quickly and at high intensity.
For this reason your approach should be different to just building muscle mass as above. You should look to perform exercises like push-ups, burpees and pull-ups using a weighted vest and/or ankle and wrist weights to add some extra bulk and force you to up your efforts.
These exercises create functional muscles that respond in the same way as they would when you're out on the field.
Increase Explosiveness
We all know that explosiveness is the secret ingredient to success in this sport, and the guy who can off the mark quickest can make all the difference in the game.
To increase your explosiveness you'll want to perform exercises where the weight is enough to keep you challenged but not as heavy as in your strength building workouts.
The key here is to "explode" the weight up through the first part of the exercise very quickly and then do a slow contraction so you maintain a 1:3 ratio. So, for example, on a bench press you lower the bar slowly (the "3" portion of the exercise), then you push the weight upwards explosively.
Weight Training For Football - Strength Training Tips For Football PlayersAre you confused and don't know what step to take in order to take your soccer speed to the next level? To start with, it all comes down to the basics. Let me explain why.
There's been some pretty heated discussions now for a while (at least here in Sweden), whether a soccer player should be spending time in the gym or not. I think we all can agree on the fact that in order to become a better athlete, no matter what sport you play - you need to get stronger. So in order to become a better soccer player, do you want to accomplish that by stacking up the weights and start spending several hours a week in the gym? Not necessarily.
Here's where the argument divides. On one side, you have coaches who always preach Olympic Lifting Techniques and using heavy weights to get the players stronger. In a perfect world, learning these different lifts and having someone professional and knowledgeable enough to help you with this, then it's definitely a good idea as you get a little older.
However, and here's where I am at with my philosophy when it comes to lower body strength training for soccer players looking to improve their speed. There are a lot of things to consider if you want to start using dumbbells and barbells. First and foremost, it will take more time (you need to spend more hours working out), you need to have a gym membership, and you need to find the right trainer for it (a bad trainer that teaches you the wrong technique when lifting may have terrible consequences for you).
So with this method, I believe, for a lot of youth soccer players, you need none of that. Sure, you may need an extra 30-45 minutes a week, but it can all be added on to your regular soccer training, meaning all of it can be performed on the soccer field, without additional equipment.
At first, we need to look at the basics. These include:
- Squats (2-leg bodyweight squat)
- Hip Bridges (2-leg, hold at the top )
- Lateral Lunges
- Split Squats
Learn to master these exercises and focus on technique rather than the amount of reps you can do. If you can perform the squat for 5 perfect reps, then 5 reps it is.
These 4 drills are then upon mastering of the technique, progressed to primarily 1-leg variations or more challenging exercises. In the game of soccer, you need to create unilateral strength, meaning you need to be equally as strong in your left leg as your right leg.
Look at linear acceleration for instance. In order to get faster, you need to learn how to produce more force to the ground, and that is accomplished through learning the proper techniques for doing this, together with improving your lower body strength!
My next example is deceleration and changing directions. If you have an imbalance between your legs where one leg is much stronger then the other, then you're definitely going to experience a difference based on which leg you stop, cut or change a direction with. If you feel you are way better at stopping or changing a direction only using your left leg, don't you think your opponent will take advantage of that and only try to beat you going on your bad side?
I am guessing he would, especially when you advance to higher levels, playing against better players.
Learn to master these exercises showed above first, and I promised you - you can progress a lot by only doing lower body strength on the soccer field, you don't need to spend a lot of time in the gym to accomplish that.
Down the road when you get really strong, you can keep on improving by incorporating medicine balls and weighted vests to get stronger, and keep on getting faster!
The Importance of Lower Body Strength For Soccer Speed