Soccer Fitness and Conditioning - Fitness Tips For Kids Soccer

As a Personal Trainer and Soccer Coach, there are a number of important points that you should be aware of when training your kids to be fit for soccer. Your first consideration should be the age and current fitness levels of your players. It is very important to realise with your training that kids are not just little adults, and as such adult fitness and conditioning drills are largely inappropriate. Second consideration should be the types of soccer drills that you are going to use. For children, I always like to make sure that a ball is involved in all of my soccer fitness and conditioning drills. For this reason I use a lot of small sided games for training my kids, as small sided games keep them involved and moving at all times, incorporating both fitness and ballwork together.

When considering fitness drills for your kids, your first realisation should be that kids are not just small adults. Adult fitness drills are generally inappropriate for kids. For the kids that I coach I tend not worry about any kind of fitness drills at training up until about the age of eleven. Up to the age of eleven I try to coach them so that they are active throughout the whole of the training session and I find this sufficient in terms of soccer fitness After this age you should take into consideration the current fitness levels of your players when considering fitness drills. You must then decide which elements of fitness you want your players to work on and formulate your drills accordingly. The various elements include speed, agility, and endurance.

At all training sessions, my primary aim is to maximise the number of ball touches that each player gets during the session. For this reason in most instances I incorporate a ball into the fitness drills that I use with my players. If you devote a significant amount of time to fitness training then you will significantly reduce the amount of ballwork that you are able to do with your players. The best way to avoid this is to incorporate a ball into your fitness drills. Another method that I have used with older children ad with representative teams is to give players a preseason fitness routine. This ensures that your players have a base fitness level when you begin training and will mean that you can spend more training time on ballwork and skills and less on fitness and conditioning.

There are many elements of soccer fitness that players require when they play a game. Factors like speed, agility and endurance are important elements that players require on the soccer field. I find that using a variety of small sided games is an effective way of training these different elements of fitness whilst not having to make the players do fitness drills. In an ideal world the players will not even realise that they are doing fitness drills. There are many different small sided games that I use to simulate the different elements of soccer fitness I find that these are a great way to incorporate both fitness and ballwork into my soccer training sessions so that the players have fun, and learn the different elements of soccer fitness that they require to enjoy the game.

In terms of soccer fitness and conditioning your first thought should always be that kids are not just little adults. If you try to use adult fitness drills with kids they will usually lose interest very quickly and become discouraged. Use a ball as often as possible in your fitness drills in order to maximise the number of ball touches that each player receives during the training session. I find that the best way to do this is to use a variety of small sided games with players so as to teach them the different elements of soccer fitness that they require. The most important elements of soccer fitness for kids are speed, agility and endurance, and the soccer drills and small sided games that you use should focus on developing these elements in each of your players.

Are you looking for soccer coaching resources. Looking to get more out of your young soccer players. I have coached young soccer players for a number of years. Check out my website at http://www.soccerdrillsreview.com for more soccer drills and coaching info. Subscribe to my free weekly coaching newsletter and get a free copy of my 12 favourite soccer drills for coaching young soccer players at http://www.soccerdrillsreview.com

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Soccer Fitness & Conditioning - Be Specific - What You Train is What You Get

One of the major challenges facing coaches of young soccer players in terms of soccer fitness and conditioning is that soccer is a game that requires players to have a high level of fitness in many different areas in order to play to the best of their ability. There are many fitness elements required to be an effective soccer player including endurance, speed off the mark and over distances up to 50 or 60 metres, agility, jumping, power and flexibility. So, if you only see your players for a few hours each week how do you ensure they are in a condition to play? What exercises do you choose? How do you conduct your training sessions in terms of fitness and conditioning?

One of the most recent exercise science studies that has been conducted in relation to athletic performance indicates that using sports specific exercises for fitness and conditioning can improve a performance by over 20 percent. So, obviously that makes it vital that you use exercises specific to soccer in training your young players. For players up to about the age of 12 I use small sided games to train the elements of fitness and conditioning that they require and I also build elements of fitness and conditioning into the training drills that I use at soccer training. I do this to maximise the time that I have available for training. As I have stated in many previous articles my number one goal for each training session for young soccer players is to maximise the number of touches of the ball that each players gets at soccer training. For older players I start to use some sports specific exercises, and depending on their level of ability and desire may also set them a home training program.

Soccer is a game that requires many elements of fitness including endurance, speed, agility, jumping, power and flexibility. It is possible to incorporate each of these elements into your small sided games by changing the setup of the game. If I am seeking to incorporate an endurance element I will use a larger field, and I will have less players on the field. I may also choose to reduce the breaks in between games as I will usually have multiple games running at the same time. For an agility session I will reduce the size of the field and increase the number of players on the field. For example I may have a 4 versus 4 game on a small field, whereas if I was looking to train endurance I would use a 1 versus 1 or 2 versus 2 game on a larger field. Speed off the mark can be trained by having players start outside the field so that they have to run to the ball located on the field. I would usually do this with 1 versus 1, or 2 versus 2 games. Power can be trained by making players shoot at goal from outside a certain area. In most of my small sided games I make players run the ball through the goal in order to score but when teaching power or shooting techniques I do not do this.

How you structure your session will largely be dependent on what elements of soccer fitness and conditioning you want to focus on. What does your team need to play to the best of their ability on game day? All sessions must include an effective warm-up and cool down period that players will also follow on game day. Warm-ups should start slow and build up. I usually start with a light jog with a soccer ball for each player. I then move to a faster jog involving some changes of direction. I then incorporate some jumping and short sprints. And finally I finish with some dynamic stretching. This routine should take no longer than 15 minutes. My cool down routines will usually start with some running with the pace being gradually reduced to a brisk walk, followed by 5 minutes of stretching, so that the routine takes about 10 minutes.

Your soccer fitness and conditioning sessions for your young soccer players must be specific. Different small sided games are a great way to do this for young soccer players. Each session must include a structured warm up of about 15 minutes and end with a cool down period of about 10 minutes. Warm-ups and cool downs at training and on game days are essential to minimise the risk of injury to your young soccer players. Being specific with your training for soccer fitness and conditioning is essential for maximising their performance and enjoyment come game day.

Are you looking for soccer coaching resources. Looking to get more out of your young soccer players. I have coached young soccer players for a number of years. Check out my website for more soccer drills and soccer coaching info Subscribe to my free weekly coaching newsletter and get a free copy of my 12 favourite soccer drills for coaching young soccer players at Soccer Drills Review

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Soccer Conditioning - The 6 Elements

Soccer is an athletic sport and it has become more than a game that awards the player with the best ball skills. Improving your body and your physical traits, as well as chiseling your physical weaknesses is extremely important in modern day soccer and the field that tends to all these aspects is called soccer conditioning.

Soccer conditioning is actually made up of 6 concepts, or sub-sections if you will. The warm up, strength, power, endurance, agility and speed training are key components to a full soccer conditioning program. I won't go into too much detail about them with the article at hand, but what I do want to do is give you a glimpse on what each component is, how it benefits you as a soccer player (or your players if you're a coach) and how it can be improved.

-Soccer Warm Ups

At the very beginning of soccer, players would warm up before a match individually and rather disorganized. Besides of a few common warm-up and stretching exercises, they depended on the first minutes of play to get them into the right condition to play at full potential.

Nowadays, warming up is given increasingly higher importance, because it helps a soccer player in two ways: it protects you from muscle injuries such as strains and ruptures and it brings you to your maximum playing ability as the match or training session begins. A third benefit comes from specific stretching exercises, that make you more agile and flexible, which is a great advantage for a soccer player in today's lightning fast game.

-Soccer Strength

Strength is a crucial factor in soccer, since it affects several abilities used during a match, such as jumping, shooting, dribbling, shielding, balance, tackling or marking. Actually, strength is probably the only conditioning key component that is useful in the same measure for all players, regardless of their position on the pitch. Shielding is often confused with power, but as you will see below there's a difference between the two.

-Soccer Power

Power can refer to one of three things in soccer: the power of your shots, the power of your headers and the power of your throws. Although strength does have an important role in determining these three attributes, you also need to have the right technique to make them work. So power is a combination between strength and technique.

For example, when kicking a ball towards the goal, strength will work towards a more powerful shot if you have trained out your abs, lower back and leg muscles, but at the same time you'll need to kick the ball perfectly if you want to achieve a truly powerful and accurate shot. As a tire commercial once put it...power is nothing without control.

-Soccer Endurance

There are two types of endurance, short and long range. Short endurance refers to your ability to sprint longer and long endurance is more general and it helps you pull off an entire match. It's important to know that endurance isn't just about being able to run for the ball longer in a match. If you get tired, you will also have a harder time focusing on the game, jumping, tackling, dribbling, finishing and so forth. So having good endurance can help you get the best out of yourself for longer periods of time.

Note that it's very hard to get to a level where you can run tirelessly even in the latter stages of the match. Even professional soccer players that are part of the most powerful clubs in the World tend to get tired around the 80th minute, or earlier if they played a high tempo game.

-Soccer Agility

Agility can help you on several levels in soccer. Goalkeepers will have better reflexes and they'll be able to get to high balls quicker if they're more agile. Defenders will be harder to dribble and their tackles will be more accurate and clean with the right level of agility. Midfielders can dribble with ease if they're agile and strikers work well around their quickness in order to get in front of the defender and finish on crosses, or dribble their way to goal when possible.

-Soccer Speed

Just like with the power-strength confusion, some people tend to put an equality sign in between speed and agility. Whereas agility refers to quick reactions, speed refers to running at full throttle, on a longer distance. Actually, speed has two components: acceleration and top speed.

Acceleration lasts from the moment you start the sprint, to a second or two before you can reach top speed. Indeed, agility plays a crucial role in acceleration, but has little to do with top speed. So focusing on agility exercises may improve your acceleration, but your top speed is difficult to improve, since it's determined by a formula involving your lower body strength, natural constitution and running technique.

Niv Orlian is the author and the owner of a Soccer Fans website that provides information on various topics related to soccer such as the history of soccer, soccer rules, famous soccer players, soccer fundamentals, soccer nutrition and soccer conditioning.

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