content:
- Peak Points
- Warming up
- Stretching
- Edurance
- Weight Lifting for Soccer
- A Pro's Workout Secret
Peak Points
- It takes stamina to excel at soccer. Do wind sprints and other stamina drills.
- Don't be fooled: Soccer is a total sport. Do all-body conditioning, focusing on shoulders, chest, abs and legs.
- Flexibility is crucial to soccer survival. Stretch often.
Warming Up
Get the body moving, the heart pumping, the blood flowing. This increases muscle temperature, improves reflex time and suppleness, and helps to avoid injury, says Dr. Luxbacher. He recommends a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes of warm-up for soccer players. Anything that gets you sweating should do the trick, but working with a soccer ball helps develop sport-specific skill at the same time, he says.
These three drills are great for getting the blood moving, says Dr. Luxbacher.
Dance on the Ball
The name of this drill describes what it looks like. Truth is, you barely touch the ball. Put it on the ground in front of you and barely touch the sole of one foot to the top of the ball, withdraw it quickly and place the sole of the other foot atop the ball, back and forth, quickly, for 30 seconds to a minute. This combines getting the heart going with a ball-control dexterity drill.
Inside Touch
With your feet shoulder-width apart, tap the ball back and forth between your feet, using the inside of your feet, for 30 seconds to a minute. Do it as fast as you can. Rest and repeat.
Confined Dribbling
Limit yourself to a 10- by 20-yard area and start dribbling the ball slowly. Constantly change your speed and direction as you dribble the ball back and forth within the confines of the area. Keep the ball close to your feet. As you warm up, increase your speed. Do this for about five minutes.
Stretching
Once you''re warmed up, go through a series of gentle, fluid flexibility exercises. Stretch your hamstrings and quadriceps, calves and Achilles tendon, groin, neck and back. See Flexibility on page 32 for a full-body routine and Running on page 181 for a selection of leg stretches. Dr. Luxbacher recommends static stretching—holding each stretch for 15 to 30 seconds—and doing two reps of each.
Dr. Luxbacher also offers this specialized back stretch using a soccer ball.
Ball Stretch
Sit with your knees together, flexed. Slowly roll a soccer ball on the ground around your entire body, keeping both hands on the ball at all times. Roll it ten times in each direction.
Strengthening
Your strength-building routine will focus on your abs, legs, arms and chest. Try this on-field workout.
For the abs, Dr. Luxbacher recommends doing crunches. Do at least 10 and up to 30.
For the legs, here are two exercises Dr. Luxbacher likes. Do one or both in your workout.
For the arms and chest, nothing beats push-ups, says Dr. Luxbacher. You can do 10 to 30 regular push-ups or bent-knee push-ups. Or try Dr. Luxbacher''s ball push-ups or walking push-ups.
Ball Push-Ups
This is a real upper-body strength builder. Get in a full push-up position, but with your hands on the top of a soccer ball. Support your body weight with your hands and toes and keep your legs and body straight.
Lift your body until your arms are straight, then slowly lower your body until your chest touches the ball. Without letting your body sag, do as many reps as you can up to 20 at first. These put a lot of pressure on your wrists; stop if you feel any pain or discomfort.
Step-Ups
Use a 12-inch-high bench or step-box from the gym. Face it and step up with one foot, then the other, and then step off, one foot at a time. Up, up, down, down. That''s one rep. Do 20, rest, and then do it again.
Ball Hops
Keep your feet together and jump from side to side over a ball. Don''t touch the ball. If you can''t make the height, stand just in front or behind the ball and jump from side to side. Go as fast as possible for 30 seconds to a minute, rest, and then do it again.
Walking Push-Ups
Endurance
Soccer players need cardiovascular fitness to keep on keeping on in off-and-on bursts of activity for 90 minutes or so. While playing the game itself is a great endurance workout, there''s more you can do than that. Dr. Luxbacher suggests two great endurance exercises, both of which help to have a partner for timing purposes.
Shuttle Runs
Place four cones along a straight line 5, 10, 15 and 20 yards out from the goal line. Race to the first cone and back, then to the second and back, and so on, as fast as you can. Your partner takes off as you return from the furthest cone and you rest. Do four to eight sets.
Cone Training
Put a cone 20 yards from the goal line. Starting at the line, dribble the ball around the cone and back as quickly as possible. Upon returning, pass the ball to your partner, who dribbles around the cone and then passes it back to you. Do 5 to 15 reps.
Wind Sprints
If you are in good condition already, do some timed running—a combination of running and jogging—once or twice a week to get to the next level. Here''s the formula: Run at 85 to 90 percent of your top speed for one to two minutes, then jog for twice as long to recover—two to four minutes—then sprint again, and recover again. Four sprint-jog repetitions equals one set. Do two to four sets, says Covert Bailey, popular fitness writer and author of Smart Exercise.
Cooling Down
When the scrimmage, the running, the exercises are finally finished, don''t just hobble to the locker room. As with all workouts, you need to cool down gradually. Part of this cooldown should be running through your stretches again. Do each stretch twice, suggests Dr. Luxbacher. This will help to prevent—or at least to lessen greatly—any next-day soreness.
Weight Lifting for Soccer
Finally, if you want to turn into a soccer monster, here''s a weight-room workout devised by Sprague. In season, he wants you in the gym two days a week, doing two sets of 10 reps each at 65 percent of your one-rep maximum. Off-season, you''ll work out three times a week, with the amounts and rep counts based on your own periodization schedule (this type of schedule is explained in Basic Fitness on page 118).
* Traditional squats for leg and hip thrust
* Dumbbell lunges for leg and hip thrust
* Pull-ups for upper-body pull
* Leg curls to prevent hamstring injury
* Rumanian dead lifts for back extension
* Military presses for upper-body thrust
* Leg raises with dumbbell or ankle weights for knee lift, kick and torso stabilization
In addition, do this exercise, which gives your body rotational strength.
Reverse Trunk Twists
Lie on your back, with your legs raised at about a 90-degree angle to the ground. Keeping your back as flat as possible, twist at your waist to slowly and gently lower your legs to the ground on one side. Then bring them back to center, and lower to the ground on the other side.
Beginners can start with their knees bent, feet flat on the ground, and should work up to having their
A Pro's Workout Secrets
- Daily bungee running. He ties a bungee cord to another player and tows him around the field for 30 minutes while dribbling, sprinting or running backward in 100-yard intervals.
- Daily weight-room lunges, squats, leg extensions to strengthen an injured knee, and weekly dips, curls, pull-ups and bench presses.
- Tennis, which provides great footwork, he says, and improves his reaction time.
- Mountain biking for two hours, twice a week, in the foothills near his team''s
- Nightly in-line skating, which builds the hips and thighs, he says, and is credited for his powerful kick.
- Sprints—series after series of 440-yard and 880-yard—once or twice a day, six days a week, year-round. The whole team does these.
