Top Tips for Excellent Performance in Soccer
The game of soccer, which has for ages been a prominent Sport in other parts of the world, is now rapidly increasing in popularity here in the US. As you probably know, soccer requires an athlete to be in excellent physical shape because a soccer player is constantly running.
Unlike other running sports where there are lots of stops, soccer has little to no breaks during the game, so an athlete must be in great physical condition. Running, however, isn’t the only activity to help a player get in shape if you desire to play competitively. There are a plethora of strength training exercises out there that could be as important to help with the endurance an athlete will need to play this sport.
These workouts do not only apply to FIFA or MLS players but anyone that wants to compete in this sport on a professional level. It really doesn’t matter if you play in a league or on your school team, keeping fit will make you a more successful and competitive player.
Dressing the Part
Make sure you wear breathable apparel that will give you sufficient comfort while you train. Most soccer kits and training apparel are made of moisture-wicking material. Wearing clothing with moisture wicking properties helps to absorb or “wick” the sweat away from your body and this helps you keep the temperature of your body down and resulting in being able to train for longer periods of time. (You sure don’t want to end up with a soaked T-shirt that clings to your body when you are done with the daily routine).
You can buy quality moisture-wicking clothes from a good Sports store or online vendor. If you’d like to feel motivated while getting in shape you could get branded shirts that’ll look pretty cool. (When you feel like you look cool it really gives you that confidence to push through the tough workouts) You could also get your entire team to invest in some nice shirts so you look like a stellar team while you’re all practicing.
Getting Warmed Up
Before starting your workout routine, you would need to warm up for at least five or ten minutes first, so you can get your heart rate up.
If it rained or snowed during the night, you might feel a little cold and sluggish while warming especially up during those early hours, so you should spend the five or ten minutes doing some light jogging and a couple of stretches.
Once you spend five to ten minutes doing those activities, you’d certainly start to feel your heart rate go up and then you can begin your 30 minute-warm up by loosening up and doing some lower body strengthening and balance exercises. These could include anything from squats to straight-leg walking with a band around your ankles, single-leg touching of toes, jumping backward, sideways and forward or even doing some single-leg hops.
Turning up the Heat
The most powerful type of exercise for Soccer is cardio. Before you start, make sure you are not unnecessarily straining your muscles. It’s a good idea to take a short jog to get your heart rate to about 70 to 80% of your maximum heart-rate. Running doesn’t always mean running on a treadmill or long distance.
You could also run an obstacle course. This will not only help to ramp up your cardio threshold but will also build your agility while working on your abs. A good obstacle course for soccer training would be a setup of 6 – 10 cones, 5 to 10 yards apart and make sure they are parallel. Begin with the first set of cones using quick, short steps, and move to the second cone, then stop quickly and jog back to the first set of cones. Then jog forward to the third set of cones, back to the second set and so on. Repeat this while in a two-cone forward one cone backward motion until you have reached the last set.
Plyometric Exercises
Plyometric training is just as important and advantageous as doing cardio. When you build tissue it helps you run faster and increases your endurance over time. One great exercise for plyometric stamina is to take a firm box that is about one to two feet high, (you could increase this as your power levels go up) and with both feet together, swing your arms to give you more momentum, and jump on and off the box 10 times. You can then switch it up by hopping up the other side as well. You can also gradually increase the height or even jump over the box if you’d like to try something different!
Combining plyometric exercises with running exercises at intervals gives you the advantages of a great cardio and strength-training exercise all in one. You could start by running in slow motion, then leaping up to a length of 10 – 20 feet. When you land, bend your knees and then jump as high as you can. Also, try jogging slowly for about five to ten minutes and then run as fast as you can throughout the length of the soccer field. Keep at these activities for about thirty minutes.
Certainly, there are a thousand other exercises you can do to help you get in shape for soccer, but these three will give you the maximum benefit of both strength training and cardio, which are two critical exercises that help you to be effective during a game. By doing these exercises you’ll probably surprise not just yourself, but your coach and other teammates with your newfound endurance. A little secret is that you’ll probably get more playing time and avoid being the substitute because you won’t be that player needing to leave the field for a rest.
Warm-ups are the most frequent in pre-match forms of training during Soccer practice. There’s no other type of exercise a soccer player will spend more time with than the warm-up. Professional soccer players habitually spend around 30 minutes of the training sessions on a quality warm-up, because this activity has three major effects on players, effects we’ll be discussing shortly.
Preventing Injuries
Our muscles and tendons could easily become sore or injured if they are used to maximum potential without having adequate soccer warm-up drills. Our muscles work on the same principle as an elastic string. Pull it slowly and regularly, and the elastic will be able to stretch without difficulties, but pull it in one quick motion, and it might snap. (Ok, your muscles actually won’t just “snap” if you use them intensively without having a proper warm up, but there’s a good chance you might strain them or develop serious injuries)
Increasing Performance
There’s a good reason why it’s called a “warm-up”. While performing these type of exercises, you are actually building your muscles and entire body’s capacity for more action. This is because when you engage in pre-game warm-up exercises, you set muscle, heart-rate and breathing levels to the same intensity they’d be during the match, so it’s pretty easy to accommodate the variables that each match will bring!
To test this theory, you could this really simple exercise:
Get yourself thoroughly warmed up for 30 minutes using a broad range of soccer warm-up drills that work out the entire body, not just your legs. After you’re done with that, take 5-10 sprints across the width of the soccer field, and measure your heart rate to evaluate the general difficulty of each sprint.
The next day, try doing a couple of stretch exercises to prevent developing any injuries and get right to sprinting (the exact number of sprints as the day before) without doing a proper warm-up first. You’d notice that you have difficulty breathing during and between the sprints, and they will become increasingly harder to complete. In the end, your heart rate will be much faster than yesterday, meaning that your body just had a harder time adjusting to the new level of effort.
Concentration
This is closely related to the two other benefits of a quality warm-up. Recognizing that you’re thoroughly prepared for the match or training session and that there’s no risk of injury, you’ll be a lot more focused on the game, playing much better. Soccer warm-ups will also get your body primed for the rigors of the game as I explained earlier, and this has a direct effect on your ability to concentrate. Definitely, when you’re not getting fatigued or stopping to catch your breath, you can concentrate on the game, thus enhancing your performance.
That should be sufficient reason to convince you of the importance of soccer warm-up exercises. As an athlete that wants to put out the best on the soccer field, your primary concern should be getting in tip-top shape physically.
Injury Prevention for Soccer Players and fans
Although soccer can be very physical, there are defensive tips you could use to prevent an injury to yourself or others in-game.
Soccer is an intense game that can subject both players and spectators to possible injuries, some of which can be very serious. Although physical collision between players is not an intentional part of the game, accidents during a match are as much a part of the game as kicking the ball.
To a spectator, soccer might not seem like an intensely physical sport, especially when you watch how talented players glide across the pitch like gazelles on an open field. But for anyone who has been out on the soccer pitch in real competition, the likelihood of getting hurt seems inevitable. (There is probably no single soccer player out there who hasn’t either hit their bodies on the lawn, collided with opposing players or had cuts and bruises.
Thankfully, most incidents pose no serious threat to a soccer player’s physical well-being, because as all soccer parents can attest, bodily contact while playing is unavoidable. The pertinent question then is: How can we prevent the unavoidable contact between players from causing more than a few bruises?
Line of Defense
The primary line of defense for soccer players against injuries is using shin guards, the only real physical protection soccer players wear. But besides protecting the feet, shin guards offer no protection to a soccer player’s body parts. That vulnerability to injury is what makes the second consideration vital.
Potential Injury Awareness
All soccer players must be aware of the potential injuries that arise from playing the game. To a large extent, whether a player gets injured or not during a game boils down the mental attitude and awareness of one’s surroundings. That would determine whether a player finishes the game and gets off the pitch, or is carried off the pitch. Safety is a crucial issue in all types of sports that goes beyond the scope of our discussion.
Summing it up
Exercise keeps us fit and efficient on and off the pitch. For an intense sport like Soccer, it is not an optional activity for players. We also often see soccer coaches who, in their zeal to put together a winning team, spend very little time to address the team on the importance of safety. This should not be the case.
Safe play can be reinforced with pre and post-game illustrations of what happens when the wrong actions are taken or not taken and what can be done to achieve a safer outcome whenever a similar situation presents itself. Players need to understand that hazards can come from both their own actions and that of the other players on the pitch. They need to know how to avoid a charging opponent, while still maintaining control of the ball.
The most effective way to prevent injuries is to teach yourself and other players to stay conscious of safety while playing the beautiful game of soccer. Coaches will have no worries about losing their talented players due to preventable injuries on the pitch when everyone has been properly trained. We also have an inherent ability to sense danger and take the necessary action to avoiding harm to ourselves or others.
Bottom line – There’s no glory on a soccer pitch that’s worth damaging the body for. There’ll always be another day to shine when we apply good judgment at all times.
KHO Health was acquired by was acquire by 9INE POINT in the summer of 2019 and is now referred to as 9INE POINT Health.
