Soccer
Conditioning - The 6 Elements
By
Niv
Orlian
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.
