SOCCER OFF SEASON TRAINING

The beautiful game is extremely demanding and is dependent upon many different athletic qualities.  Speed, agility, power, quickness, flexibility, strength, and aerobic and anaerobic capacity are all qualities that must be trained to perform at a high level in the sport.  The off-season is the primary time to train to improve physically and tactically for a given sport. During off season, most people usually do nothing, and have to start from scratch by the time the season rolls around. Off season training and conditioning is one of the most essential components of being a good player and also a good teammate. 

The American game is also becoming increasingly more physical due to the role of strength training in this country.  Strength training plays a huge role in increasing the ability to produce force and ultimately power but also in reducing the chance of injury. By improving your ability to produce force and capacity to do work, there is an increased potential for you to carry over the force produced to the actual game which can translate into moving faster and at a higher rate, becoming more explosive and making movement much more efficient.  Strength training should be balanced and focus on developing all areas of the body to reduce the chance of injury.  Nutritional education should also be incorporated into the off-season to ensure recovery between training sessions and improvements in body composition can be made. Nutrition is very important and I sometimes fall prey into not caring about how I nourish my body during the off season. The other area of off-season training that is often overlooked but may be the most important is mental conditioning.  My coaches always stress the importance of mental conditioning and emotional intelligence even though it is often overlooked. To make great athletic gains requires a great amount of effort and physical and mental discomfort.  This requires you to challenge your comfort level and also to push your levels of threshold.      I use a program called PP10 to help me prepare for the upcoming season, and it includes, conditioning, strength training, and agility movements. The conditioning part of the program is geared towards improving both aerobic and anaerobic capacity to enhance soccer specific conditioning.  General means of conditioning are emphasized first to build a base and ensure that the body is prepared to handle more intensive conditioning later in the program.  Tempo runs done between 75-85% of max over a time between 15-45 seconds form the bulk of the general phase of conditioning.  The rest is typically two times the work interval (i.e work for 20 seconds, rest for 40 seconds).  Repetitions start at 10 and progress up to 20 over the course of 4 weeks.  This base phase then progresses to maximum intensity shuttles runs.  A shuttle is sprint that is done over an interval that requires a change in direction (i.e. 100 yd shuttle done at 25 yd intervals means to run back and forth over 25 yards two times).  The distances can be manipulated for each specific position or can be generalized amongst the entire team.  Repetitions will vary based upon the distance but a general recommendation is to start between 500-600 yards and progress up to performing close to 1000 total yards. Doing core based workouts are one of the most important components of fitness to help you get ready for the upcoming season. Players usually hate doing core workouts but it is essential for fitness. Doing simple 5 to 10 minutes core exercises will help you in running, and winning fifty to fifty balls on the ground and in the air.  You should incorporate some strength training sessions that will help make you an all around complete athlete. The strength training is based upon ground based movements, free weights, body-weight, movements, multi-planar, varying speeds and loads, eliminating weak links, and increasing lean mass. You can do a program that is performed three days a week and broken down into a lower body day, upper body day and a total body day.  The lower body day isn't completely lower body as upper body pulling and intrinsic shoulder work (scapulae stabilization and rotator cuff endurance) are incorporated into these days. You could organize a training session with your team and you could do all of these activities with them to make sure you're all fit. To conclude your training session, I suggest that you do some type of team building activity such as squat holds, split squat holds, plate pushes, or a shoulder circuit.  Then some sort of recovery modality is implemented, either static stretching or foam rolling.    This type of program has personally helped me a lot, and worked extremely well in terms of improving strength, power, speed, conditioning and reducing the chance of injury.  I strictly advice that as more conditioning and practice is introduced, the volume of lower body work must be reduced.  I have noticed that if the lower body volume is consistent while increasing conditioning has a detrimental effect upon lower body strength expression and ultimately the ability to be fast and explosive and this fact is backed up by research done on athletes at the collegiate level.  Fatigue masks fitness and all factors must be considered when performance is decreasing, so please keep yourself motivated and make sure to fight against staying in your comfort zone..  903