Soccer Fitness Training - How To Do It

Often called "The Beautiful Game", football, or soccer if you're from the United States, is unquestionably the most popular sport in the world.

It started with George Best in the 1960's, and now Soccer is the new rock and roll of our time with multi-million pound paydays, glamorous celebrity lifestyles and worldwide acclaim on offer for its top exponents. Sponsors and TV Companies also profit massively from the world-wide demand for the game and its domination of our TV Screens and popular culture shows no signs of flagging.

Not surprisingly therefore, how to actually train a soccer player to produce the goods on the pitch is big business for the coaches who know how. As an avid football fan for over 25 years I'm going to explain the best conditioning exercises currently known for the different player positions. I am not going to discuss ball control here because that is a separate topic:

The Goalkeeper

The Goalie has to go from a still position suddenly into a quick explosive movement. Powerlifting, reaction training and plyometrics should therefore be the mainstay of the training regime. A controlled low fat diet should also improve agility making it easier for the keeper to span the width of the goal at breakneck speed when required.

The Defender

Similar to the Keeper, the defender needs explosive bursts of energy and good reactions and agility. They also ideally need to be physically bigger to intimidate and impose themselves on the attacking strikers but still be able to run fast enough to keep up with them. Fullbacks need full body strength training but a high protein / low carbohydrate diet to avoid putting on too much weight which could slow them down. Reaction training is also a must here.

The Mid-Fielder

Mid-fielders need to do interval training interspersing sprints with longer runs to improve both their basic fitness and explosive power as they will need both to get them through 90 minutes of what will be a lot of running around (more so than with any other player position). Power lifting to achieve full body strength (but again not at the expense of speed) should also feature prominently to give extra authority to the tackles that will need to be made.

The Striker

Forwards need to train for speed and agility pure and simple. This means factoring in explosive twists and turns into their workouts. They also need good general fitness so they can run at a slower speed for longer periods of time to keep up with the pace of the game and stay in contention to capitalise on any opportunities that are created.

Conclusion

These tips are just general guidelines and obviously will need to be tweaked to fit the individual requirements of different athletes but hopefully the underlying principles should be clear. The more progress a player makes the more individualised his or her training can become.

It is important that any unique physical characteristics of a footballer (e.g. an unusually tall player) be taken into account when initially forming a training program and it is also important to constantly re-evaluate the training methods to find the right 'fit' for that particular individual.

To use an analogy from Boxing: behind every great fighter there is a great trainer. The best boxers in history often had very unconventional techniques but had trainers who recognised their particular talents and structured the training to allow for this. Muhammed Ali did everything wrong from a boxing textbook point of view but his trainer, Angelo Dundee, recognised his genius and allowed him to express himself in training, taking a much more 'hands off' approach than other boxing trainers of the day.

So perhaps the rule should be that there are no definitive 'hard and fast' rules but that if you combine the above basic principles with a flexible approach then the foundation for success can be achieved.

Gary Evans has been an avid football supporter for over 25 years. If you found the above information on soccer training useful, you can learn a lot more about how the world's elite players and coaches train for their soccer matches by clicking here: http://tinyurl.com/kqgdg

The Soccer Ball - An Ageless Entertainment

It is said that thousands of years ago, South American Indians already kicked an elasticized ball for fun. They used things such as heads, skulls, stitched up cloth and pig or cow bladders. The Chinese played "tsu chu" where animal skin balls were dribbled through gaps in a net stretched between two poles. The actual soccer ball only came after a few thousand years. Ancient Egyptian rites are said to have similarities with soccer, and both the ancient Greeks and Romans also played a game that entailed carrying and kicking a ball.

The more irregular the bladders used as balls were, the more unpredictable was its behavior. After Charles Goodyear patented vulcanized rubber, he designed the first rubber soccer ball (football). It was only in the twentieth century that rubber bladders were began to be used in most balls. In 1862 Lindon developed one of the first rubber bladders for balls, probably inspired because of the ill effects of blowing animal bladders, after his wife died of lung disease.

The soccer ball is an air filled sphere with a circumference of 68-70 cm, weight 210-250 g, covered in leather or other suitable material. Most of the modern balls are stitched with 32 panels of water proof leather or plastic and the colors are usually black and white. Over the years balls have become lighter. Older Balls were usually stitched with 18 oblong leather panels. The problem is that these balls were very heavy. Though in the last world cup in 2006 the ball is stitched with 14 panels and the colour isn't the usual black and white. By reducing the amount of panels used the more accurate a shot with that ball will be, because with the fewer the amount of panels the more perfect the circumference becomes.

The black and white colors on the soccer ball were defined so that it could be seen better on monochrome televisions, but in cases like playing in the snow the soccer balls have different colours such as yellow or orange. The soccer ball used in the World Cup 2006 final is golden with white and black details. Some soccer ball brands are developing new technologies such as using foam as part of the composition of the ball or even having rings so that goalkeepers can determine the spin of the ball.

Nowadays there are many brands that make soccer balls, amongst which are the famous ones such as Adidas, Nike, Mitre, etc. About 80% of the association soccer balls are made in Pakistan, and 75% of these are made in the city of Sialkot.

As soccer is the most popular sport in the world you can find a soccer ball almost in every place on the planet. It doesn't matter if it's called football, soccer, fussball, futebol or f?tbol, one will always find some soccer ball being kicked around, even in countries were the sport isn't as popular as in Brazil, Argentina, England, or Germany. Soccer balls are even used in peace campaigns, with special games as on with team with players from Palestine and Israel, playing side by side in a same team united by the same soccer ball.

Get all the latest in Soccer know how from the one and only true source at http://www.SoccerDetails.com. Be sure to check our soccer ball pages.

Soccer Training Tapes - Learning Goal Keeping Skills

Soccer training tapes can be an effective mean to train the players various soccer skills, such as goal keeping. The task of a goalkeeper is fun and exciting in a different way.

However, if the team has good offensive skills, the task may sound boring because the opponent in that case gets fewer chance to attack and reach the goal. This reduces the role of the goalkeeper.

But still, the goalkeeper has the most crucial role to play in a game and when the opponent team attempts to shoot and score a goal, the goal keeper will have to do his best to prevent the goal. Overall, since the goalkeeper?s task is much different from other players, the coach needs to train him in a different way.

Pulling The Ball Tightly Into The Body

The goalkeeper is the only player who is allowed to use their hands to catch the ball. But, when they attempt catching the ball, they should pull the ball tightly into the body in order to ensure the possession of the ball. The coach must provide various training tapes to the goalkeepers.

When they will watch again and again, how to catch the ball while pulling it tightly in the body, they will be able to do it efficiently. Training tapes can play a very important role for the goalkeepers.

If you are coaching the younger players, instead of teaching them to pull the ball, you should teach them to cuddle the ball on the ground. But, while doing so, they should keep their body in front of the ball in a way that their shins, knees and feet could also help stop the ball.

The ?W? And The ?Heart? Way To Handle The Ball

?W? and ?Heart? are the terms used to define two hand positions to handle the ball in a better way. ?W? is the ideal way for the smaller hands. In this method, the goalkeeper has to place the tip of their thumbs together, with their palms toward the ball and fingers pointing upwards.

On the other hand, the ?Heart? is an ideal way for the bigger hands. In this method, the goalkeeper has to place the tips of the thumbs and the tips of the forefingers together.

In order to get a better understanding of the goalkeeping techniques, the coach must supply sufficient soccer training tapes to the goalies.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority on the subject of soccer training tapes. His web site, Youth Soccer Drills, provides a wealth of informative soccer articles, resources and tips for soccer coaches, parents and players.