Strength training for football

Geschatte leestijd: 5 minuten Strength training for soccer as a supplement to your regular soccer training can be very effective for you as a soccer player. More leg muscle strength can potentially make the difference between winning or losing a header duel. Read on to find out how strength training can be very effective for you as a soccer player.

Soccer and Strength Training

Explosive strength is especially used when, for example, you take a short sprint, jump, engage in a duel, or have to kick hard. Also, your core and leg muscles are extremely important for your balance.

Plyometric Strength

To optimize strength training for explosive sports like soccer, you need to know what adjustments to make compared to, for example, training for maximum strength or muscle mass. If we look at so-called plyometric exercises, they are not aimed at generating as much force as possible, but at generating force as quickly as possible. It’s nice if you can squat with 200 kilos, but during a soccer action, you don’t have the time to generate that force as with a squat. After all, the average soccer player doesn’t weigh 200 kilos and also doesn’t need to take their opponent on their back. So, it’s mainly about moving your own body weight as quickly and as far as possible. In the image above on the top right, you can see that in the first 200 milliseconds of a movement, much more force is generated when trained explosively. Only when a movement lasts longer than 350 milliseconds would it make sense to train with heavy weights for maximum strength. The moment when your foot makes contact with the ground during a sprint lasts, depending on how someone is trained, less than 200 milliseconds [1,2]. It is not for nothing that the shorter this moment lasts, the faster someone can sprint [1,2]. About plyometric exercises and the stretch shortening cycle, you can read more in the article “Strength Training for Combat Sports“.

Stretch Shortening Cycle

In strength training as you see happening in the gym, muscle mass is often the goal. Then it is important to minimize the involvement of the muscle attachments. After all, you want to make it as difficult as possible for the muscle so that it gets as much stimulus as possible. In explosive sports, however, you want to maximize the elastic capacity of the attachments. Instead of a normal squat with extra weight, it is more useful to turn your squat into a jumping exercise, using a relatively light weight with which you jump as high as possible. Here you then use the energy stored during the descent in the attachment and the elastic tissue of the muscle itself. You can read more about plyometric exercises and the stretch shortening cycle in the article “Strength Training for Combat Sports“.

When to Strength Train?

It may be wise to plan your strength training after your soccer training or to do it on another day, so that you have as little muscle pain or fatigue as possible during your soccer training. Also, keep in mind that it is not advisable to do heavy strength training just before an important match. After all, you want to be completely 100% fit for this important match! There are theories about so-called Postactivation Potentiation suggesting that strength training before a match can lead to better performance. However, the effect of this has remained unclear from studies. Moreover, it is difficult to determine which exercises you should do for a specific sport, with what volume, and what intensity [3 to 7]. The challenge lies in finding the right intensity to “activate” the muscles without fatiguing them too much.

1. Mero, A., Komi, P.V. & Gregor, R.J. (1992) Biomechanics of sprint running, Sports Med, 13, p. 266-274.
2. Kawamori N, Nosaka K, Newton RU. Relationships between ground reaction impulse and sprint acceleration performance in team sport athletes. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Mar;27(3):568-73. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e318257805a. PubMed PMID: 22531618.
3. Robbins, D.W. (2005). Postactivation potentiation and its practical applicability: a brief review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 19(2), 453-458.
4. GÜILLICH, A., AND D. SCHMIDTBLEICHER. MVC-induced shortterm potentiation of explosive force. N. Stud. Athletics 11(4):67–81. 1996
5. MACINTOSH, B.R. AND D.E. RASSIER, D.E. What is fatigue. Can. J Appl. Physiol. 27(1):42–55. 2002.
6. GOSSEN, E.R. AND D.G. SALE. Effect of postactivation potentiation on dynamic knee extension performance. Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. 83:524–530. 2000.
7. HRYSOMALLIS, C.AND D. KIDGELL. Effect of heavy dynamic resistive exercise on acute upper-body power. J. Strength Cond.Res. 15:426–430. 2001.

Exercises for Explosive Strength

The following exercises are mainly aimed at developing explosive strength: Box Jumps In box jumps, you try to jump from a stationary position onto a raised platform. A regular vertical jump where you don’t jump onto anything is also fine. By doing the box jump, however, you can measure your progress well by placing the platform higher each time. Vertical Jumps: Counter Movement Jump and Squat Jump In addition, there are different variations for how you jump. The Counter Movement Jump uses the stretch-shortening cycle because you first move in the opposite direction (when you bend your knees) before jumping. The squat jump trains only the explosive power of the muscles and not the stretch-shortening cycle because you do it from a standstill (from the squat position). This is therefore also called a static jump. In both cases, you can choose to involve the arms or not. To what extent the arms help you jump higher is a matter of technique that can be trained. In the case of soccer, they seem to often work half-way. They are used to initiate the movement, but are then not thrown all the way up as when jumping to touch the ceiling. This undoubtedly has to do with the fact that the arms would otherwise get in the way with the risk of fouls when hitting an opponent in the head or “handball” when hitting the ball with the arms. In addition, you will notice that intuitively you push your hands down halfway through the jump to push your head up. The advice is therefore to perform the jump training in the same way.

Exercises for General Strength (Depending on Execution)

The following exercises are more focused on overall strength, although they can be used for explosive strength by performing them plyometrically.

Squats / Leg press

A perfect exercise focused on your core stability and the strength in your legs. When squatting, it is extremely important to perform it with good technique. If you have never done strength training before, start building up your strength training slowly with the leg press.

Lunges

To give your quadriceps and legs the right stimuli, the well-known lunges are a good exercise. Notice that your jumping and kicking strength can improve through lunges! To focus more on explosiveness, you can perform them as jumping lunges by working with not too much weight and jumping as fast and high as possible from a lunge.

Plank

Most of your strength comes from your core, and a stronger core also provides better balance during duels, for example. The plank is a very effective exercise for your core muscles.

Standing or seated Calf Raises

When jumping and sprinting, your calves are an important factor. By training your calves with standing calf raises or seated calf raises, you can gain a lot of explosiveness in sprinting and jumping.

Intervaltraining/HIIT

Stay the fastest throughout the entire match? Ensure excellent conditioning through interval training or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). By training with intervals, you not only train the red, slow muscle fibers you need to keep running the entire 90 minutes as with regular cardio. By alternating periods of high intensity (such as sprints) with periods of moderate intensity (such as jogging), you ensure that the fast muscle fibers are also trained that you need for explosive actions. In a sprint interval training, you can ensure that you sprint for 1 minute at 90% of your maximum heart rate (220 minus your age), after which you can take it a bit easier for 90 seconds (at about 60%). Repeat this sprint cycle 8 times, for example, so that your conditioning improves over time. References

1. Mero, A., Komi, P.V. & Gregor, R.J. (1992) Biomechanics of sprint running, Sports Med, 13, p. 266-274.
2. Kawamori N, Nosaka K, Newton RU. Relationships between ground reaction impulse and sprint acceleration performance in team sport athletes. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Mar;27(3):568-73. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e318257805a. PubMed PMID: 22531618.
3. Robbins, D.W. (2005). Postactivation potentiation and its practical applicability: a brief review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 19(2), 453-458.
4. GÜILLICH, A., AND D. SCHMIDTBLEICHER. MVC-induced shortterm potentiation of explosive force. N. Stud. Athletics 11(4):67–81. 1996
5. MACINTOSH, B.R. AND D.E. RASSIER, D.E. What is fatigue. Can. J Appl. Physiol. 27(1):42–55. 2002.
6. GOSSEN, E.R. AND D.G. SALE. Effect of postactivation potentiation on dynamic knee extension performance. Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. 83:524–530. 2000.
7. HRYSOMALLIS, C.AND D. KIDGELL. Effect of heavy dynamic resistive exercise on acute upper-body power. J. Strength Cond.Res. 15:426–430. 2001.