Transcription
The new Premier League season starts this weekend, and this reminds me that these athletes are not only at the top level technically but physically as well. I played Varsity soccer/football in high school, and not only did I not understand the importance of strength training for performance, but I also had no idea how to do it because it seems so complicated, and there's not great information online. This inspired me to make this video where I teach you how to strength train for soccer in an easy-to-understand way.
If you don't know who I am, my name is Martine Rios. I have a Bachelor of Science in exercise science, and because I'm here to make finish grade again, I'll be teaching you how to strength train for soccer in an easy-to-understand way to where you can maximize performance. Before I teach you how to do this, if you're actually looking for programs to maximize your athletic performance, be sure to check out my 120-day Peak athleticism package. In this subscription, you'll get monthly programs to make sure that you're constantly progressing and obviously maximizing your athletic capabilities. But if you're someone who thinks they benefit more from one-on-one coaching, I just launched one-on-one coaching. The links for both of these will be in the description.
The first thing I want to start off with is training frequency. Training frequency is so much simp for bodybuilders because, let's be honest, the gym is their entire life, and they don't have to balance their gym workouts with anything else. But for soccer/football players, you have to balance your gym workouts with skills training. Training frequency will vary depending on what point of the Season you're currently in. In the offseason, you can resistance train up to six times per week. Preseason, the frequency should be more like three to four times per week, and in-season, you should be training about two to three times per week to maintain the adaptations you built prior to the season. In my opinion, three times per week is a sweet spot because you have enough volume to make sure you're getting the most out of your workout routine, but you also have more than enough time to make sure you get your fair share of skills training in.
When it comes to what you train on those days, depending on how you structure your workouts, you can have a full power day and then other weightlifting days, or you can train power with resistance training. It really depends on what you prefer and how much time you have. Now that I got the training frequency out of the way, I want to discuss the purpose of weightlifting for soccer/football and just sports in general because I swear there's a huge misconception in the fitness Community about what weightlifting for sport should really be. The first thing is that weightlifting is not meant to replace skills training. It's crazy, but so many people think that lifting weights is what actually makes you a great player, and this is a big reason why so many people think that weightlifting for sports has to look exactly like the sport, and that's probably what the Barcelona team thinks because look at how they're training. I mean, for some reason, they think they have to add a soccer ball to their weightlifting routines, which makes no sense. And then there's this weird thing where they use a plate like a racket and hit a ball. I mean, at this point, there's no point of doing on-field work because apparently every single exercise in the gym has to use a soccer ball and look exactly like the sport, and that's not the purpose of weightlifting for sports. They're both two separate things. Again, sports-specific training doesn't have to look exactly like the sport. Sports-specific training is done in an environment that closely replicates the environment that the sport is played in and is meant to enhance athletic quality so that you can perform skills at a higher level. This is why I keep saying that the Barcelona team adding a soccer ball to exercises is so dumb because the purpose of weightlifting is to boost athletic qualities so that you can perform skills at a higher level, but you develop those skills during actual skills training. Another example is running. If you strengthen your legs, you get better at running, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your exercises in the gym have to look exactly like running. And most importantly, if you're not going out there and actually running, regardless of what you do in the gym, you're not going to get better at running.
The other purpose of weightlifting for soccer/football is for it to not get in the way of skills training because skills training will always be the priority. How you actually get good at the sport is not by lifting weights but actually being a very skillful technical player, so skills training should always be the priority, so weight lifting should not get in the way of skills training but complement it. So your weightlifting session should not make you overly sore or overly fatigued to where it affects your skills training because, like I said before, that's where you actually become a better player.
And now on the actual strength training exercises, and the first category will be upper body exercises. There is a huge misconception that soccer players should not be training upper body exercises. I a couple videos about soccer/football players doing upper body exercises, and then there's a supposed kn-- all saying soccer players shouldn't be training upper body; they don't have to use their upper bodies. And obviously, these people are so dumb; they don't understand that they're exposing the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about. I'll say it now: just because you play soccer/foot doesn't mean you shouldn't train your upper body. And if you still don't believe me, there are so many examples of elite soccer/foot players training their upper body. Here's the best player in the Premier League, Cole Palmer, doing a shoulder press. Here are center backs Ben White and Levi CW doing a bench press, with Ben White bench pressing 80 kg and Levi CW bench pressing 140 lb, and these are pretty good numbers, so you know that they're doing these exercises pretty consistently to where they're able to push this much weight. And while those are examples of top soccer/football players doing pushing exercises, here is the goat, Lionel Messi, doing chin-ups, and he's loading this exercise up as well, which again shows that he does this exercise on a consistent basis to where he's able to progress to using a chain and not just his body weight. So obviously, the top players in the world are training upper body, but you may be wondering what is the purpose of training upper body, and that's a good ass question. Having great upper body strength will help players in physical duels, whether it's trying to maintain possession or trying to gain possession. And believe it or not, having a strong upper body helps players run faster as well. I mean, there's a reason why sprinters have jacked upper bodies as well. A strong upper body helps propel the body forward, maintain balance and good posture, which allows for a more efficient stride leading to greater overall speed and decreased chance of injury.
Now that you know the importance of training upper body for soccer/football, you may be wondering what exercises should I include. When it comes to how athletes train upper body, athletes train movements, not muscles. So unlike bodybuilders, you want to structure your upper body workouts based on movements, and you want to make sure you're hitting all the foundational upper body human movements, which includes a horizontal push, which is a bench press like Ben White and Levi Cobo were doing; a vertical push, which is an overhead press like Cole Palmer was doing; a horizontal pull, like a row variation; and a vertical pull, like a chin-up, which is what Messi was doing. When it comes to all these movements, make sure you're hitting a variety. This is because you don't want to master exercises; you want to master movements. So I can promise you now, Messi is not just doing chin-ups; he's adding in some pull-ups, likely as well as neutral grip pull-ups. Same thing with Ben White and Levi Cobo; in the horizontal push, they're probably doing barbell bench press and even some incline bench pressing. You get the picture. Make sure you're doing a variety of different exercises for each respective movement. When it comes to exercise selection for all these movements, you preferably want to do free weights and do them standing up. While adding in an exercise sitting down or using machines won't hurt you, you do want to prioritize ground-based free weight exercises. Free weights are better than machines for upper body as they will help develop scapular and shoulder stability while you're pushing and pulling. This is very important for sports as not only will it decrease the chance of a shoulder injury, but since real life is not a fixed range of motion like a machine, you'll have to stabilize yourself in real life, so you should be doing the same thing in the gym so that you can produce the maximum amount of force outside the gym. And you should also prioritize standing exercises like a shoulder press, barbell row, and even a pull-up technically. And I'll go into greater depth later about the importance of core stability.
Now that you know how to train your upper body for maximum performance, now we're on to the lower body, which a lot of you will be emphasizing because soccer is obviously played with your feet. It's obviously so important for soccer/football players to have great leg strength, so obviously you got to train your legs. Having great leg strength will help with jumping for headers, running (especially because soccer/football players run a lot), and changing direction. Just like upper body, you're training movements, not muscles, so you're going to want to make sure you're training the foundational human leg movements. The Squat and the lunge will primarily hit the quads, glutes, and adductors, and just like the upper body movements, you want to make sure you're doing a variety of different Squat and lunge variations, with my favorite squat variations being a barbell squat, zerker squat, front squat, and even goblet squat, and my favorite lunge exercises being any sort of lunge variation or split squat variation. You may be thinking, well, if the squat and the lunge hit the same muscles, what's the point of doing both? This is because doing unilateral leg work is so, so important. The majority of sports skills, which obviously include soccer/foot, are done on one leg, so you want to make sure that you're training that so you have the adequate amount of balance and stability to do those movements. So many people squat but ignore lunging, so make sure you do some sort of unilateral leg exercise. And the last foundational leg movement is the hinge. The hinge is similar to the squat/lunge, but it has a far greater emphasis on the hip extensor, so the glutes and hamstrings, and again, you want to make sure you're doing a variety of different variations with hinge exercises, including any sort of deadlift variation, whether it's with a barbell or a trap bar, and then any sort of RDL variation. I would say to make sure you include a single-leg RDL from time to time because, like I said before, balance and stability are so important, especially because the majority of leg movements are done on one leg, so this exercise will translate very well onto the pitch. And the last bonus exercise I do like to include for soccer/football players are a thrust variation. The thrust technically doesn't count as a foundational human movement, but I do think it's great to include, and there are also a ton of top soccer/football players who do include it, so you probably should be too. Just like the hinge, the thrust has a large emphasis on the hip extensors, but it has greater emphasis on the glutes, while the hinge has greater emphasis on the hamstrings. The best thrust variations, in my opinion, are a barbell thrust and a single-leg thrust. And just like the upper body exercises, you want to prioritize standing free exercises so that you develop the balance, stability, and core strength needed for soccer.
And now to the most important muscle group for sports, in my opinion, and that's the core. And luckily for you, if you're doing ground-based free exercises, which I told you to do earlier, you're actually going to be hitting the core really well. But core stability is so important that extra work is very beneficial. When it comes to football/soccer, core ability plays a large role in physical duels, but it plays an even greater role in force and power production. When you are playing soccer/football and pretty much any sport, you're always going to be doing it standing up, and when you're trying to generate force while standing up, the limiting factor is always going to be core stability. This is why I always say bodybuilders are super weak because they do every exercise on a machine and sitting down. Hearing this, you probably realize that having a stronger core will lead to you being far stronger in other movements. In order to develop the core, just like the upper and lower body, you want to hit the foundational movements, and in this case, you want to hit the foundational trunk movements, and this includes trunk flexion, like a sit-up; trunk lateral flexion, like some sort of side bend; trunk rotation, like a rotation exercise obviously; and trunk extension, like a back extension. But you also want to make sure that you're obviously gaining better core ability because those are dynamic exercises, so you want to make sure you're getting better at resisting all these movements, so you want to make sure you do anti-extension movements, anti-flexion movements, anti-rotation movements, and anti-lateral flexion movements. If I had to pick one of these movements that you should prioritize, it would be rotation and anti-rotation. This is because ground-based free exercises don't work the core in the transverse plane very well, AKA rotation, so you should prioritize training anti-rotation with something like a Pallof press and training rotation through all the different angles, so side to side, high to low, and low to high.
All these traditional exercises I just talked about are great for improving strength, but not the best option for improving power. And while strength is very important, power is even more important. And while strength does lead to a higher potential for power, you want to make sure that you are powerful. Contrary to popular belief, power and strength are different things. Strength is essentially the most amount of force you can produce; power is your ability to produce lots of force quickly, which is why it's commonly known as high-speed strength or explosive strength. And power is so important because sports movements happen too quickly to produce maximal force. If you think about a one-rep max squat, they're pretty freaking slow. Do you have that much time in a football match to produce that much force? No, you obviously don't, which is why power is so important, so you're able to produce lots of force quickly for football/soccer. Obviously, leg power is the name of the game, which is why you need to incorporate plyometrics to develop your power. Not only are you using far less weight so you can actually produce force quickly, but unlike these traditional exercises, you're able to keep accelerating through the release point, whereas with standard gym equipment, you will naturally decelerate towards the top of the movement. It's like in a squat; you're naturally going to decelerate towards the top, while if you're jumping, you're obviously accelerating through the top, which is why you end up in the air. When it comes to lower body plyometrics, I like to separate them out into different categories to make sure that I'm hitting everything. I like to include some sort of horizontal power, like a broad jump; vertical power, like a box jump; some sort of loaded jump, like a trap bar jump; and again, make sure you're not using too much weight so you're actually able to get in the air and accelerate; some sort of single-leg jump jump; and a lateral jump because sports aren't done in one plane of motion. And while many plyometric exercises do involve multiple of these, just make sure you're working on all of them.
Everything I just talked about should make up the majority of your lifting routine, but there are important accessory exercises that you should likely include in your routine to prevent injury. The accessory exercises I like to include are for vulnerable spots for injury, and many of you can probably get this, but the first are the hamstrings. The hamstrings are frequently injured in football/soccer. I still remember when Con pulled his hamstring, and that was super heartbreaking, so direct hamstring work is very beneficial, and all you got to do is do direct knee flexion work, with Nordic curls and stability ball hamstring curls being some of my favorites. And the last is direct adductor work because many soccer players will pull their groin during the season, with one of my favorite exercises for direct adductor work being a Copenhagen plank variation. And while these are two of my favorite accessory exercises for football/soccer players, accessory exercises are pretty player-specific, so if there's a specific area where you find yourself being more injury-prone or you just find to be a weak spot, you should include an exercise to strengthen that area in your routine. When it comes to rep ranges for these exercises, for power, I like to keep it at around five reps, just make sure you're doing each exercise as fast and as powerful as possible. And when it comes to strength training exercises, if I'm focusing more on conditioning, I'll keep it to 8 to 15 reps, but if I'm more focused on strength, I'll keep it at four to six reps. And that's a simple guide on how to train for maximum performance for football/soccer. If you're interested in the differences between how a bodybuilder and how an athlete works out, be sure to check out this video.