Are you keen to start playing soccer on a regular basis? Whether it’s your dream to play the beautiful game in a professional capacity or whether you just want to have a weekly kick about with your friends, you’re going to need to increase your fitness levels.
This is an incredibly demanding sport that will take its toll on your body. If you want to perform to the best of your ability right the way through to the final whistle of every match, you need to get yourself in great shape. Here are some of the specific workouts that you should incorporate into your exercise regime if you want to get in shape and be fit enough to handle the physical demands of soccer:
Accelerated fitness training
If your first match is looming but you don’t feel like your body is quite ready for the demands of soccer, you should embark on an accelerated fitness training program. Simply add four or five cardio workouts to your weekly fitness regime, and be sure to have a go at some plyometrics exercises that are proven to improve the performance of soccer players.
To ensure that you are constantly making progress with your accelerated training program, be sure to invest in a fitness tracking device. This will help you to accurately pinpoint what level your fitness is at while you are attempting to improve it, which in turn will allow you to step up the intensity of your program if, at any point, you don’t feel like you are making satisfactory progress.
There are plethora of fitness trackers with blood pressure measurement out there on the market today. Some of the very best devices in this field include:
- Omron Heart Guide
- ASUS VivowatchBP
- HalfSun Fitness Tracker
- MorePro Blood pressure monitor
Weight training for explosion
Once you improve your fitness levels and feel that you could last the full 90 minutes of a soccer game, it’s time to start working on your leg muscles. Soccer players need to be able to make short, sharp sprints throughout the course of each game, which is why you need to perform workouts that actively make your glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves more explosive.
Here are just a few weight workouts that will be sure to make your leg muscles far more dependable out there on the soccer pitch:
- Deadlifts
- Lateral bounds
- Good mornings
- Calf raises
- Squats (split and single-leg)
Optimum diet for soccer players
Different sports have different demands when it comes to dietary requirements. Football players and heavyweight boxers, for instance, need to bulk up in order to be able to perform their sports in peak condition. Soccer players, on the other hand, don’t necessarily need to consume a lot of food in order to perform to the best of their abilities. If you’re serious about playing this sport at a high level on a regular basis, you should look to fill your diet with ‘good carbs.’ This means eating a lot of fresh fruit, whole meal bread, and brown rice.
Are you serious about improving your chances of success on the soccer pitch? If so, be sure to put the fitness advice laid out above into practice.