Sports Performance Archives

Offseason training

This article was provided by Training & Conditioning

By Alex Buchman,

Ever since I started working with the University of South Carolina women’s soccer team six years ago, I’ve been studying the game. This has led me to seek the input of experts from some of the top teams in the world, including the Seattle Sounders of Major League Soccer and the German Men’s National Team.

With their assistance and advice, I’ve developed a comprehensive offseason strength and conditioning plan. The offseason comprises the meat of our training, and it runs for about seven months from January through the summer.

During this period, we keep the demands of the sport in mind at all times. There is a reason for every lift and exercise that we implement, and we avoid adding to the existing stressors of the game by carefully monitoring each athlete.

When it all comes together, the results show up on the field. We won back-to-back Southeastern Conference regular season titles in 2016 and 2017. And since 2013, we’ve made the NCAA Division I Tournament every year — with a quarterfinal appearance in 2016 and a semifinal berth in 2017.

Guiding principles

Learning from other soccer strength coaches has influenced my own coaching philosophy. There are two pieces to it.

The first part involves enabling athletes to move well. Too often, I see players who are poor movers. They struggle with basic bodyweight movements, yet have participated in full-on weightlifting programs before.

If one of our athletes can’t perform the basics correctly, we work to fix the problem first and progress from there. For example, if a player has never squatted before, the last thing I would have her do is the back squat. This does not mean that she would stick with bodyweight movements forever. Once she gained a clear understanding of the squatting motion, we would add in a goblet squat as her first variation and advance accordingly.

The second component of my philosophy is establishing relationships with coaches and athletes. Head Coach Shelley Smith and Associate Head Coach Jamie Smith have been tremendous in not only allowing me to work with their program, but in helping me grow as a sports performance professional. From the start, they gave me the opportunity to dictate the strength training for their team, which really spoke volumes about the trust they had in me. To further build their trust, I became a sponge and absorbed as much information as I could about the foundation their program was built on.

» RELATED: Strategies to develop the ‘total soccer player’

With players, I try to connect in a way that allows them to trust me to do my job. This is one of the hardest, yet most rewarding, parts of this profession. I want to be someone they can come to when they need something, but also someone who is going to push them to be their best day in and day out.

To build this kind of relationship with athletes, I talk to them on a daily basis, and it’s not always about soccer. Sometimes I ask how their classes are going or talk with them the day after a match to see how they feel. This helps me get to know them on a personal level and understand some of the outside pressures they are facing.

Winter session

I take both pieces of my philosophy into our offseason programming, which kicks off in January. During this five-week phase, I train the team four or five days a week.

Soccer is an anterior-dominated, high-intensity sport that requires a lot of explosive and powerful movements. In order for players to compete effectively, we need to build a good base of strength in the winter.

Starting out, the team lifts three days a week, and the sessions are broken down into lower-body, upper-body, and full-body days. Our goal is to build better athletes in the weight room so they can be coached at the highest level possible when they get onto the field.

Because the athletes are not playing much soccer in the early offseason, we can load them anteriorly. For this reason, front squatting is a big focus during the winter. I am a huge fan of front squats because they allow us to activate the hamstrings in a full range of motion, strengthen knee stability and develop great core strength.

Single-leg training is also a significant component of our winter lifts. Soccer requires a lot of single-leg demand, and it is important to limit the deficiencies from one leg to the other. We’ll include Bulgarian split squats, single-leg Romanian dead lifts, step ups, single-leg hypers and sit-to-stands, to name a few. Other lifts used in the winter are back squats, overhead squats, glute-ham raises, barbell forward and reverse lunges, hang cleans, hang power cleans, and hang snatches.

We condition two times per week in January. Most of our conditioning at this time emphasizes form, technique, and basic linear speed patterns. We want the players to first become more efficient runners before adding speed. In addition to these basics, we incorporate some acceleration/deceleration drills to prepare players’ bodies for the next phase.

Spring season

Once the spring playing season gets underway in February, the team practices four or five days a week, so we drop to lifting and conditioning two days a week. We follow this schedule for the next 10 to 12 weeks. Although the team has games in the spring, we still want to take complete advantage of this stage from a performance standpoint. If there is a match or tournament, the intensity stays the same, but we lighten the load with some of our lifting and conditioning.

We also back off from front squatting when we move to more daily soccer activities, as the athletes get more stress anteriorly from playing. This goes back to the importance of knowing the stresses of the sport and not adding to them.

Another piece of our spring programming is fatigue training. “Getting comfortable being uncomfortable” is a motto for us, and the players must be able to maintain correct technique in everything they do while in a fatigued state. There might be some days when they do not feel 100%, and that is when they have to push through. We want them to understand what it feels like to be tired but know they can perform one more run, one more set, or one final sprint.

Once the spring season wraps up, we give the athletes a two- to three-week period that is a lot lighter and designed to keep them off of their feet. During this phase, cross training is the main form of conditioning.

Summer slate

When the athletes finish the spring season, there is naturally some muscle loss. So once the summer rolls around, the programming is very similar to our winter session in that we aim to build the players’ strength levels back up.

May has a bit more of this weight room focus again, with a couple of conditioning days mixed in. Like the setup we used in January, there is a three-day split of upper-, lower- and full-body days. We also add in explosive and power training.

In June, we move to two days of lifting with three days of conditioning per week. Both lifting days are full-body workouts.

Aerobic conditioning is the biggest emphasis for June, as this is the time where we want to “fill the tank up.” The higher aerobic capacity an athlete has, the quicker she is able to recover. We mix this up using a lot of tempo and Fartlek-style runs.

There also is an anaerobic portion to our summer work, and it intensifies through June and July. We include speed and power sprinting segments during each session, which could consist of five to 40-yard runs.

I think the most neglected form of training in many soccer programs is high-speed sprinting, so this is something we focus on in our summer conditioning. Linear sprinting and speed are the bases for all our drills starting out, and there is some form of sprinting during each workout, with an emphasis on speed toward the beginning of the week.

Once we have the linear component down, we add in some change-of-direction elements. This helps prepare the athletes for when we progress to shuttle runs and other drills in which they are required to change direction.

Using data

No matter what stage of the offseason we are in, athlete monitoring always plays a big part. Our primary tools are Firstbeat Sports’ heart rate monitoring system and wellness questionnaires.

This is our fourth year partnering with Firstbeat. It has been a great boost for us because it takes the guesswork out of any metric we want to target. We use it to monitor individual and team training loads — including heart rate variability and stress/recovery levels — during training sessions, fitness sessions, and matches. In the offseason, this allows us to track our players and how they are improving.

Whenever the system is in use, I watch the Firstbeat dashboard and note anything that stands out. Then, we develop a unique profile for each player based on her physiology. As a result, training becomes more personal, and proper training dosages are managed with precision.

Both our coaches and athletes appreciate the individualization and customization we are able to achieve with heart rate monitoring. After every session where we use the system, I meet with the sport coaches and go over the numbers. This enables them to make actionable decisions, and my constant communication helps them buy into the process.

» RELATED: Maintaining endurance during the offseason

The players want to feel like they can train as well as possible while avoiding activities that are going to seriously fatigue them, and heart rate monitoring addresses both needs. By tracking players’ training loads, we can ensure they recover after each session. We can also use the data as a motivational tool to push for more when possible.

Besides heart rate monitoring, all of our athletes fill out daily wellness surveys. I look at them every day to see how the players are responding to training. If I need to make an adjustment, the surveys help me decide where.

Although I think sports science is great, it’s easy to get carried away with it. To avoid this, it’s important to have a full understanding of the team identity before implementing a monitoring component.

For me, this means understanding the style that the coaches want to play, the demands of each position on the field, and the athletes at those positions. If I hadn’t done the work beforehand to get a good grasp on these areas, it would have been hard to track any sort of physical trends with the monitoring data. Instead, we would have had a bunch of numbers with no specific meaning.

Our athlete monitoring initiatives have been invaluable, as has our offseason training, but the real success of our program goes back to the people in it. It starts at the top with Shelley and Jamie, along with their vision. The synergy among us as a staff helps us work very well together. Plus, we have an unbelievable group of student-athletes who have bought into everything we want to do. The athletes understand the expectations of our program and embrace the process to achieve all of their goals. It is very fun to come to work each day.

Alex Buchman, MS, USAW, is Assistant Director of Sports Performance at the University of South Carolina, where he has spent the past six years training the women’s soccer team. He also works with men’s and women’s tennis. Buchman can be reached at: [email protected]

Strength Training for Young Athletes: Building a Foundation

This article was provided by Training and Conditioning

By Angelo Gingerelli

Angelo Gingerelli,MEd, MBA, is Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coordinator at Seton Hall University and has held similar positions at Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, and with the Pittsburgh Pirates. His duties at Seton Hall include all aspects of training and conditioning for baseball, men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball, swimming and diving, cross country and men’s and women’s golf, and he also serves as an adjunct professor.

Most sport coaches understand the importance of strength training and the role it plays in making athletes bigger, faster, stronger and more injury resistant. But many are unsure what to do once they get the team in the weight room. This problem is compounded when dealing with athletes with very low “training ages” (experience weight training) that may never have even entered a strength facility before.

Here are a few things that sport coaches dealing with younger or untrained populations can address early in an athlete’s development that will build a foundation for continued success in the weight room and on the field of play.

Flexibility

Unfortunately, most young athletes have limited flexibility and range of motion. There are many factors that contribute to this, such as poor posture, too much time sitting and early specialization. The earlier you address this, the better your athletes will respond to all other aspects of training.

Start each session with a general warmup to increase heart rate, respiration rate and core body temperature. Then address the flexibility of all joints and muscle groups. This doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Staple movements like leg swings, bodyweight squats, lunges, and mountain climber stretches are great for beginners and you can make the stretches and movements more complex as they increase their proficiency in the basics.

Body weight control

It’s shocking how many kids we deem “good athletes” that can’t properly do a pushup, pullup or bodyweight squat. The earlier you address these basic movements, the sooner they can make a smooth transition to effectively using implements like barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells.

» ALSO SEE: Emphasizing safety in the weight room

“Classic” or “old school” exercises like pushups and pullups, and the progression to proper technique, are critical to helping young athletes build proficiency at weight training. For example, if somebody is struggling with pullups, a progression of inverted rows, assisted/banded pullups, spotted pullups, and then actual pullups will not only increase posterior chain strength, but will set the foundation for more complicated back exercises to be learned later and instill a sense of pride about their efficacy in the weight room.

Foundation movements

If the athlete can reasonably control their bodyweight, it’s time to start introducing movements that will be the foundation of your program. Picking one lower body push, one lower body pull, one upper body push, and one upper body pull — and making sure your players are great at those before introducing anything else — creates a strong foundation for both the athletes and your program. I have found that the back squat, Romanian dead lift (RDL), barbell bench press, and pullups are good starting places for collegiate athletes, but depending on the actual age and training age of your team, adjustments may need to be made.

Core stability

Lack of core stability is an issue for most young people. This weakness prevents them from achieving their full potential in resistance training and in sports. Addressing core stability with a mixture of flexion (sit-ups, crunches), extension (super-mans, hyperextensions), bracing (planks, holds), and leg dominant movements (leg raises, hanging knee raises) during every session will help young athletes develop the foundation for successful weight training.

Important rules

When working with young athletes, coaches should establish some absolutes and never deviate from them. Teaching young people these training principles will impact their life after they’ve left your program or competitive sports. Below are a few I think are valuable.

Safety first. Principles like using collars on bars, having a spotter for any potentially dangerous movement, wearing proper attire/footwear, and never sacrificing technique for more weight on the bar are ideas everyone should acknowledge.
Without effort, there are no results. There has never been more information available about how to train or more specialized equipment available to train effectively, but none of this will matter without the effort of the person training. You don’t need thousands of dollars’ worth of wearable technology or the most scientifically engineered treadmill to put effort in at the gym and see results.
Quality over quantity. Five good reps are better than 50 bad reps. In addition, sacrificing technique for bragging rights or to over inflate an ego is a recipe for disaster.
Your biggest competition is yourself. Sports are about competition and we love competitive athletes, but this can get dangerous in the weight room. There are dozens of reasons why one athlete is stronger than another (body type, muscle fiber proportion, limb length, training age). While we should foster healthy competition under some circumstances, as coaches we should focus more time and energy on making our players better than they were yesterday.

Agility Training: Cone Drills

Agility is a key component of any strength and conditioning program for soccer players.

In this post you will see two simple cone drills that help to teach footwork and body position. These drills are easily adaptable and can be used in training a wide variety of athletes.

In the clip below Patrick McHenry, Strength and Conditioning Coach at Castle View High School, demonstrates two agility drills that he uses. One for baseball players and one for basketball players. Both drill could easily be used for athletes that play other sports. They are not necessarily sport-specific.

Coach McHenry’s drills are just two of the drills he shared at a recent Glazier Athletic Performance Clinic. His entire presentation entitled Developing Speed and Agility includes multiple agility drills that utilize ropes, ladders and cones. For information about how to gain access to Coach McHenry’s entire presentation, as well as hundreds of other presentation from some of the top strength and conditioning coaches from around the county, click the link Glazier Clinics Soccer Vault

The video below has sound, so please make sure your volume is turned up. Click the arrow to play the video.

Foot Speed and Coordination with Jump Rope

This post was provided by Training-Conditioning

By Mike Gentry

We all want athletes that are flexible and mobile. We want them to have the ability to bend and play with leverage. We also hope that they are coordinated and can quickly get their feet into the best positions for balance and positions of power.

I believe that if we teach our athletes, through practice, to make their feet do what their minds want them to do, that there will be positive carryover. Do they need to practice the specific foot patterns relative to their position and sport? Yes, of course. However, if you take the opportunity to have your athletes work on their foot speed and coordination before every strength and conditioning session for five minutes, I will promise you that as a team you’ll be amazed at their athletic improvement. The results of the time spent working on foot speed drills will also include better anaerobic fitness and increased self-confidence as your athlete’s skill level improves.

Teaching beginners

Start with a rope that’s the proper length. Have the athlete stand in the middle of the rope with both feet. The ends of the rope should reach to the armpits of the athlete. You may be able to roll the ends of the rope around the hands if the rope isn’t excessively long. It is important that the jump rope has enough weight to turn easily. We have used inexpensive jump ropes that had short plastic links that are surrounding the rope to provide enough weight to rotate well.

Buy enough ropes of varying lengths to be able to efficiently get your kids through a session without having to exchange ropes if possible. The ropes I’ve used were always under 4.00 each.

Starting a true beginner

If you are introducing an athlete to jumping rope for the first time, demonstrate the skill at a moderate speed with both feet. Emphasize minimal arm swing and just jumping high enough for the feet to clear the rope. Remind them that the rope rotates forward.

Now, have the athlete join in the following drill: Hold both ends of the rope in your dominant hand, turn the rope and jump with both feet as the rope hits the floor. Take your time; the idea is to let the athlete relax and learn the rhythm of the exercise. After several short trials of this let the athlete take the end of the rope into each hand and start with jumping with both feet.

Stationary rope jumping

After the beginners have the idea, have them practice jumping rope with both feet for 2-3 sets of 10-15 seconds with 15-20 seconds rest between sets. End the first few sessions with a set of speed jumps with both feet for 10-15 seconds. Be positive and encourage them to get right back into it after a mess up.

After learning to jump with both feet, try jumping on one foot for 10 seconds stop and the other foot for 10 seconds, rest and go back to both feet for a speed jump. Gradually introduce running in place or alternating feet, after single leg hops, then two jumps on the right foot and two jumps on the left, both feet side to side, both feet forward and back, gradually increasing the difficulty over time. As the athletes become more proficient jumpers, you no longer have to let them rest between different types of jumps.

Two rope turns with one jump, shuffle variations, etc. are all possible for most kids, if you take your time introducing the drills and let their confidence build. One of the advanced possibilities is to have one of your more advanced kids lead the group while they try to mirror him.

We usually did our footspeed drills after our dynamic warm-up exercises and before our group abdominal and core exercises, at the beginning of the workout. The jump rope format varied from one minute to one minute and a half, there were no breaks between exercises. I’d call out a variation every 10-15 seconds. One of the advanced possibilities is to have one of your more advanced kids lead the group while they try to mirror him.

Typical stationary rope jumping session (1½ Minutes)

(Changes called out by coach)

Both feet – 10 sec.
Right Foot – 10 sec.
Left Foot – 10 sec.
Run in Place – 10 Sec.
Two on the right, two on the left – 10 sec.
Both feet – side to side 10 sec.
Both feet front to back – 10 sec.
Speed Jump (their choice) – 20 sec.

If the effort or concentration was lacking, I might have a 30-second “concentration jump.” In this exercise, anyone’s miss would add five seconds to the groups 30 sec. They could jump with any method and reasonable speed. It was amazing how many fewer mistakes are made when the entire group is penalized.

Moving jump rope drills

If you have the room to do it, practicing jumping rope while moving is a great variation. After becoming proficient at stationary jump roping, the moving jump drills are easier to learn. Having access to a gym or large hallway that’s unused can provide a good training space. We used an area that we called the speed agility gym which was the size of a basketball court to do our moving jump rope drills. The actual jumping area was 20 yards long with five yards to line up and stop at the ends.

Typical moving jump rope routine

Running with High Knees – 20 yards
10 yards on the Right Foot, 10 yards on the Left Foot – 20 yards
Double Leg Hops Forward – 20 yards
Double Leg Hops Backward – 20 Yards (athlete goes backward, the rope goes forward)
Both feet, Zig Zag – 20 yards
Running High Knees – 20 yards

Other moving jump drill variations

Lateral Double Leg Hops
Single Leg Zig Zag Hops

Click here to read other articles from Mike Gentry on his website.

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Creating Agile Athletes

This article was provided by Coaches Network

Athletes who can stop, start, and change direction quicker than their opponents will almost always have the advantage. That’s why agility training is so important. One of the best ways to develop these skills is to incorporate agility bags into your conditioning regimen.

Doug Heslip, owner of Heslip Elite Sports Performance Training in Negaunee, Mich., and contributor to IYCA.org, says that agility bags are one of his favorite training tools. He believes the bags offer a fun way to teach reactionary skills, which will help keep athletes safe and performing at a high level.

Agility bags essentially represent an obstacle in the athlete’s way, typically an opponent. As athlete’s step over, jump over, or cut past the bags, they will develop coordination, footwork, and body control. This can also help them develop spatial awareness and the ability to use peripheral vision, giving them the ability to keep their eyes on the play while knowing what is around them.

If you don’t have agility bags at your disposal, many of the same drills can be done with cones or small hurdles. Here’s a list of the drills that Heslip recommends:

Drill 1

Place six bags on the ground. The athlete can start in the middle of the six bags or at either end of the bags. You should stand at the third bag a few feet away with a ball. The ball you have can vary based on the sport. For most sports, you will hold the ball in your hands, but if you’re coaching soccer then keep a ball at your feet.

Point the ball to the left or to the right, and the athlete will follow the ball in the direction pointed. Then, point in the opposite direction and the athlete has to change direction to follow the ball. You can change direction at any time. If you are coaching soccer, you can just use your arms to direct the athletes.

When you want the athlete to transition from two-ins frontal plane to one-ins sagittal plane, yell “Score,” or another word of your choice. When you yell the word, toss/pass them the ball and they will perform one-ins until they reach the end of the six bags. This could be modified for soccer by having them dribble between the bags.

Drill 2

The bags are set up the same way as in Drill 1. The difference is you play catch with the athletes as they travel in the frontal plane performing two-ins. This is where peripheral vision must really be utilized. For soccer players, you can pass the ball back and forth as they go through the drill.

Travel up and down the six bags at first while playing catch/passing with the ball. As the athlete gets used to this drill and is confident going over the bags while playing catch/passing, you can change direction on them and have them respond. If they are late getting to the ball and it hits the floor, the drill is restarted.

Drill 3 (Mirror Drill)

Take four bags and lay them on the ground. Take another four bags and lay them right across from the original four bags. Have each set of four bags approximately one yard from each other. For this drill, you need two athletes at a time. One of them will be the “lead” while the other will be the “responder” and will mirror the lead’s movement. You can choose how sport-specific you’d like the drill to be by utilizing balls or other implements.

The lead will initiate the movement by moving laterally with two-ins. The responder will follow with two-ins. The lead can go up and down the four bags a maximum of six times. The lead can change direction any time they want to, and before the sixth rep, they have to transition from lateral movement to straight ahead one-ins. Have a coach approximately ten yards away with their hands extended out to their side, shoulder level. The first player to slap the coach’s hand wins. You can use six to eight bags. Heslip says this drill is very fun and competitive.