HS/College Soccer Player Off-Season (Body Weight)

Each session will incorporate our “Two Lines” dynamic warm up, and either sprints or classic strength and bodybuilding work, with basic plyometric progression schemes and body-weight or weighted calisthenics movements added. If you know you are prone to half-assing non-soccer workouts, please at least take the cardio, plyometrics, and sprint sessions seriously as they will most directly apply to your soccer fitness, quickness, and change of direction. Goals for the program are to: • Acquire mass to properly support tendons and joints through the demands of soccer matches and training • Prevent injury • Maintain or improve speed • Improve explosiveness • Improve change of direction • Develop strength in several different planes of motion; bilateral, unilateral, etc. Intended to be done in order written. Adjustments should only be made when equipment is unavailable. If always unavailable, please refer to bodyweight exclusive program that I will also provide. Ensure good balance of bilateral and unilateral movements if making substitutions. Recommended substitutions will be included in exercise notes. Sprint Work Notes: To improve your top speed, you have to train at or extremely close to your top speed. Conditioning your muscles to movement at your top speed is very specific and should be done with a lot of intention. This means you should: • Stop sprinting when you start slowing down. Sprints will be limited to 3-6 intervals. This is intentional, sprint training should be *relatively* easy. Picture it like practice touches • Only do sprint training when feeling 100% • Never train with weighted sprints (maybe for conditioning, but never for speed) Plyometric Work Notes: Because it has an emphasis on speed and explosiveness, you want to be as fresh as possible while performing plyometrics. Training these while fatigued will only serve to condition your body to move through these patterns slowly. You’ll want to do plyometrics after your dynamic warmup, but before any of your majorly taxing movements for the day (ie sprints, weighted movements, soccer sessions, cardio, etc.) Plyometrics should be done with the utmost scrutiny and intentionality. Proper form for jumping and landing may seem intuitive, but almost always begins to degrade after multiple reps, where many begin to see themselves falling into comfortable movement patterns that may not be efficient for explosiveness and power output. Make sure you’re not only TRYING to be explosive, but also landing properly, and, when necessary, making ground contact as short and efficient as possible.