Soccer Fitness Training for Beginners

Soccer players must have and maintain a high fitness level to be successful. When starting out, it is important to remember that achieving excellent fitness doesn't happen overnight. It takes discipline and patience to commit to a workout regimen that will push the body at just the right levels to improve fitness without causing injury.

  1. Anaerobic Fitness

    • Anaerobic fitness prepares your muscles for intense action. By improving your anaerobic fitness level, your muscles will have more stamina and allow you to play at higher intensity throughout the course of long training sessions and matches. You recover quicker and play at high pace throughout an entire soccer game.

    Aerobic Fitness

    • Aerobic fitness involves enhancing cardiovascular endurance. Improving cardiovascular endurance means working at an increased rate of activity for a distinct time period. By pushing yourself to work harder and longer, you'll see benefits to your heart, lungs and circulation.

    Drills Without the Ball

    • Anaerobic fitness drills without the ball include running intervals (alternating between periods of sprints and periods of recovery) and weight training. Essentially, the key is to engage in exercises that task your muscles at varying degrees. Aerobic training includes any continuous activity such as jogging, bicycling or swimming.

    Drills With the Ball

    • Fitness work with the ball is a must because it allows you to improve skills while improving fitness. Aerobic soccer exercises with the ball include dribbling for extended periods and playing in small-sided or full-field games, which also improves anaerobic fitness because of the varying nature of intensity soccer players put out while playing. An anaerobic example of dribbling with the ball would be to set up a course that involves walking, jogging and sprinting with the ball under control. A good illustration of this sort of drill can be found at mastersport.co.uk.

    Avoiding Injury

    • Younger players and players who are out of shape risk injury during fitness training if they don't warm up properly or try to push themselves too far beyond their physical capacity for exercise. You can limit the danger of pulling muscles (or worse) by starting with at least 10 minutes of warming up involving dynamic and static stretching and a cool-down period involving things like slow jogging and stretching after working out. Although you have to work hard to improve your fitness level, start slower when beginning--whether you are working on your own or part of a team, consider the start of exercise as a preseason period, starting with shorter periods of high-intensity work and working with lighter weights during weight training, then pushing yourself harder as your muscles recover faster and begin to show improvement in fitness level.