How to Improve Stamina & Endurance for Soccer

Soccer demands a great deal of walking, jogging and sprinting, both forward and backward. Endurance is extremely important -- a soccer player can expect to be on his feet, moving around, for 45 straight minutes, with sudden bouts of sprinting interspersed with running and jogging.



The important point for soccer endurance training is to force the body to adapt to the constantly changing nature of a soccer player's activity. This means focusing on interval training, whose quick bursts of action better mimic the bursts required in a soccer game.

Instructions

    • 1

      Divide your running into intervals. If you usually run three miles in 40 minutes, divide this into six half-miles, 12 quarter-miles, or any other smaller interval of your choosing.

    • 2

      Run harder than you usually do during your interval, and then easier than you usually do for a rest in between. Encouraging bursts of energy like this in a long-term manner will force your muscles and nervous system to develop in the correct manner for soccer playing.

    • 3

      Engage in resistance training that focuses on pushing out a lot of reps quickly rather than a few reps slowly. This will encourage muscle endurance rather than raw strength, which is not really necessary for soccer, since it is a mostly non-contact sport and a regulation ball weighs slightly more than 1 lb.

    • 4

      Perform your weight training to a time rather than to a certain amount of reps. Rather than doing 20 push-ups, for example, perform push-ups for 30 straight seconds.

    • 5

      Focus on body-weight exercises like push-ups, lunges, pull-ups and dips rather than added-weight exercises like squats, dead lifts and overhead presses. The former encourage muscular endurance; the latter encourage muscular strength.