Youth soccer-specific strength and fitness training always demands the utmost attention to the client’s outward appearance and unconscious signals. Failure to pay proper attention when working with any individual, particularly with kids, because kids are so eager to please, they will often go beyond themselves in order to do so, and that’s when injuries occur.

Brian’s Soccer-Specific Strength and Fitness Training Begins

Brian showed up right on time, Lombardi Time, fifteen minutes early dressed and ready to begin. I sat off to the side and watched as he, without prompting, began the series of stretches we’d covered twice now…he did them flawlessly. Up until now Brian was being tested. And, while testing never really stops, Brian showed me he had the heart to do what I was about to demand of him. You see, so many times it’s the parents that want the program, not the player. If I find that to be the case and I determine that the child is just not into it, I find a way to disqualify the individual, always after a heart to heart with all concerned. There are enough athletes out there who want the best training available without having to force some poor kid against his or her will!

After Brian hopped off the Lifecycle, 20 minutes at random 3, the kid was sharp, I grabbed my clipboard (we document everything) and nodded towards the leg extension machine. Brian smiled and was up on it without hesitation. I watched as he began to adjust the seat so the back of his knees were tight against the seat, just like I showed him. This kid will be working out on his own soon, I thought. I then proceeded to explain to Brian the idea behind leg extensions and the proper form for carrying them out. I told him we were not interested in how much weight he could lift or even how many times! “I don’t care and your muscles don’t care. All I want from you,” I told him, “is to give it 100% until I tell you to stop.” Brian nodded without saying a word and proceeded to do just what I told him.

NOTE: As noted previously, I never take a young athlete to failure with heavy weights, it can damage the growth plates and injure muscle and connective tissue. We are not in the business of producing powerlifters, although I have worked with some of the best, some of the strongest men in the world, literally. However, with young athletes care must be given never to risk injury to growth plates, muscles, tendons or ligaments. Let me say that again…NEVER!

Next, we went straight to the leg biceps (hamstring) curl, followed by the abduction and adduction machines. The only rest Brian had was the time it takes to move from one exercise to the next, he was doing what I call a rapid-cycle circuit. After the first couple of times through, I was setting the proper seat position for the next exercise, always keeping a close eye on body positioning and body language, while he finishing up with the previous exercise. So, after the abduction and adduction, we went to the leg press machine, then on to the hack squat, which we do face-in for quickness, power, and explosiveness. By the time we are finished with the legs, the athlete is looking pretty worn out, Brian was no different…but he was still game.

Upper body:

Brian hesitated a bit when we got to the first upper body exercise. I could tell something was on his mind, so I said “What gives?” He hesitated again and I nodded that it was OK to speak up, and he did. He asked why he needed to work his upper body when he was a soccer player. I smiled and asked him if he had watched any professional soccer, men’s or women’s, or any national team matches. He said he hadn’t, except once in a while he watched the US Men’s National Team and that he would rather be playing than watching it. I smiled and thought to myself that I had been the same way when I could play. Why watch when you can be playing? So, I gave him an assignment: I told Brian he had to watch fifteen minutes of professional soccer or national team play I didn’t care what teams, just fifteen minutes, and give me the answer to his own question in a week. Brian winced but he said OK and we continued with the upper body workout.

The upper body workout focuses on big muscle groups down to the smallest, and in…out. The workout begins with the back and then the chest (in), then works to the shoulders and out to the arms and forearms. Finally, after we had moved from back to chest to shoulders to triceps to biceps to forearms, we go back in and work the abdominals and obliques. By the time we finish, and if the athlete finishes, many times the athlete does not finish, at least for the first few times through, we have worked largest to smallest, largest to smallest, and then core. The workout is intense, focused, and usually takes now more than thirty minutes…after the warm-up.

I would love to tell you Brian finished the first time through but I’d be lying.

Brian stopped halfway through the chest exercises. In fact, Brian didn’t make it all the way through the first four times, then he never stopped again. It was as if he made a decision that he was not going to be beaten, and after that, he rarely ever was! After the first workout, Brian was shot. I mean he could hardly stand up for a few minutes. Then, seeing his mother walk through the front door, he got up, went to the locker room, showered, got dressed, and came out looking like he had been on a stroll through the park. He was not going to show his mother how tired he was. I found out much later that he didn’t want his mom to interfere; she still wasn’t sold on the whole idea.

I smiled at Mom, told her Brian did “fantastic,” and set up his next workout for 48 hours later. She smiled, messed up his hair a bit, and they left the gym with Brian walking just a little bit gingerly. I made a mental note of it, would watch the next workout, and moved on to the Rosen twins…6’6″ twin girls who played basketball for the local high school and were being scouted by every major university in the country.

Brian spent the next week watching professional soccer, and a US Women’s National Team match, he said he liked Michelle Akers, said she was awesome. After the week, I asked him if he needed me to explain to him why soccer players should work out their upper bodies. He smiled, shook his head no, and commenced to work harder than ever on his whole body. Brian was that rare kind of athlete every coach dreams of being able to work with, I was just one of the lucky few to actually have an opportunity to work with him…and many more like him.

Brian started to grow, not only up but out. He was growing taller and, in terms of muscle, width and depth, Brian was getting big! Brian, still not even a teenager, was turning head and would have made any football coach’s dreams come true. But Brian was a soccer player, a dominant one in his age bracket. Soon however, Brian was playing two and three years up…making a huge impact. You see, Brian’s strength and fitness gains were incredible and soon the word was out, we were turning away athletes. As a business, we would have loved to sign every one of them. But as an athletic training company, we could only train so many and do it effectively. We weren’t going to hire just anyone off the street to work with our clients. Many have, we wouldn’t.

Next:

Brian makes the jump to premier (club) soccer, and gets an amazing invitation.

Thanks for looking in! We will begin to discuss actual workouts soon, for those of you who would like to have that sort of information. Please, keep in mind that these workouts were conducted under experienced, adult supervision. Do not attempt these or any other workouts without first getting clearance from your family physician. Every athlete we every trained, and train to this day, has had a thorough physical before beginning our program. No physical? No program!

Take care!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com

Laying a Foundation and Setting the Pace: Brian’s Introduction to Strength and Fitness Training for Soccer Athletes

The night before had been a difficult one for both of us and I wasn’t sure whether Brian would be up for his testing. The testing for soccer-specific strength and fitness training is not really that different from testing for any other sport, it is demanding and takes the athlete to the limits of his or her strength, fitness, and endurance. Soccer-specific testing, many would argue, should be based more on the lower extremities because soccer is played primarily with the legs, ankles, and feet; this is, unfortunately, the prevailing mindset.

Prevailing? Yes!

Correct and proper? No!

For one thing, anyone who thinks soccer is only played from the waist down hasn’t watched too much soccer. Additionally, there is a secret to working out and getting optimal results.

The secret? No, not the new-age “Secret!” Although this secret is perhaps as revolutionary or at least as controversial, particularly among those less-informed. The secret I am referring to is something discovered years ago by bodybuilders. Yes, those heavily muscled hulks, male and female, who work out for hours and pose in front of the mirror a lot. Another stereotype!

Am I going to get cards and letters, phone calls and emails, IMs and smoke-signals about that one!

Anyway, back to the secret. The common perception regarding working out is that if you work out a particular body part more than any other part of the body it will continue to grow and develop until you look something like Popeye (forearms) or Tom Platz (thighs).

Platz? Google him! My age, actually, and an absolutely dominant force on the bodybuilding stage in the late 1970s to mid 1980s. Platz was known for incredible, some argued too incredible leg development. Google him and you judge. He competed with guys you may remember. Arnold? Lou (speaking of Hulks!)?

Back to the thought behind Brian’s soccer-specific strength and fitness test.

The secret? If you don’t find a balance, a proper ratio in the focus of your workouts, upper body to lower, your development and your progress will not be to the levels possible with a well-balanced routine. Hence, Brian’s testing, and subsequent workout programs, were an overall, holistic approach to development focusing as much on the upper body as the lower.

Now that the theory is behind us, only one more thing must be noted before we continue. No one, and I mean no one, who isn’t experienced working with young athletes should ever go any where near them in the context of a strength and fitness coach. Let me say that again in a slightly different way: Do not attempt to train an athlete, particularly a young athlete, particularly a prepubescent adolescent, unless you have extensive, and I mean extensive, knowledge and experience working with kids!

Brian Arrives!

Brian walked in to the facility at a little after 10am EST on an unseasonably cool morning for Northern Ohio, it was mid-May. Funny thing? Mom, Dad, and Sis…still giggling… were right behind him. Mom and Dad thought they’d stay and watch, just to make sure Brian worked hard and did his best. Not on a good day!

Something I learned almost day one in training athletes: loved ones stay home, especially parents! Why? There are a thousand reasons and, believe me, they are all valid. Two stand heads and tails above the rest. One, I tend to get very intense when I work with athletes and, while another coach or athlete will understand this and handle it properly, moms definitely do not! Two, they are a distraction! Moms, dads, wives, and especially girl or boyfriends are strictly forbidden, they are the kiss of death when it comes to intensity. Case closed! So, Mom, Dad, and even Sis were sent packing. I told them to be back in an hour. Mom looked a bit perturbed. Dad was grinning, I think he had an idea why I sent them away and he wasn’t arguing. Sis was oblivious but somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t going to get to see her little brother get worked out…and over!

Brian by this time had returned from the locker room with his gym shorts, t-shirt (no tank tops/muscle shirts), white socks, a clean pair of Adidas, and two towels. He was also instructed to bring two more towels and not to eat anything for two hours prior to his strength and fitness testing.

It’s funny how big a young soccer athlete looks when on the pitch, challenging for a ball or diving for a save. When with their peers, in uniform and competing, even a young boy or girl looks somehow bigger. However, on this particular day, standing in front of me, towels, fitness survey, and doctor’s release in hand Brian looked all of ten years old…and scared to death!

I took the forms, made sure they had been signed and notarized, and set them aside. I asked Brian if he had any last requests. I laughed! He didn’t. I then took one of his towels and set it on a flat bench half way through the circuit of machines set up specifically for testing, the other I wrapped around my neck. I looked at Brian and nodded towards the Lifecycle…he followed.

I take on a slightly different persona when training an athlete. Before and after the training session I am relaxed, even jovial in tone and temperament. My intentions? Simply put, they are to put the athlete at ease. During the session, testing or training, it is all about the work, the challenge, getting the athlete to step up and even out of him or herself…to strive for something greater than anything they have done before. That’s not to say we don’t have fun, we do, but there is a fire just below the surface, a sort of slow, intense burn, and it is that burn I tap into for 30 seconds to a minute, fifteen to thirty times during the test.

The test is intense, Intense, INTENSE!

After Brian did his 20 minutes of LSD (long-slow-distance), he hopped off the Lifecycle and I could tell what he was thinking. He told me later I was right! Brian was thinking, “This isn’t going to be so bad, I can handle this…no problem!” I have been training athletes for thirty years and you can see it on their faces every time; they all have that same look after the Lifecycle. He was even beginning to get a bit of that strut back in his step, in his talk, his manner.

After the Lifecycle we stretched for another ten minutes. I was beginning to see it on his face, that look they all get, the “When are we going to lift!” look. Brian was getting bored, even a bit aggravated…it was all over his face. After all, he was thinking, it’s been thirty minutes and my Mom and Dad will be back in a half an hour. We haven’t even started lifting yet. He kept looking towards the back of the facility where some of the high school football players were putting each other through the paces. That’s where he wanted to be, with the jocks, not up here with me and all of these sissy machines. Stretching!

Brian’s Soccer-Specific Strength and Fitness Training Test Begins

It was exactly 10:34am EST when I nodded toward the first machine, the Kaiser Cam II leg extension machine. Brian looked at me and the look said it all. He hesitated and then asked, “where are the weights?” I smiled and told him not to worry about it and to hop on. Brian looked at me, still not convinced, took a seat and I turned the knob. Immediately, there was a hissing sound, something like a snake…or a ticked-off Brown fan…a compressor in the back kicked on. I told Brian what I wanted him to do, “We are going to go from machine to machine, as quickly as possible with occasional detours to that flat bench where your towel is resting” He nodded and we started.

I pushed Brian from the leg extension to the leg-biceps (hamstring) curl, to the leg press, then over to the bench in about 4 minutes. Brian was a nice rosy shade, somewhere between pink and fire engine red, breathing heavily, sweating, and a little unsteady. I told him to lie on his belly and to bring his left leg up to his buttocks, now he was really looking at me funny!

A couple of the veterans (12 & 15 years old), they had been through the test the week before so they knew it all, had gathered. The veterans, knowing exactly what was going to happen next, were all grins.

Failure the Ultimate Soccer Training Strength and Fitness Way!

I took the towel and wrapped it around Brian’s right ankle and told him to resist, to not let me pull his leg down. Brian did so. I found him to be remarkably strong for his age. Resist down and then pull the leg back up against my resistance on a six count. We did that until he couldn’t lift his leg on his own. Then we switched to the left leg and did the same thing…to failure! As soon as both legs had been fully exercised, we immediately moved (I moved, Brian kind of shuffled) to the machines for the back, three of them, then on to the machines for the chest, two more, all the time returning to the bench to take the muscle group to failure with nothing more than my hands or a towel.

Finally, we got to the bench for the triceps, it was 10:48am EST or 14 minutes into the actual test, and that was it. Brian was done! Or that’s what he thought! Quite red from the exertion and almost totally out of breath in 14 minutes. Brian bolted to the locker room and made it just in time! It seems Brian figured he would eat anyway. After all, he was in shape, he thought. He’d eaten before practices all the time. Besides, Mom said it was OK, he needed his energy! So, Brian had only himself, and his mother, to blame. He confessed after the test and promised to never, ever eat before a workout again. I didn’t say a word!

A few minutes later Brian emerged from the locker room and you could tell by the look on his face, color almost back to normal, that he thought he was done.

Wrong!

I pointed to the Lifecycle and he groaned. That’s right, he actually groaned! It seems someone had told him about the last part of the test. He figured because he had broken the rules and gotten sick as a result that I would feel sorry for him and let him slide. I told him that almost everyone gets sick the first time, mainly because no one is in the kind of shape they should be in, I don’t care if they run fifteen miles during a match!

Brian hopped up on the Lifecycle; a crowd had formed by then and all of them started cheering and clapping! I told him to start pedaling, that no matter how hard it got to never stop pushing those pedals! Pedal as if your life depends on it, and he did…for 12 seconds at level 10 manual! If you know anything about Lifecycles, level 10 manual is a bit like cycling up Mount Everest, particularly after a strenuous leg workout, even one that only lasted all of 6 minutes, with the “failure bench.”

Brian slid off the bike to rousing cheers and applause…he had made it, he was one of the Ultimate crowd now. Brian had passed, he hadn’t quit, he had lost his breakfast; and, he was on his way to becoming a real champion, he just didn’t know it yet. I, on the other hand, did!

Brian’s Mom, Dad, and Sis walked in just as Brian was pulling himself up off the floor. Mom looked at Dad, who was laughing now, and just shook her head. Brian, color almost back once again, stumbled over to his parents, gave them a big hug, and thanked them “for the best gift” he’d ever received. He loved it!

Next? Soccer-Specific Sex-Specific Strength and Fitness Training: Brian Begins the Ultimate Program and Defines the Word Champion!

NOTE: The testing techniques I use have been developed by watching, learning, and employing the techniques of the very best in the world for more than three decades. I was at the gym working out the day the first Nautilus machine was delivered (1976), and then the entire circuit. I watched and read as Penn State went from almost completely focusing on Nautilus when it first came out to moving back to a mix of machines and free weights. The following year they were NCAA National Champions and everyone in Happy Valley was Papa Joe Paterno’s fan, buddy, and pal! I had the pleasure of having one of Penn State’s best training with us at our facility that summer, 1982, just before the championship season. I have never, and I am including professionals I’ve had the pleasure to work with, ever witnessed anyone work harder than that young man. Ohio State told him that at 6’5″ and 265 pounds he was too small for their program! So he went to play for Joe Paterno, became a national champion, and played in the Senior Bowl. Bravo! And go figure!

ON TRAINING AND FAILURE: When I take an athlete to failure I am aware of several things. I won’t go into all of the conditions here are two: One, he or she is already a conditioned athlete and we are not starting from scratch; Two, I am taking them to failure not with a machine or free weights but with my hands or a towel. In doing so, taking them to failure in such a way, I am in total sync with how their body is reacting and how they are dealing with the stress every step of the way.
One more thing! I never take an adolescent to failure with heavy weights and low repetitions, machines or free weights.

NEVER! Workouts for soccer athletes vary and can range from fast-paced circuit training to high repetition, machine and free weight training; and, occasionally, heavier training is employed with older, mature, and seasoned athletes. The program and the intensity varies from athlete to athlete and situation to situation.

The ULTIMATE result of Ultimate Soccer Training, the Soccer-Specific Sex-Specific Strength and Fitness Testing and Training, is an athlete who is faster, quicker, more powerful, more self-confident, and, probably most important of all, more INJURY RESISTANT than ever before! This can be particularly important when training female athletes, given their increased susceptibility to knee injuries. I have never, I will say that again, NEVER, had a female athlete suffer a knee injury requiring surgery after training with me for a significant period of time! Strength and fitness training is not only appropriate, it is essential for today’s soccer athlete, male or female!

See You in the Championship Circle!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com

Brian and Motivation: To Believe in One’s Self!

When working in the area of sports motivation, a coach is presented with myriad challenges almost at once! This is particularly true when done in concert with, and in the context of, sport-specific, sex-specific strength and fitness training. In this case, I was working with a young boy, Brian, who was 10 years of age when we started working together. In Brian’s case it was crucial to develop a motivational climate that was both positive and encouraging in nature. The challenge when dealing with high-performance, top-caliber athletes, even at Brian’s age (or perhaps even more so!) is to balance positive feedback with constructive suggestions meant to develop the athlete physically and psychologically. The coach must strive to encourage and develop an environment, a relationship, more carrot than stick.

Just entering adolescence, and puberty, Brian had a particular constellation of challenges that only an experienced fitness instructor/strength coach should have gone anywhere near! Fortunately for both of us, some of my most difficult clients ended up as my finest students and life-long friends! This would be the case with Brian, a diamond in the rough, a jewel to be treasured years into the future. His children have been my clients, and now, Brian is talking about his grandchildren, when he has some, becoming part of a legacy that started with a quiet, shy, even nervous young kid. A young boy who would become a champion. A champion in every sense of the word!

But that part of the story begins later today….

Tomorrow: Brian Begins, Quits, and Begins again!

Until later today? YUP!

See You in the Cheap Seats!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com