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Mistakes For Soccer Speed Training

Original article published at Ezinearticles.com

Soccer speed training has become too traditional. Rings, hurdles, ladders, cone drills. Training looks more like a circus now a days.

Here are the biggest mistakes for soccer speed training

1. Lack of strength training

To improve sprinting speed, particularly acceleration, soccer players of all ages should engage in strength training. Younger athletes can benefit greatly from using medicine ball throws. In fact, med ball throws are a staple of all my athlete's training programs. As players age, more traditional means of strength become more important.

In fact, as a guest coach at a local soccer camp in 2007, out of 132 high school female players, only 3 did any strength training, and 1 did it consistently throughout the year.

2. Being too cute with drills.

Stick to the basics. Sprint to get faster. Jump rope for foot quickness. Throw medicine balls for explosiveness. Forget the marathon obstacle courses that encourage athletes to run much slower than game effort speed.

3. Lack of progressions

As a speed, strength and conditioning coach, it's my job to understand how a training program will effect players. As most soccer coaches have little background besides their own playing career, there is little regard to proper progression. How many times have you seen a team go through training and the next day, everyone is way too sore to have any type of quality workout.

4. No concept of acceleration training

Acceleration is king in soccer. Being able to win 50/50 balls in small spaces requires tremendous ability to accelerate 5, 10, 15 yards. This is only 1-2.5 seconds worth of sprinting. If a session is focused on "speed" and "acceleration" then athletes should be performing short sprints at maximal speed.

5. Not understanding what agility is

Agility must be trained with the following 5 characteristics

1. Recognition: Athletes must recognize the situation and what should be done tactically

2. Reaction: Athletes must react to the situation

3. Acceleration: Athletes must accelerate to the ball, the open space, or out of the change of direction

4. Deceleration: Athletes must decelerate in order to stop and change direction

5. Body control and positioning: To move effectively, the body must be positioned correctly to ensure no injuries occur (such as ACL).

Improving these mistakes will make a huge impact on the field performance of soccer players.