Soccer Fitness and Conditioning - Fitness Tips For Kids Soccer

As a Personal Trainer and Soccer Coach, there are aball into your fitness drills. Another method that I have
number of important points that you should be awareused with older children ad with representative teams
of when training your kids to be fit for soccer. Youris to give players a preseason fitness routine. This
first consideration should be the age and currentensures that your players have a base fitness level
fitness levels of your players. It is very important towhen you begin training and will mean that you can
realise with your training that kids are not just littlespend more training time on ballwork and skills and less
adults, and as such adult fitness and conditioning drillson fitness and conditioning.
are largely inappropriate. Second consideration shouldThere are many elements of soccer fitness that
be the types of soccer drills that you are going to use.players require when they play a game. Factors like
For children, I always like to make sure that a ball isspeed, agility and endurance are important elements
involved in all of my soccer fitness and conditioningthat players require on the soccer field. I find that using
drills. For this reason I use a lot of small sided gamesa variety of small sided games is an effective way of
for training my kids, as small sided games keep themtraining these different elements of fitness whilst not
involved and moving at all times, incorporating bothhaving to make the players do fitness drills. In an ideal
fitness and ballwork together.world the players will not even realise that they are
When considering fitness drills for your kids, your firstdoing fitness drills. There are many different small sided
realisation should be that kids are not just small adults.games that I use to simulate the different elements of
Adult fitness drills are generally inappropriate for kids.soccer fitness I find that these are a great way to
For the kids that I coach I tend not worry about anyincorporate both fitness and ballwork into my soccer
kind of fitness drills at training up until about the age oftraining sessions so that the players have fun, and
eleven. Up to the age of eleven I try to coach them solearn the different elements of soccer fitness that they
that they are active throughout the whole of therequire to enjoy the game.
training session and I find this sufficient in terms ofIn terms of soccer fitness and conditioning your first
soccer fitness After this age you should take intothought should always be that kids are not just little
consideration the current fitness levels of your playersadults. If you try to use adult fitness drills with kids they
when considering fitness drills. You must then decidewill usually lose interest very quickly and become
which elements of fitness you want your players todiscouraged. Use a ball as often as possible in your
work on and formulate your drills accordingly. Thefitness drills in order to maximise the number of ball
various elements include speed, agility, and endurance.touches that each player receives during the training
At all training sessions, my primary aim is to maximisesession. I find that the best way to do this is to use a
the number of ball touches that each player getsvariety of small sided games with players so as to
during the session. For this reason in most instances Iteach them the different elements of soccer fitness
incorporate a ball into the fitness drills that I use withthat they require. The most important elements of
my players. If you devote a significant amount of timesoccer fitness for kids are speed, agility and
to fitness training then you will significantly reduce theendurance, and the soccer drills and small sided games
amount of ballwork that you are able to do with yourthat you use should focus on developing these
players. The best way to avoid this is to incorporate aelements in each of your players.