The energy of a football player



The energy of a football player

Introduction

The benefit of strength and strength training for footballers is well supported by research. For example, De Proft and colleagues had one group of Belgian professionals perform extra weight training during the season. Compared to a control group of colleagues who did no extra training, the players improved their kicking power and leg strength. In addition, British researcher Thomas Reilly showed that the stronger players outlasted the weaker players in terms of a regular place in the team, and had reduced injury risks. He recommends that leg strength in particular is developed, especially in the quadriceps and hamstrings, to help stabilise the knee joint, which is the most frequently injured joint in football. Peter Apor, a Hungarian researcher who has been involved in long-term studies of Hungarian professionals, agrees, saying that knee-extension torque has been associated with success in the game and that strong hamstring muscles in relation to quadriceps are crucial to knee injury prevention. Another common football injury is hernia, for which the best protection is developing strong abdominal muscles.

Strength Training

From this brief review of the research, we can conclude that strength and strength training, especially in the legs and trunk, are important for footballers who want to improve kick performance and reduce the risk of injury. To increase general strength, a workout consisting of leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, bench press, lat pull downs, abdominal and lower back exercises, would be ideal. This can be done with multi-gym equipment, which is also safe and easy to use. In my experience, some professional players use the club's gym equipment to perform this kind of workout after their official training session. Reilly found that players who voluntarily performed extra strength training were the ones who suffered the fewest muscle injuries. Therefore, since maintaining a fully fit squad can be a big problem, it makes sense for clubs to encourage or schedule general strength training for all players.

Hop, bound and jump

Plyometric exercises are another proven training method that enhances leg power and sprinting speed. McNaughton cites soccer as one of the many games where short, explosive power is required, and that plyometric training is a useful complement or alternative to strength training to achieve this. Once the players are used to it, plyometrics may be more convenient than weights for speed development in terms of scheduling during the season.

Plyometric exercises are typified by hopping, bounding and jumping movements. These exercises demand a high force of contraction in response to a rapid loading of lengthening muscles. For this reason, they should be more accurately called reversible action or rebound exercises. The training effort increases the force production in the muscles, but the movements are performed at faster speeds than weight-training exercises. Thus rebound exercises are more specific to the sprinting and jumping movements in football. These exercises should be done in 3-5 sets of 8 repetitions for each leg, with at least one minute's rest between ...