What if I told you that stretching as a part of soccer training tips is highly recommended by professional soccer coaches and is widely practiced by players in almost every sport? Soccer is one of such sports that is always growing and developing in its complexity.
In kid’s training for soccer, there are two types of stretching, dynamic and static stretching that are integrated.
Static stretching requires the kids to extend their muscles as far as they can and hold for a given duration of time. Recurring motions, rebounding, and rhythmic bouncing are performed by the players while doing dynamic stretching. Generally, static stretching is considered as more effective and involves less risk than dynamic stretching.
This article shares some of the benefits that stretching provides in helping average players become champions.
Stretching reduces injuries: When players do stretching every day and keep doing it for a long time, it promotes their muscle growth that reduces the risk of injury. Stretching also provides an effective way of enhancing the muscle size and strength.
Stretching shapes flexibility: Stretching puts a stop to any loss of flexibility. Nevertheless, stretching works best when performed for a greater length of time than for shorter periods of time.
Stretching increases flexibility when it is performed for a few minutes before any soccer activity. But, of all the soccer training tips, the best is where stretching program is extended over a longer period of time that constantly improves the player’s range of motion.
Stretching enhances performance: Player’s performance improves when stretching exercises are designed to be soccer specific.
Stretching can be a lot of fun: For this, you need to add variety in your soccer drills and focus a lot on performing them. Keep altering the warm up exercises that you do before stretching. Try to include games such as the tag game, ball tag, and keep away.
Focus mentally on stretching exercises, feel and recognize each stretch, whilst checking for body soreness.
In most of the cases a single 15-30 minute stretch for each muscle group is enough for kids but some may need longer stretches or more repetitions.
The reason is that when the temperature of muscles is higher than normal, tension decreases and extensibility increases. Kids who hope to retain or boost their flexibility can somewhat reach this goal by stretching. It’s advisable to perform stretching exercises when the body temperature is higher than normal as it is safer and more useful.
This is the reason why some coaches make kids stretch even after a workout. To prevent muscles for tightening too fast, make your players do some stretching after they’ve practiced soccer skills.
Normally, players who perform an active warm-up previous to stretching get an enhanced range of motion than the ones who simply stretch. So if injury prevention is your aim, stop stretching before exercise and increase the warm up time.
Some food for thought; one of the most important soccer training tips is that hurried stretching is meaningless and boring and doesn’t help your players gain flexibility, so allow them some extra time when they are feeling inflexible or stiff. Join to our youth soccer coaching community and you can get access to numerous articles, videos, and periodic newsletters.
Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Youth Soccer Drills.
Tags: soccer drills, soccer skills, soccer training tips, training for soccer