Q & A

ANNOUNCEMENTS –Mark Williams is named Strength and Conditioning Coach for Jersey Sky Blue Soccer of Women’s W – League.  Go to Sky Blue Soccer for more information.

Williams Sport Training LLC is setting up a consulting service for clubs and teams.  This consulting service will provide information and programs in the areas of speed, agility, and strength training on the field!  Every program will be custom designed to fit the needs of the team or club.  Details will be released soon.

Best Upper Body Movements
for Soccer Players

This month’s newsletter article is about the best two upper body movements for soccer players.  When training my athletes I like to use bodyweight movements such as push up and/or chin up variations.  The variations I like to use and have had great success with are timed sets, given repetition ranges, or max repetitions for time.  Now all of these variations tax the nervous system in it’s own way.  I will explain each variation and how you can institute them into your workouts.  Remember depending on the exercise used will determine the variation you should use.  

Variation 1: Timed Sets – Perform 2 to 3 sets of a selected amount of time that the athlete has to do each repetition in a full range of motion. This variation is not to get as many as you can for the set amount of time but keeping a full range of motion for each repetition throughout the set.  That is, performing each movement correctly.  You can record the amount of repetitions if you like. The time amount that I would recommend would be:

 Week 1: 30 sec for 3 sets resting 1:30 min between sets
 Week 2: 45 sec for 2 sets resting 1:30 min between sets.

Exercises to use: Push up Variations.

Barbell Push Ups

Variation 2: Given Repetition Ranges – Perform a set amount of repetitions for 3 sets. Again we want to keep a full range of motion for each repetition of the set. Rest 1:30 between sets. Examples of repetition ranges (5 reps to 25 reps) would be as follows:

Week 1: Barbell Push ups for three sets of 20 repetitions
Week 2: Barbell Push ups for two sets of 25 repetitions

Exercises to use: Push up Variations, Chin Ups Variations

Variation 3: Maximum Repetitions for each set.  This variation is about all out speed and trying to get as many repetitions as you can for each set.  Record the amount and try to break it each time you do it, again rest for 1:30 min between sets and perform 3 sets to failure! Examples of this variation would include:

Week 1 and 2: Three sets of max repetitions for chin-ups

For this variation keep the same exercise for both weeks. 

Exercises to use: Push up Variations, Chin Ups Variations

Chin Ups

For more exercises and training variations please see the table of contents of Mark’s Manual.

Question and Answer Section:

You can ask Mark any question dealing with Strength and Conditioning for Soccer players and he will address two or three questions each month.

Mark now has his strength training manual Williams Soccer Strength Method available on his website!