Soccer Drills – Upper Body Strength

Upper body strength is just as important as the strength in your legs when playing soccer. The upper body strength can help you to maintain your position when fending off opponents, make you more supple and improve your balance when dribbling and shooting the ball.

Any upper body exercises improve your stability and help to improve the movement in your hips, trunk and shoulders allowing you to move more quickly across the field.

Increasing your lower backs strength, alongside having strong arms, shoulders and hips can all help to increase your running stride.

Some exercises that you may consider are:

Push-ups
Abdominal sit backs
Body weight rows
Low back stabilisers
Bench presses
Activities using a medicine ball
Lat pull downs
Pull-ups
Abdominal curls
Resistance training – pulling on a resistance band to strengthen the arms and shoulders

You can also do back extensions whereby you would lie face down on the ground, raise your arms and legs as high as possible and then lower them though not allowing them to touch the ground again.

For training with a teammate you can lie facing each other and throw a ball to each other without allowing your arms to touch the ground.

You may also consider weight training but you only need to use lightweights to achieve optimum effect. If you choose this method of training always seek advice first and it is thought that children under the age of 14 are too young to consider this option.

It is important though in any exercises to allow your muscles to rest and concentrate on only one muscle group each day. You should always ask for help and guidance from a qualified person and follow their guidelines.