If you have played soccer before, then you know that it is one of the most physically demanding sports out there. A professional soccer player is required to engage their whole body in many physical activities throughout the whole 90 minutes of a soccer match.
So, if you’re into playing soccer either for fun or to pursue a professional career, one thing that you certainly need to work on is your stamina, and this article will give you some tips on how to do that from your home.
The following are some exercises that you can use to increase your stamina for soccer at home.
1- Alternate between Sprinting and jogging
This is one of the most used exercises during soccer training sessions.
During a soccer match, the one thing that you will be doing almost all the time is running at different speeds.
You won’t just be running at a constant rate. Instead, you’ll be instantly changing your running speed and your running direction all the time.
For that reason, training your body to run at a constant speed in one direction isn’t going to increase your soccer stamina a lot.
What you need to do first is to find enough space inside your home or some place around your home, then place a target as far away as possible.
Then you need to run towards that target as fast as you can, and once you reach it, jog back to your initial position. Repeat the same thing again and again.
Try to add slight variations to your run while you repeat the exercise. For example, you can try jogging backwards when you’re going back to your initial position, or you could try sprinting then suddenly decreasing your speed while you’re heading towards your target.
You can also set multiple targets instead of one. If you do that, then try running towards one of the targets, and then suddenly switch to a different target. This will help your body adapt to the instant change in the running direction, which is something that you’ll be doing a lot during a soccer match.
Repeat these running exercises as much as you can. However, make sure that you take enough rest periods and don’t push yourself extremely hard at the beginning. More on this later.
Before we move on to the next section, I would like to remind you that the above exercise is extremely important because it helps your body gain the stamina required to play a soccer match instead of gaining the stamina required just for running.
2- Increase your strength with simple and no equipment exercises at home.
Having running stamina isn’t the only thing that is required for you to survive a professional soccer match, what you also need is body strength.
You can do some very simple yet very effective exercises at your home in order to increase your soccer stamina. Here are some of these exercises:
- Push-ups: will help you gain strength in your chest, shoulder, triceps and so on.
- Squats: will help you gain core strength and maintain your balance
- Lunges: will strengthen your thighs
- Planks: will increase your core strength
These, and other no equipment exercises, can help you gain the strength needed in order to increase your soccer stamina by a lot.
The best thing about these exercises is that they can be practiced at your home using no equipment at all, which means that you can get started right now.
3- Juggle the soccer ball while moving
This is a great exercise that you can use at home in order to build stamina for your future soccer games.
Juggling the soccer ball while running requires that you keep interrupting your normal running movement in order to control the soccer ball.
This will not only increase your running stamina, but it will also strengthen your legs because you’re forcing them to multitask.
This exercise will also give you a much better control over the ball which is an essential soccer still to have.
Since this exercise involves a ball, make sure that you find a small area next to your home in order to practice it. This will ensure that you don’t break anything inside your home.
That’s it on the exercises side, however I’m not done yet. In order to make sure that these simple yet effective exercises are beneficial, you need to make sure that you follow the following tips.
4- Warm up before any exercise
If you’re planning to exercise really hard, one thing that you need to do first is to warm up before you begin the heavy exercises. Increasing the stress that you force on your body should be done gradually and not instantly.
So make sure that you warm up before every exercise.
5- Do not over exercise.
Here’s one thing that you need to know: There is no way you can gain all the soccer stamina required in just a few days.
Over exercising won’t do the trick. In order to understand why, here are some scientific explanations of how your body responds to sudden change.
There’s a process adopted by our bodies that is called Homeostasis. According to this live science article, Homeostasis is the ability for our body to try and maintain a stable state whenever changes are occurring to the body.
For example, if your body temperature goes higher than what the body thinks is the stable body temperature, then your body will try its best to restore the stable temperature by releasing sweat among other things.
So, in order to increase your soccer stamina at home, what you need to do is to force your body to go out of its normal state. When you do so, your body will use all its power to go back to the normal state again.
This is when the growth happens. It’s when your body is adapting itself in order to be able to maintain its normal state again.
Why am I saying all this? I am saying all this in order to tell you that you need to exercise enough in order to force your body to leave it’s normal state, but not to the point where it damages some parts of your body forever.
So, make sure that you do not over exercise, because you won’t be doing yourself any good. Your body will need time to restore the normal state and to strengthen itself to be ready for any future shifts from the normal body state.
The main take away from all this is that you need to pause your exercise whenever you feel that your body won’t be able to handle more stress. When this happens, just take some rest until your body restores its normal state
6- Sleep, eat and drink well.
The last tip that I want to mention in this article is fairly obvious. If you follow all of the above exercise and tips without paying attention to this one, then you’ll be doing things in the wrong way.
Your body needs enough energy to be able to restore its normal state whenever you put it under pressure. In order to supply your body with enough energy, you will need to eat well, sleep well, and stay hydrated.
That’s it for this article. I hope that you found it useful, and I wish you best of luck during your next soccer match.