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Posted by
Richard Bucciarelli,
March 20, 2012
Email Richard Bucciarelli
Richard
Bucciarellii is the President of Soccer Fitness Inc., and Fitness Coach
for the Canadian National Women’s U17 team, which will be travelling to
Guatemala in May 2012 for the CONCACAF qualification tournament of the
FIFA Women’s U17 World Cup. For more information about Richard and
Soccer Fitness, please visit www.soccerfitness.ca.
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The Key to Pre-Season Explosive Power Training
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Spring – and the outdoor pre-season – is just around the corner. With it comes the last few weeks and months of pre-season fitness training for strength coaches to ensure their players are in peak physical conditioning for the start of the competitive season. A key concern among strength coaches, as well as all soccer coaches, is the development of explosive leg power, which helps soccer players with the start of sprints and short running bursts, as well as single- and double-leg jumps.
In most traditional models of periodization, training for power is done towards the end of the pre-season, once a solid base of strength has been developed before-hand. The purpose of this article is to introduce a unique and specific method of leg power training that we use in the Soccer Fitness Training Centre which helps to develop explosive leg power during pre-season training.
Plyometric training involves exercises that are used to take advantage of the stretch-shortening cycle in muscles. The main principle of the stretch-shortening cycle dictates that muscles which are quickly or rapidly stretched will in turn contract – or shorten – with more power than would normally be possible with a slower stretch. If an external load can be applied to exercising muscles, which will ‘speed-up’ the stretch portion of the cycle, then the resulting contraction – or shortening – of the muscle will be more powerful.
At the Soccer Fitness Training Centre, we utilize an external load – an elastic loading device attached to a harness around the athlete’s waist – to achieve this goal of improving the function of the stretch-shortening cycle in the key jumping muscles (glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves). Athletes training using this elastic loading device will perform 3-4 sets of 6-10 repetitions of maximal jumps with resistance (in the harness), followed immediately by 3-4 sets of 6-10 repetitions of maximal jumps without resistance (without the harness). This method of training provides three unique stimuli to the exercising muscles, each of which will be discussed below.
Application of resistance to the concentric (upward)
jumping movement
The resistance applied comes in the form of the elastic loading device. One end is fixed to a harness around the athlete’s waist, and the other is attached to hooks placed at corners of a plywood jumping platform. As the athlete jumps, the elastic stretches, adding resistance to the jump.
Stretch and recoil of the elastic loading device during the eccentric (downward) landing movement
It is during this phase of the exercise that the stretch-shortening cycle comes into play. At the height of the athlete’s jump, the elastic loading device is stretched. It must then recoil, pulling the athlete towards the ground at a faster rate than that which would be seen without the elastic (using gravity alone). The extra force pulling the athlete towards the ground increases the load placed on the leg muscles during the “stretch” phase of the stretch-shortening cycle. This increased load, in turn, forces the athlete to stay balanced and quickly contract the leg muscles during the “shortening” phase of the cycle. Over time, the athlete will develop the ability to contract (shorten) the jumping muscles in the legs with more speed and power than they previously could.
Contrast training by performing the exercise without the elastic
loading device
Immediately after performing the prescribed number of sets and repetitions of jumps with the elastic loading device, the athlete then removes the harness, and performs the same exercises without resistance. This type of training is termed “contrast training”, because it provides a contrast to the brain, as well as to the exercising muscles, first forcing them to stretch and shorten with resistance, then without resistance.
Because the brain and muscles expect to encounter the same resistance in both the “stretch” (landing) and “shortening” (jumping) phases of the stretch-shortening cycle, the brain will make the muscles contract with more force then is required in the absence of resistance. The stretch-shortening cycle is thus sped up, which has a net training effect of increasing the power output of each jump. Over time, athletes performing resisted plyometric exercises using an elastic loading device at the Soccer Fitness Training Centre have shown a marked improvement in both linear acceleration and running speed, as well as leg power assessments.
In the attached video, an example of our resisted plyometric protocols is shown, which was used as part of the pre-season training program with Sotiri Varlokostas, goalkeeper with the York University Lions Men’s Varsity Soccer Team, as well as SC Toronto of the Canadian Soccer League be presented.
Richard Bucciarelli is the President of
Soccer Fitness Inc., and Fitness Coach for the Canadian National Women’s
U17 team. For more information about Richard and Soccer Fitness, please
visit www.soccerfitness.ca
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