3 ways to properly prepare for training

To have an awesome day of practice, it is vital to get a proper warm-up.

I have seen players mess around during those who end up have a terrible day of training, or even worse, they end up hurting themselves from failing to warm up properly. 

That is the last thing you want to do as a practice, training, or game. 

I usually require my players to come to every training session 15 minutes before spending enough time warming up. 

And they will sometimes complain about that.

I then inform them that Texans JJ Watt often spends up from 30 minutes to an hour warming up his body to prepare for a hard workout.

I think they can spend 15 minutes on a proper warm-up.

So here are three tips I give players for a proper warm-up:

1. Move: Try to spend 5-10 minutes to get moving. You can jog if you are at the park, bike if you are the gym, or even jump rope if you're at home and don't have much space. The point is to move to help your body know that you will be working hard. 

1. Dynamic Stretching: When I was going through youth soccer, our coaches would have us do static stretches. As I rose through the ranks, our physical trainers informed us that dynamic stretches were better suited to prepare us for training—for example, high knees, butt kicks, carioca, shuffles, open and close the gate.

1. Hip Mobility: As soccer players, we need to make sure our core and hip are ready to play. My college coach educated our team on making sure our hips and glutes were activated so we would not have problems with knees or ankles. He gave us all looped bands which would do walks with to help train our glutes to fire. Some exercises to do: looped band marches, sideways walks, etc.

There you go 

Here are three tips you can take with you to your next training, practice, or game so you can ready to play your best.

Does your player need more tips like this? Contact me here to set up a time to chat about joining our program.