Girls Soccer Players NEED Speed and Strength Year-Round (Don't Let Them Become SOFT!)

23 Sep Girls Soccer Players NEED Speed and Strength Year-Round (Don’t Let Them Become SOFT!)

Posted at 12:25h in Blog, Female Athletes, Girls' Soccer Training, Uncategorized by erica 0 Comments

Recently, I’ve been asking the question: are girls soccer players becoming soft?

Before you get all up in arms and say I’m being too harsh, hear me out.

The youth girls game is becoming more intense, fast paced, and demanding. The top travel leagues are now year-round, with teams practicing 3-4x a week on average, with 1-2 games on the weekends.

A girls soccer player who is going through puberty must ensure her body can keep up with these increasing demands – the hundreds of changes of direction, the many yards of high speed running, and the rigorous cardiovascular demands.

This isn’t to fear-monger, but the rise of pediatric ACL injuries is no joke. And this is because girls aren’t focused enough on the physical preparation to handle these increased loads.

Ask around on your current team: how many girls are strength and speed training year-round with a certified strength and conditioning professional? It’s usually a small percentage, if any.

Here in Tampa, Florida, I’m grateful to have an extremely consistent core group of girls soccer players who commit to strength and speed training year-round. Not only are the insanely resilient to injury and have stayed healthy, they’ve also leveled up their speed, power and explosiveness. I love having the time to really develop athletes, and I make my philosophy VERY clear to parents and athletes who start working with me: long-term, consistent training gets the best, most impactful results.

At the end of every summer off-season, I make it VERY clear why there must be a continuation in training for not just maintenance of everything they worked for, but also, continued improvement. Some people listen, some people don’t. But at least I said my peace.

The truth is, all girls must do this type of training year-round, or they will wither away, and their bodies won’t be able to keep up with the increasing loads of youth travel soccer. Eventually, they will break down, whether it’s a soft tissue injury, or worse yet, an ACL tear. And on the performance end, a plateau in speed and agility.

Girls soccer players must load in the gym to handle load in the game. The hamstrings must be strong so girls can explode fast and repeat these efforts at similar speeds. The hamstrings must also be strong so the tibia doesn’t sheer forward and cause the knee to blow out. The hamstrings must be strong so girls can be faster than everyone else.

Other muscle groups in the upper body and core also help female athletes to better control their center of mass when decelerating. They will be more efficient when they change direction and in better control of their body weight so they don’t take a wrong plant that twists their knee. They must have a strong upper body to shield off defenders and go into tackles fearless.

Girls must strengthen their quads, namely, eccentric strength, so they can better pump the brakes fast and quickly change direction.

And all of this must be done consistently. Strength gains are made with year-round effort. Otherwise, girls will never progress to heavier loads. Girls soccer players should never hang out at the same weight all year. Eventually, they must gain strength relative to their body weight. All of my girls in Tampa dead lift well over their body weight at this point because they have stuck with a program.

Girls soccer players must also speed train year-round. Speed gains begin to go down as soon as one week’s time away from training. Girls need fast twitch inputs at least every 7 days. Speed is a highly neural activity, so they must continue to stimulate the body with max effort sprints and bouncy plyometrics. And these must be designed with the proper exercise selection and dosing by a strength and conditioning professional.

With soccer becoming more year-round, it’s mandatory girls strength train. We can’t change year-round schedules, but what we can change is our girls’ capacity to handle them.

Don’t let girls soccer players become soft.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica Mulholland is a former college 3x All-American soccer player and now Hall of Famer from Johns Hopkins University. She holds a Master of Science in Exercise Science and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, who has been helping female athletes of all sports with speed, agility, strength, power, and conditioning for over 13 years. She works with athletes who want to become stronger and faster, as well as ACL rehab girls soccer players in the later stages (over 3 month mark post-op) who want to return to sport better than they were prior to injury. Whether you’re a fully healthy athlete who wants to become resilient, or an ACL patient wanting to come back better than ever, Erica is here to help. She practices in-person in her gym in Tampa, Florida.

Train with Erica in Tampa Florida for speed and strength training, OR late stage ACL rehab (must be at minimum 3 months into physical therapy and post-surgery): BOOK Assessment

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