In Season Strength Training for Girls Soccer Players: It Should be MANDATORY

10 Aug In Season Strength Training for Girls Soccer Players: It Should be MANDATORY

Posted at 10:57h in ACL Injuries, ACL Injury Prevention, Blog, Girl Power, Girls' Soccer Training, Uncategorized by erica 0 Comments

*This blog on heavy lifting is directed toward girls age 13/14 and up. Younger ones must master a variety of motor skills, work on movement patterns, play multiple sports, and build a strong foundation first. Listen to a podcast on younger ones HERE.

Originally published by Erica on girlssoccernetwork.com.

Not so fun fact: girls’ soccer has the highest rate of ACL injury rates amongst all sports.

Even worse fact: girls’ soccer is the LEAST likely sport to do strength training year round.

Soccer girls are not getting in the gym enough.

Yet, ACL injuries in girls soccer players continue to be blamed on female anatomy, the menstrual cycle, the turf, and other factors girls cannot control.

“We don’t have a ‘female’ problem. We have a load problem.” – Coach Carmen Bott

Put simply, their soccer load – running, jumping, cutting, and changing direction – is all overpowering their strength load. When sport specific load is higher than muscle tolerance, that equals injury.

The same people who are shouting “it’s the turf!” or “it’s their periods!” are the same people failing to get their female athletes to lift heavy in the gym, and actually protect their knees against the high forces in the game.

The knee joint is protected by the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, adductors, and gluteus max and gluteus med muscles, and is also stabilized by a strong upper body and core. Girls soccer players at a minimum need to be dead lifting their body weight for several reps, but ideally, working toward 1.25x their body weight for 3 reps.

They need to be working toward getting at least 1 perfect pull-up unassisted, too. And then some.

Ask any girl on the average ECNL, ECNLR, or GA team what her dead lift, front squat or pull-up numbers are, and many can’t answer. They don’t strength train year-round. They might do a few month program during the off season, then peace out as soon as the season starts.

How can they work toward better strength numbers relative to body weight if they aren’t consistent?

How can they work toward heavy lifting if they work hard for just a summer off-season, then wither away in-season? How can they be resilient and robust to the high forces in soccer if their hard earned muscle atrophies for several months out of the gym? How can they truly bulletproof their hamstrings if they aren’t progressing their dead lift numbers?

Of course, you have a few who do take strength training year round consistently, and these girls thrive. In the 14 years I’ve been working in performance, my athletes who strength trained consistently during the season 1-2x a week never tore their ACLs. For my consistent athletes, who never missed an in season workout, and who had been training for over one year in the gym, we have a track record of zero ACL tears.

When the muscles around the knee stay strong, the forces in the game are less likely to go to the knee joint. When girls are also taught proper deceleration and landing mechanics, working on HIGH QUALITY jumps and not quantity of jumps, they improve their knee stabilization. Too often, I see girls soccer teams doing SLOPPY plyometrics. As a result, they get sore and weak knees. No progress was made.

I challenge you to ask other girls their strength numbers.

What can they dead lift? What can they split squat? How many perfect push-ups? And I’m not talking sloppy push-ups with the hips drooping below the shoulders, with a weak core. What about their pull-up form? Are they being taught to keep tension in their glutes and not swing up to the bar? Are girls progressing to pistol squats and being taught controlled eccentric movement on the way down, with full engagement of their core, and their posture not collapsing?

I’m sorry, but girls ARE NOT being taught proper core stability and are not being corrected on these basic movements. As a result, their cores are unstable and glutes are weak, which makes the knee unstable. It’s a total disaster.

ASK GIRLS THEIR NUMBERS. Many will give you a blank stare and give you nothing.

And this is the problem. They need to be trying to achieve these year-round in the gym. 1x a week at a minimum, up to 2x a week in season. They need to be becoming strong beasts.

My strength standards are high and they can only be met with consistent training for years. I did strength training since middle school and still do it today to maintain and keep building muscle.

Female athlete health should be a long term pursuit, not a quick program.

It’s also worth mentioning that injury reduction is not a body weight program with cute little balance drills and mini band work. It’s the consistent pursuit of gaining strength relative to body weight. It’s the consistent stimulation of the muscles to truly build. It’s the continuous progression of lifting more, and not staying at the same weight all year. It’s the consistent challenge to the muscles.

As strength coach Tony Gentilcore says, “lifting weights isn’t supposed to tickle.”

You must push, press, squat and pull some heavy iron.

Because guess what? An ACL tear happens with forces of up to 8x body weight. So yeah, I don’t think your itty bitty body weight balance drills in warm-up are doing much. I don’t think your crappy Nordic curls are doing much.

Even though this blog is for girls post growth spurt (usually on average, age 14 and up) to lift heavy, I want to give a shout out the younger ones: we need to stop specializing early, and start building A VARIETY OF MOTOR SKILLS to prepare for the coordination, stability and mobility required for heavier lifts in the weight room. We must lay a strong foundation first.

Another thing on these warm-ups: most coaches will implement “injury prevention” warm-ups, but form is sloppy and landing and body weight strength drills are NOT BEING COACHED PROPERLY. It’s a waste.

Girls must be under the guidance of a strength and conditioning professional to build true injury resiliency. They must be working with someone who understands long-term athletic development and each stage in their journey. Again, this blog isn’t for the young ones, but I can tell you my young ones are prepping their muscles by doing a variety of tasks – flips, crawls, cartwheels, hangs, pulls, rock climbing – so yes, body weight and resistance for some of them is fine during the most plastic years of motor skill development (ages 6-13), but it must be A VARIETY and not overuse certain muscle groups.

And one more thing: injury reduction for girls ages 13/14 and up is NOT a club-wide strength coach doing circuit style workouts, bopping from station to station, hardly any rest time, with girls lifting the same weight every week. That’s making it look like there is injury reduction happening, but there’s NO progression of weight, no tracking of load, no assessment and re-assessment. It’s all fake. It’s just to check a box and act like everyone’s being virtuous for female athletes. A huge red flag is when girls stick with 10-15 pound dumbbells all the time. Their muscles have adapted to this weight over time, and now they’re stagnating if no load is added. Be on the lookout if this is happening…it’s a red flag.

Circuit style workouts are not true strength. True strength is progressing to heavier loads, with a minimum of 2-3 minute rest in between sets.

A true strength training program must be tracked and progressed with an end goal in mind to get girls strong relative to their body weight. Girls must be truly be corrected on deceleration, plyometrics, and strength work.

And if girls are doing remote training with someone, they better have someone who requires their athletes to upload videos, who gives constant feedback on their technique, and who sees their athletes on Zoom every month.

Girls must LOAD in the gym in order to handle LOAD in the game.

With that said, don’t let girls wither away in season. Don’t just let them get in the gym for 2 months in the Summer, only to lose it all in the other 10 months in the year.

And most critically, stop blaming ACL tears on female anatomy and hormones when your girls are failing to get into the gym, and don’t even know their strength numbers.

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