Search Toggle Sports Tips and News UK Sports Tips and News There are multiple benefits to living a sporty and active lifestyle. Sports such as football and tennis keep the mind and body in shape, and provide social benefits too. This blog is here to help people get involved in sport and provide some additional tips across different sports. Useful Tips On Football Fitness For Pre Season Training Learning how to maintain fitness all year round for football can be a long and frustrating journey. Many players have realized that summer fitness can help to dramatically improve their game when the new seasons usually start in October. However do not think that you need to be running marathons over summer in order to compete at a semi-pro level of football in the UK. What you do need is to strengthen key muscles that contribute to your game, depending on position. For example, a defender will need to focused on upper and lower body, where as a winger will need more high impact sprint training. Here are some fitness tips that may help to improve your game, as well as help you in other sports: Tip 1: Do Leg Curls The quads play a critical role to a faster and fitter football player and generate greater power in the legs. One of the best exercises to strengthen the quads is by doing leg curls using gym weights or some other suitable weight training equipment. Doing few but very heavy repetitions is probably the best way to strengthen the quads versus doing hundreds of light repetitions. Do not do these exercises more than once every 2-4 weeks as you need to give your muscles time to recover and rebuild. Clarence Seedorf was famously great at maintaining excellent quads throughout is football training career. Tip 2: Strengthen Your Abs The abdominals play a major support role in football and promote good shape and balance. A good way to strengthen the abs is to do weighted ab crunches. There are machines in most gyms that allow you to do this exercise easily. You can also do this exercise easily on many home gyms too. Do not forget to also do side ab crunches or ab twists with proper weights to strengthen the sides of your abs. Tip 3: Strengthen Your Back Many footballers suffer from back pain and this can really negatively affect your game. One of the best ways to stop back pain is to do exercises to make the back muscles stronger. Do the appropriate exercises at your local gym to target both the upper and lower back muscles. The best strategy is to simply perform regular weight training exercises that strengthen all the key muscles in your body however if you have very little time then doing the 3 exercises above can really help to improve yourself on the football pitch and help you to make it through 90 minutes. It is recommended to take a 4-6 week break in the UK in summer, as most professional footballers do the same. However, in August when football clubs across the UK are starting pre-season training, try to use the above tips to give yourself a head start. Open Facebook in a new tab Open Twitter in a new tab Open Instagram in a new tab Open LinkedIn in a new tab Open Pinterest in a new tab © 2021 Sports and More