When to Lift Professional Soccer Players During the Week

For performance coaches working in the soccer setting, it can be a constant conundrum we run into: when to sneak in high-quality lifting for our teams. There’s no simple way to go about it: coming off a Sunday match, we want to respect a 48-hour recovery-window but we also need to take into account:

1. Coaches plans for the week (likely desiring 1 or 2 days of hard training)
2. Off days (hopefully 1 per week)
3. The following weeks match and players desire to “not be sore”

In-season is a time when strength needs to be maintained so ideally the muscular system and the CNS both get stimulated at some point during the week. If we choose to lift heavy on the days that the team goes light, we simply will inhibit full recovery from high-intensity soccer sessions. Similarly, we will likely get large amounts of push-back from players as they have just started to feel better but now must complete a lift that they feel will lead to soreness for their upcoming match.

No matter what your weekly periodization model is, I would always aim for putting your heaviest “lower-body” lifting day on your hardest training day. This will concentrate the weekly load on the body but also allow for maximum recovery. When you spread out the gym and overload days on the field by a day or two, you interrupt the recovery process, turning a 48-hour recovery window into a 96-hour process where the athletes never feel well-rested or well-recovered. Most lower body lifting won’t exceed three sets of 4-6 reps and as long as the movements are not drastically different week to week, the volume should not produce mass amounts of muscle damage or CNS fatigue. Instead, these types of loads will allow athletes to build up into one or two heavy sets to maintain strength and keep their tolerance to produce and absorb forces high.

Now, the caveat is this: the weight room is supplemental to what they are paid to do. The focus should always be the field. So, if the field session was 120% higher volume than typical or an athlete comes in feeling completely depleted after a session, it’s also our responsibility to make adjustments on the fly. There will also be weeks where the above recommendation simply does not make sense. Multiple matches, a coach changing up the typical routine, or other unforeseen circumstances may make things more challenging.

The final component of instituting something like this is managing expectations. Athletes thrive off routine and knowing what to expect. Changing their routine messes with them mentally but can also have negative physical effects. Setting a precedent and letting them know the reasoning behind the periodization and allowing them freedom to even do some or all of the workout prior to training will drastically lower the push-back that one might receive.