Stretching is a big help at SoccerFit (by Cate Cahill Guest Blogger)

Soccer involves a lot of powerful and unique movements. Whether jumping for a header, changing direction or sudden sprints, the body is constantly moving in a way that is potentially damaging to muscles if the body has not been properly conditioned. This is why we take the time to warm up for SoccerFit.

An important part of the warm up is stretching. This is when we loosen stiff muscles and try to expose them to movement. Recent studies have favoured dynamic stretching over static stretching as an effective preventative to injury for sports that involve powerful movements.

Dynamic stretching involves movement whereas static stretching is standing still, typically, and leaning into stretches. For soccer some of the best dynamic stretches involve skipping (for calf muscles), ankle rotations, gentle changes of direction while jogging, swinging or kicking the legs from small arcs and gradually increasing, swinging legs sideways, walking lunges (hamstrings, hip flexors), running with high knees, running with butt kicks, and not to forget the rest of the body - arm circles, body rotations, neck circles ad so on.

Static stretches still have a place especially for relaxing the muscles. They should always be done when the body is warmed up. They are useful for the end of training or after a game. Some people prefer a mix of static and dynamic stretches before exercise. If it works for you...!

The beauty of Dynamic Stretching is that it can be incorporated into the warm up phase, keeping constant movement of the body, without having to stop completely to stretch. Dynamic Stretching is the most effective "wake up" for muscles before more intensive exercise and soccer games.

(Picture SoccerFit Randwick - Ankle Circles)

Women in a league of their own

Football Federation Australia (FFA) and Westfield this week announced a landmark agreement in support of the fastest growing team sport for women in the country – women’s football.

The Westfield Group’s support involves women’s football ranging from the Westfield Championship for Girls, the establishment of a new national women’s league known as the Westfield W-League, and the national women’s team to be known as the Westfield Matildas.

Westfield has also extended its partnership in respect of the Qantas Socceroos and the Hyundai A-League.

“We are delighted to announce this new and historic agreement for women’s football,” said FFA CEO Ben Buckley.

“Women’s football is a big growth sport which is enjoyed by many girls and women and watched by many mums and grandmothers each weekend, and it’s terrific to have the support of Westfield in our efforts to grow and develop the sport even further.”

Buckley said that women’s football has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 6.3% over the past five years, especially on the back of the performance of the Matildas in the Women’s World Cup in 2007.

“The Westfield Matildas are one of the highest achieving sporting teams in Australia, having made four Women’s World Cup tournaments and several Olympic Games, and football offers a unrivalled career path for talented elite women athletes,” Buckley said.

Read the rest of this article at Football Australia’s website

(photo by Koichi Kamoshida © Getty Images)

Passing to a Player on the Run (by Cate Cahill Guest Blogger)

If you are passing to an open player who is moving into an open space, it is crucial to play the ball in front of her. If you play it toward where her feet are at the moment you strike the ball, by the time the ball gets to her a second or two later it will be behind her.

So play the ball ahead of the player on the move. The faster she is moving, the further ahead she will need the ball to be. Always try to play a ball so that the player receiving it will not have to break or adjust her stride pattern to receive the pass.

Two-Touch Soccer – great for fitness and teamplay (by Cate Cahill guest blogger)

Towards the end of a SoccerFit fitness workout session, we divide up for the SoccerFit game experience. Soccer drills are good for fitness, and learning skills, but the game experience is where there is some great fitness and team interaction to be had. Applying and practicing soccer skills in "real time" in the game experience also creates a great sense of achievement where we can put what we've learned into practice to further enjoy the flow of the soccer game.

SoccerFit games are devised to be as non contact as possible. One of the ways to do this is to keep the ball moving by limiting the number of "touches" allowed on the ball by any player. A 'touch' is any contact that a player makes with the ball whether a kicked pass or a contact used to control the football. SoccerFit instructors enforce a 'two touch' rule and this very effectively eliminates the need for tackles to change possession of the ball. In an interesting way, it also changes the way that more experienced players influence the game by ensuring that the ball is shared by everyone. If a player touches more than twice, then the ball is turned over with a free kick to the other team.

Two-touch and other restrictions on a game are not just a SoccerFit initiative - in fact they form they basis for training for football teams from top professionals to the amateur clubs around the world.

So why is two-touch soccer an important way to boost fitness and teamplay?

It's simple – two-touch encourages players to 'receive-pass-and-move'. That is, to receive the ball (with a controlling touch), pass the ball (a second touch) and move into space in the hope of receiving the ball again. This continuous movement approach gives all participants an excellent fitness workout as well as teaching them how to work as a team to move the ball as rapidly as possible around the playing area.

Two-touch also teaches players to have vision on the field. It forces them to be clever about where they position themselves and to be ready to respond to help other team-members. It also motivates them to be prepared to pass the ball at the earliest time and teaches them the crucial importance of the first, or controlling, touch. Other key aspects of two-touch include:

· The ability to control the ball at first touch, and its placement subsequent to that touch dictates how the ball will be played.

· Off the ball the supporting players know they need to move quickly into a position of support.

· Decision making that players learn should include whether to pass to the feet of a player or pass into space beyond a running team mate.

It's the flow of the game around the field that creates the beauty of soccer - players linking together as a team to move a spherical object creatively and ingeniously to achieve the ultimate - scoring a goal. Two-touch soccer training promotes and teaches this flow.

My First SoccerFit Session (by Elaine Chang, Guest Blogger)

Joggers, socks, shorts, t-shirt et voila. Mr. SoccerFit says that’s all I’ll be needing today. I could have also brought along my brother’s old but trusty size 5 Paul’s Warehouse-soccer ball, but I wasn’t sure it would be good enough as it has recently grown a tiny nose – Mr. SoccerFit later tells me that it would have been fine. I might brave the fight for space on public transport next time and bring my nose-ball.

The green spread of the playing area greets my office-sore eyes. While the sky has been a little weepy, the ground isn’t sodden and Mr. SoccerFit has thoughtfully sent round a confirmation SMS to let everyone know that SoccerFit is still on that afternoon. In any case I’m not going to let a little damp grass get in the way of my introduction to the world of soccer, or fitness, or at least my attempt to get there.

As I approach I spot our trainer bouncing a ball up and down on his knees while talking to a girl with a blond ponytail – who is dressed in much groovier soccer regalia than my own (obviously someone who has played for a club before). I get closer and see that she is pulling her socks up over shin pads. Wow, she looks tough. I’ve only got anklets.

“Hello! Is this SoccerFit?”

“Yes, you’ve come to the right place.” the trainer smiles at me. “This is Mira. ” He stopped juggling for a moment to introduce the pretty girl, decked out in black gear, who looks like she means business, soccer business. He continued, “This will be the first lesson for everyone in this group, so you’ll all be in the same boat here. I’ll be coaching you this afternoon.”

After some preliminary chit-chat about the weather, and exchanging stories of how we heard about SoccerFit (me, through a friend who plays in Coogee; Mira via a friend who’s played in the city) and if we’ve ever played soccer before (me, no, unless you count a couple of PE games at my all-girls high-school where five girls kicked a ball around a field while another 15 class-members feigned moving around in shady patches). More SoccerFit people soon arrived and we got started on warming-up and stretching. We then went straight into the technique drills that take up the first half of the session.

I say technique drills, but they were sweat-inducing jogs up and down the field that required us to reach down to touch the grass, skip sideways in a line, change directions, change directions again then jump up to pretend to head a ball… etc. We dribbled balls around cones with different parts of our feet, passed balls to a partner, attempted to dribble our balls past our partner, and finally tried some group-passing exercises. With all the passing drills, the trainer made us yell the name of the person to whom we were sending the ball; this turned out to be handy preparation for ball-passes in the second half of the class: a noisy game of basic-rules soccer.

The basic-rules for our SoccerFit game included:

- no balls above waist height (a protective measure for beginners like me),

- only two consecutive touches of the ball permitted per player (to prevent ball-hogging, or rather to encourage ball-sharing),

- no scoring from beyond the half-way line (not sure why?), and

- no contact (thank god, that Mira girl was nice but still tough).

Apart from some anxious moments of not being entirely sure in which direction I was supposed to be scoring (we’d just changed direction and I was adrenalin-charged), I managed to score one goal and I was left feeling more delightfully exhausted and sweaty than I’d been for possibly a year! I was a little winded but mostly amazed. This was going to be brilliant exercise.

After our warm-down, we packed up shop, someone kindly handing me a WetOne and a stick of gum, and another person offering a few of us a lift to the train station. What a nice group of people. I would certainly be coming back for more.

To visit the SoccerFit website, please click here

SoccerFit Solo - a real calorie-burner

So you're going to one of our regular SoccerFit group sessions, or benefitting from the dedicated services of our specialist SoccerFit 1-2-1 Personal Trainers, what else can you do? Well, lots really, in fact, try SoccerFit Solo - getting out there on your own, just you and your football, and working hard, on your juggling, your tricks, dribbling, weaving, heading and just having some great fun. Even half an hour of SoccerFit Solo a day work will really zap those calories and help with weight control efforts. And the other amazing thing...it's absolutely free, it doesn't cost a cent.

This I think is one of the great undiscovered benefits of soccer, possibly moreso than any other sport. Because so much emphasis in soccer is on close in control of the ball with the legs (and other body parts), there is an enormous range of moves and body actions that one can apply to maintain ball control. The greater the range of actions, and the expertise with which you can implement them, the better your in-game performance can get (if indeed you wish to play competitively, or even socially). Many ball control actions place a high energy demand on your body and generally, the more complex the movement, the more energy your body must output - this is where some serious calorie burning can kick in.

A small experiment I often run at our SoccerFit sessions demonstrates this principle in a very simple way. Firstly we run with speed over a short distance (30 metres or so) turn and run back to the original starting point. We then effectively repeat the exercise, but this time dribbling a ball and maintaining close control over it. Although this is at a slower pace than the first activity, when it is completed I ask the participants which felt more challenging. The majority typically say that the latter activity using the ball was significantly more intensive.

I am not suggesting that all fitness activities need to be intensive - generally a balanced mix of light and heavier activities make for a great workout - but if time is short, and you want to achieve a raised level of intensity, a 20 or 30 minute SoccerFit Solo session is a great option.

Not to mention that well-executed control skills are the most beautiful facet of the game. We all gasp in admiration when Portugal's Christian Ronaldo dodges effortlessly past a handful of big-name professional defenders and slides the ball with pin-point accuracy past an equally world-famous goalkeeper. Though very few people can ever expect to approximate the skills of Christian Ronaldo, at a more basic level, we can all work on our skills as a way to enrich our love and appreciation of the game.

There is an endless amount of things to try during SoccerFit Solo, and if you are ever short of inspiration, please feel free to ask our SoccerFit trainers for a new drill or a new juggling style to try.

Please observe suitable health and safety precautions when undertaking any form of exercise or physical acitivity. Click here to access the SoccerFit Health Safety and Risk Awareness Guidelines.

To visit the SoccerFit website, please click here

Things to consider when buying a football...

1. Beginners should consider a size 5 ball (the biggest standard sizing) as these may be easier to control. Experienced players may wish to consider a size 3 or 4 or even a mini-ball as these, being more challenging to control, can stimulate skill development. Futsal (a popular indoor version of socccer) balls are heavy and do not bounce very well - these are best purchased only if you wish to focus on the indoor game.
   
2. Although it's a personal preference, and quite subtle, if the skin of the ball is 'grippy' rather than 'shiny', it can be a little bit easier to control. This may not be immediately obvious, but if you juggle (or kick to hand) the ball a few times, you may notice the difference.
   
3. The colour or design of the ball probably makes no difference to it's flight characteristics or how it feels, but at the same time, to 'enhance the karma in your personal universe', pick a colour or design that you like. Though colour seems irrelevant, many experienced players voice the opinion that they don't feel comfortable playing matches with anything other than a white ball.
   
4. Official FIFA regulations say that a ball should be pumped to between 9 and 11 pounds of pressure per square inch. This can feel heavy to play with (especially if you've got small feet), and can sometimes hurt your toe if you miskick, so for training purposes, consider letting some air out. This may have the added benefit that the softer ball 'sits' better on the foot/boot when juggling or dribbling. Heading overpumped balls is not only uncomfortable, it's downright dangerous.
   
5. For practice purposes, a training ball, not a match ball, may be advised. Training balls are significantly cheaper and may be easier to use.
6. Consider the conditions you'll be using the ball in. If you intend doing plenty of wall work (i.e. practising striking the ball against a concrete wall using a wide variety of techniques) then the ball is going to suffer much wear and tear. Some balls suffer this better than others. There is no rule of thumb here but good advice may be to experiment with less expensive balls.
7. Buy a pump as well. A highly recommended model that is currently sold in high street shops allows you to store the valve in the head of the pump when you're not using it. This can be handy if you are in the habit of forgetting where you last left your valve (regrettably this can happen an awful lot).
8. World Cup Replica balls are typically great looking and very attractively packaged, but they may not possess any of the desirable properties of their high-tech counterparts.
   

Please feel free to put forward any additional suggestions you would like as a blog comment, or email info@soccerfit.com.au

Regards,

Liam O'Duibhir, Director, SoccerFit

To visit the SoccerFit website, please click here