Soccer Performance Training - Running

Michael Minthorne: Hi! I am Michael Minthorne and I am showing you how to properly perform soccer movements. Right now we are going to discuss how to run properly. There are some things you want to keep in mind, no matter what speed you are running at. Body posture, arm movement, and ground contact.

In soccer we do a lot of sprinting. When you sprint, you hit two phases. The first one is acceleration, the second one is max velocity. Acceleration is a build up to top speed. Max velocity is how you maintain your top speed. When you accelerate your technique is little different than when you are at max velocity.

Building up speed is very aggressive, almost violent, if you will. Your body lean, or your body posture is at a 45 degree lean. Now the angle starts at your ankles and goes to ears. Between your ankles and ears, needs to be a complete straight line, at 45 degrees. You are pumping your arms aggressively and you are punching and driving your knees. One thing that you do, that lot of kids do, or a lot of athletes would do is, they cycle their legs, they move their legs in a circle.

When you are accelerating, you want to punch and drive. Your foot should move in a straight line and you should always be striking behind you. A part of the foot that you should be striking is the ball of your feet. You have to keep your ankle's dorsiflex in order to do so.

Now once you have accelerated, which will last to about 10 to 15 yards, you are going to be in max velocity. Max velocity is when you are at your top speed. How do you maintain your top speed, is very different than building up the top speed. When you are at max velocity, your body is in upright position, you are at a 90 degree angle, and your ground contact is underneath you.

You want to make sure you do cycle, and not punch and drive. Both of these movements are fairly complex. You want to make sure you start with something simple when training for these movements. This exercise here is a wall drill. I am able to pull myself at a 45 degree lean without worrying about having the whole myself there.

Here I can practice punching and driving and not cycling and always making sure that I strike behind me and I am hitting the balls on my feet while keeping my ankles locked. And this is a different type of wall drill. Here I am showing you proper max velocity technique. As I raise my heels up, they reach the peak of the cycle underneath my hips and they go down forward making sure that it strike underneath me.

Always keeping my body nice and straight and from my ankles to my ears is a straight line. This is how you cycle properly when you are at top speed. In both phases of running your arm should be pumping along with your legs. Arm movement should be forward and backwards and arm movement should also be with the opposite leg, meaning I move my right arm forward as my left leg goes forward. I will move my left arm forward as my right leg goes forward.

So with these simple guidelines, you should be moving quicker and more efficiently on the soccer field. Next, we are going to talk about how to jump properly.