Sport-Specific Training for Soccer and Lacrosse Athletes

Soccer and lacrosse athletes are among the most physically demanding athletes I work with. Both sports require a rare combination of aerobic endurance, explosive sprint capacity, change-of-direction agility, and sustained technical skill under fatigue. Train only one of these qualities and you'll cap the other. Build all of them in proportion and you get an athlete who stands out on every film reel.

Soccer: The Most Complete Aerobic-Anaerobic Sport

A Division I college soccer player covers 7–9 miles in a 90-minute game. But those miles are not jogged at steady state — they're a constantly changing blend of walking, jogging, striding, sprinting, and maximal effort accelerations. Elite soccer fitness is not aerobic capacity alone. It's the ability to recover from high-intensity efforts and repeat them — sometimes 30+ times in a game.

Speed and Acceleration for Soccer

Goals in soccer are most commonly created through explosive accelerations in transition — a midfielder bursting past a defender, a striker turning a first touch into a 3-on-2. The decisive moments in the game are anaerobic. Training purely for aerobic fitness misses the quality that actually creates scoring opportunities.

At AP22, soccer athletes work on first-step acceleration from multiple starting positions (standing, jogging, backpedaling), top-end velocity in transitions, and the repeated sprint ability to maintain that quality through a full match. GPS tracking lets us quantify how speed holds up as fatigue accumulates — a key data point for evaluating training effectiveness.

Change of Direction in Soccer

Soccer players change direction thousands of times per game — most of them reactive. A forward adjusting to a ball in flight. A midfielder tracking a run. A central defender reading a diagonal pass and closing space. We train reactive agility heavily for soccer athletes — not just programmed cone patterns but stimulus-response drills that mirror real game decisions.

Position-Specific Soccer Training

• Forwards: acceleration in tight spaces, turns at speed, explosive first touch and finish
• Midfielders: repeated sprint ability, 360-degree spatial awareness, box-to-box conditioning
• Defenders: lateral speed and recovery runs, aerial challenge mechanics, 1v1 defensive footwork
• Goalkeepers: lateral dive explosiveness, footwork in 6-yard box, distribution speed

Lacrosse: Power, Endurance, and Multi-Directional Athleticism

Lacrosse is growing faster than almost any sport in the country — and so is the physical standard at the collegiate level. Division I lacrosse players are among the most well-rounded athletes in college sports: fast, powerful, aerobically fit, and technically skilled under pressure. Training for lacrosse at a high level requires a comprehensive athletic development approach.

Lacrosse-Specific Speed and Agility

Lacrosse features high-speed transitions (clear to attack), tight-space dodging (1v1 at the crease), and long-range sprints in transition. We build both max velocity and dodging-specific acceleration. The dodging mechanics of lacrosse — roll dodge, face dodge, split dodge — require the same deceleration-to-acceleration efficiency as football and basketball cuts.

Stick-Side Power

Shot velocity and passing power in lacrosse are driven by the same rotational mechanics as baseball — hip-to-shoulder separation, core stability, and posterior chain involvement in the follow-through. We integrate rotational power work — medicine ball throws, band-resisted rotational movements — into lacrosse athlete programs to develop this quality directly.

Position-Specific Lacrosse Training

• Attackmen: dodging quickness, close-range explosiveness, finishing power
• Midfielders: aerobic capacity alongside sprint power, 1v1 agility, two-way conditioning
• Defensemen: lateral footwork, physical contact mechanics, footspeed in clearing lanes
• Goalkeepers: explosive lateral movement, foot positioning under pressure, outlet velocity

Building the Complete Soccer/Lacrosse Athlete

The physical profile that earns college scholarships in soccer and lacrosse has several common threads: elite acceleration, high-level aerobic capacity, reactive agility, physical durability over a full season, and consistent technical quality under fatigue. AP22 programs are built to develop all of these simultaneously — within a periodized structure that peaks athletes at the right time.

“College coaches in soccer and lacrosse don't want fit athletes. They want explosive athletes who can sustain that explosiveness for 90 minutes or 60 minutes. That's a different training problem — and it requires a different solution.”

Andrew Preston · AP22 Performance