How to Do Youth Soccer Stretches

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Jill Weiss, and I'm going to show you some tips, and just basic stretches, that you can do for your athletes, and for your team, but the first stretch, calves. Let's go ahead and stretch the calves. You can do this against a tree. You can do it against any type of wall, or you can have them get into like a sprinter stance, and try and keep that front leg, you want to bend the knee slightly. You don't want to completely lock the knee, but have them feel the stretch of the calf. To lower the stretch, in the lower part of the calf, have them bring their back knee down a little bit. That will give them more of a stretch throughout the calf. As far as the groin goes, all young kids know the butterfly. That's an easy stretch for the groin, so you're just going to have them kind of sit, almost Indian style, and have them press, maybe use their elbows to press down on the legs, to feel the stretch in the inner thighs, or the groin area. Just have them hold it. Make sure they're not kind of bouncing up and down, just have them hold the stretch, anywhere from three to ten seconds, so that's a good stretch for the groin. A good stretch for the quad muscle, from the thighs. This also you can do standing. You can hold on to something, or if your athletes have very good balance, just bringing that foot up to the buttocks area. If you want to have them sitting,you can do it this way. This also stretches the quad muscle, grabbing that ankle, and bringing it towards the back, also. Just have them hold the muscle. That will be a good stretch for that. As far as the hamstring goes, right behind the legs. You can have them laying down, laying down and grabbing the leg, and just holding. Don't have them come all the way, as far as they can comfortably, and that's a good stretch. They can also do that one standing against something, where they're kind of just holding that stretch, to kind of stretch out the hamstring, and then you can incorporate upper body, just basic stretches, but very important to do that lower body stretches, so that's a little bit about stretching for youth soccer. Thank you."