Jeremy Bettle is the Associate Director for Sports Performance at UC Santa Barbara. In between his nonstop work with one of the best soccer programs in the country, Bettle spoke with us about his work with UCSB and what makes for ideal preparation.

Soccer players, listen up!

What can a young player do prior to college to gain an edge for the next level?

Get stronger. If a player can start a really smart strength regimen – if they can get with a personal trainer or a professional they will really get a huge advantage over a lot of people.

Box Jumps help build explosiveness.

What is the most common mistake young players make in preparation?

Players are usually focused on running and there is way too much aerobic work. The goal with training is to replicate the demands of the game – the power movements you’ll need over and over in a game. You might be able to run ten miles at once pace, but soccer isn’t played at one pace.

How do you go about working with your athletes?

We start off by looking at injury prevention, and what main injuries a player may face. Then we establish a goal based on each individual: some players need to get bigger, others need better lateral movement. We try to build better soccer players.

Then we’ll do complex training that features a strength movement (i.e. squat), power movement (i.e. box jump), an antagonist movement (i.e. resistance) and stability movement.

Is there a specific injury most common in soccer players? How do you prevent them?

With women it’s the ACL, so we have to put emphasis on hip and hamstring strength. For men it tends to be groin injuries with their lack of flexibility, so we do aerobic work.

What is the future of sports performance in soccer?

There’s going to be a lot of movement toward smarter training. A focus on aerobic training is falling off and I’m hoping to see a move towards resistance training. Soccer is quite a long way behind in terms of sports performance. There are a lot of old school practices. Soccer is a sport with lots of tradition and a lot of people go from playing to coaching so they have their players do what they did and that gets passed on. Hopefully over time, we get newer programs in place.