Whenever a quality pair of soccer cleats is sold, there is a very common question that is on the mind of almost each buyer: how long is my pair going to last? Well, this is the question that brought you to this page. Read on to know more.

First of all, if you are a regular player of soccer and play this game 7 days per week, expect your cleats to last two seasons at most. Here are a few factors that will affect the lifespan of your soccer cleats.

Lightweight shoes

Soccer shoes that are lightweight are not as durable as the heavier ones. This is because they are made from thinner stuff, which makes these shoes more fragile.

Playing Surface

Just like other things, the surface you are going to play soccer on is also important. For grassy surfaces, we suggest that you buy firm ground cleats. You must not wear these cleats to play on artificial turf or the lifespan of your cleats will decrease significantly.

Your activity level

If you play 7 days a week, you should by an additional pair of soccer cleats. Wearing the same pair of shoes throughout the week will reduce their lifespan.

How Hard You Play

If you don’t play as aggressively as the professional players, your shoes will last longer and vice versa. So, you need to be realistic and go for the right pair of shoes based on your aggression level during a play. If you want your cleats to last the longest, make sure you take good care of them. Here are a few tips that can help you with this:

Loosen Your Cleats

Whenever you buy a new pair of cleats, you should put them on for jogging or before a game. This way you can loosen up your cleats. After a few days, the new shoes will become the right fit for your feet. Then you can use these cleats for your soccer play on the ground.

Dry Your Shoes

After each play, we suggest that you air dry your shoes. Another good tip is to stuff a few pages of some newspaper in each pair. The paper will absorb the extra dampness and will also keep your pair in shape. Excessive exposure to the sun is bad for your shoes, especially when they are drying.

Detachable Cleats

After each play, you should remove your detachable cleats. If you don’t remove them after a play and walk on hard surfaces, your cleats will become blunt. As a result, you won’t be able to use them.

Clean Them

Each time you get back home from the playground, don’t forget to clean your soccer cleats. This will prevent the dust and debris from causing damage to the leather. Aside from this, you should remove debris from the stitches of the shoes as well. It’s better not to use cleaning agents while cleaning your cleats.

Leather creams

It’s a good idea to use a good leather cream on your shoes as it will keep your shoes soft.

Don’t use hot water

It’s very important that you don’t use hot water to clean your cleats or you will end up ruining them for good.

So, I hope now you have a pretty good idea of how long your soccer cleats will last if you take the right steps.

This is a question that is asked soon after the purchase of say a pair of high end soccer cleats costing close to 300 dollars.

If you are an active player, playing 3 to seven times a week, say seven, and have just that one pair of high end soccer cleats, you can expect them to last one full season (three to four months) and if you are lucky, maybe two seasons.

There are four main variables to determine how long your soccer cleats should last

1. A lighter shoe will be less durable. The material is thinner and more prone to break faster than a heavier shoe.

2. The playing surface is important. If you buy Firm Ground cleats, they are designed for play on firm grassy surfaces. You are advised not to use them on artificial turf as that would be a sure shot way of breaking them before time. Buy a pair of soccer cleats that is appropriate for the surface you play on whether it is firm ground, soft ground, artificial turf or indoors.

3. If you are an active player, playing every single day, it makes sense to get an additional pair of cleats so that the wear and tear is distributed between the two pairs.

4. The intensity of play – here self knowledge is the key. You should know whether you are going to the field just to play a few kicks, or a few side games or that you like to play intensely, and move about a lot on the field. In the latter scenario, no brand will last longer than another. You have to be realistic and admit that you are pretty hard on your shoes and so expect to replace them often. Basically, your track record in soccer cleats is key here.

If you want your football cleats to last as long as they possibly can, taking good care is important. Here is a care regimen for soccer cleats

1. Breaking in for new cleats can be achieved by jogging in them during warm ups or just before a game. The more you engage them, the more they will loosen up and provide the right fit.

2. Air dry the cleats after every game, and stuff some newspaper in them to absorb the dampness and also hold the shape till they dry. They will crack if you expose them to the sun while drying.

3. Remove the detachable cleats soon after the game. Walking in them on any other surface blunts them and renders them useless in their function of providing you grip.

4. Clean your soccer cleats soon after the game, to prevent dirt and dust from settling into the leather causing damage. Carefully brush out any dirt from the dented areas of stitching. If you are using cleaning products, make sure they are gentle on your soccer cleats.

5. Use a leather foot and leather creams regularly to keep the leather uppers of your football cleats soft and supple.

6. Never subject them to a hot water cleaning, as this ruins the shoes.

In any type of strength training for soccer players, building a solid foundation from the ground up is imperative. Exercises that have a player sitting on a seat and extending their leg or lying on their stomach and curling their hamstrings are with out both functional and preventative value.

Unfortunately there are still misinformed coaches giving the wrong information about soccer fitness and building leg strength. In particular the leg extension exercise is given to improve kicking strength.

Here are three reasons why leg extensions and hamstring curls are poor choices for building leg strength.

1) The game of soccer is mostly played on one leg while either foot is in contact with the ground. Neither the leg extension or hamstring exercise provides this opportunity. When in a game does a soccer player lie on the ground and bring his/ her buttocks to the ground or sit on the turf and straighten his /her leg? These exercises isolate either the quadriceps muscle group or the hamstring muscle group and places unwanted tension at the hip.

2) Sitting or lying on either of these machines minimizes avoids the integration of the deep abdominal core muscles as well as the buttock muscles. As you know a strong “core” and strong buttocks leads to strength and power in the lower body.

3) The ligaments that support the knee either get stressed inappropriately (too much stress on the ACL) or not at all. Remember these exercises were designed for body builders to isolate these muscles. These guys and girls do a lot of posing and do not have to stop, start and change direction.

Here are three exercises to build leg strength to run faster and kick harder:

1) Any form of the single leg squat. This exercise may be done several different ways. You may squat with the air borne leg either in front or behind you.

2) Moving kicking action with resistance. Stand with feet shoulder width apart. Place a band above or below the knee of the kicking leg. Make sure the band is anchored behind you. Now take one step forward with the plant leg then follow through with the in a kicking motion with the other leg. This exercise stresses both the kicking leg for resistance and the plant leg for single leg strength and balance.

This type of exercise closely relates to the kicking action in a soccer game.

3) Stability Ball Curl. Lie on your back and place your heels on the stability ball. Raise your hip in the air then curl the ball towards you and away from you. Keep your buttocks tight. This combines the stomach core muscles and the buttocks muscles along with your hamstring muscles.

Keep in mind a couple of things about these exercises;

A) They include the both the abdominal and buttock muscles.

B) The actions closely relate to the movements in a soccer game.

C) They protect the knee joint.

So there you have it. Be well informed before you start building leg strength for your soccer fitness.

As I started my research for this article I had no idea what I was going to find. I do not watch soccer and did not know that the field was called a pitch. When I heard about the odd name of a soccer field I got very interested in finding the answer to the question why a soccer field is called a pitch.

What I found out is that there is not a lot of information available about this subject. I also found that there are two different answers to the question. The first one that I will talk about is vastly more popular than the second. Even though there is wide gap between these two schools of thought I thought to present them both and let you decide which sounds more feasible.

The first explanation for why a soccer field is called a pitch comes from the beginnings of both soccer and cricket. This is possibly why this is the most popular answer for the question we are asking. Most people believe that a soccer field is called a pitch because it refers to the fact that the goals had to be pounded, or pitched, into the ground. This is similar to using the word in the context of “pitching a tent.” The fact that a cricket field is called a pitch as well goes a long way to imagining that this could be the actual way a soccer field started being called a pitch. Also, from what I could find, all playing fields in England are called a pitch.

As I said the second explanation for why a soccer field is called a pitch is far less popular than the first one. Being a writer this answer appeals to me, and actually feels like this could be the real reason a soccer field is called a pitch. This explanation comes from the Oxford English Dictionary. In the Oxford dictionary the definition of a pitch “is an area of ground marked out or used for play in an outdoor game.” This can also be a good explanation for the reason that all playing fields in England are called a pitch. In England a “field” is defined as an open space that is used for agricultural. In the US we call all large expanses of land a field, whether they are used for games or farming. In the UK they differentiate between the two by calling a farm field a “field” and a playing field a “pitch.”

What this means, is that this is just a difference in Americanized English and what the English call the Queens’ English. There are many examples of these differences in our languages. For instance we call fuel for our cars “gas” and they call the same fuel “petrol.” We use the word garbage, they call it rubbish. You could go on and on with examples of the different words that are used in each country. These are the two different reasons I could find as to why a soccer field is called a pitch. I presented both of the explanations so that each reader of this article can make up their own mind which one they believe is the correct reason.

Soccer is a game where conditioning is of huge importance when it comes to maximizing performance.

At the beginning of pre-season, most coaches today focus a lot on building an aerobic base that prepare the players for the season.

Building an aerobic base

The term “aerobic base” has been frequently used over the last 10-20 years, and the reason for building this base is because of the evidence that a player run 8-12 km during a soccer game over the period of 90 minutes.

So far so good. But when it comes to the distance covered during a soccer game, shouldn’t we really focus on how we reach that distance, rather than just focusing on the distance itself?

Is the actual distance the most important aspect?

Sure, a professional soccer player may run 11-12 km during a game, but that distance is not accomplished through long distance running at the same tempo throughout the whole game, quite the opposite.

What separates a world class player from an average player is not necessarily the distance covered, but rather the number of high intensity runs and sprints being performed.

Long distance running will make your players slower and weaker

If you still think running long distance running is the way to go for soccer conditioning, then this should hopefully change your mind.

Running long distance will stimulate your slow twitch muscle fiber, meaning your body is adapting to the slow tempo being performed during long distance running, and over time your fast twitch muscle fibers will “drown”, which will make you slower and weaker.

Soccer is a “power-sport”, where sprinting, maximum strength and jumping ability is of extreme importance. Running long distance will do the opposite for your players and make them weak and slow.

Is there a need for an aerobic base?

Not in the traditional way through long distance running. My philosophy on soccer conditioning is that it all should be performed on the soccer field, and most of the conditioning should be sport-specific, meaning most of it should be performed with the ball.

However, during the beginning of pre-season, I build an aerobic base through tempo running.

Tempo running is where the players run at around 75-80% of what they would run when sprinting that distance. The distance I use for tempo running is 100 meters (the length of a soccer field), and 200 meters (back and forth).

A rule of thumb for the distance and time is:

– 100 meters: 18-22 seconds

– 200 meters: 38-44 seconds

So if they do 100 meter tempo runs, they should run at a pace where it would take them 18-22 seconds to run 100 meters.

I use tempo runs for 3-4 weeks, 2-3 sessions/week, increasing the distance with 200-300 meters per workout. I coach a Boys 18 team, so if you coach younger players, be a little more careful with the volume.

The first session might be 8 x 100 meters, and then the next 10 x 100 meters, and then after that I would alternate 100 meter runs with 200 meter runs in the same session.

I often let the players rest halfway through for 2 minutes, and then let them run the rest of the distance after that.

Tempo running will help you build that aerobic base necessary for soccer, and it will ensure that your players still stay strong and explosive.

Running under heat can lead to sweating of the feet leaving behind moisture and odors in your soccer cleats. The fact that you need to be in soccer socks for comfort increases the chances of being stuck with smelly soccer cleats. It gets even worse when you leave them in your bag instead of airing them. The odors can be quite strong and unbearable, but fortunately it is not impossible to get rid of them.

Just like anything else, it is best to start by taking prevention measures to keep the odors at bay. If you want to eliminate the chances of this smelly problem, you should:

· Clean them after every practice or game and allowing them to air dry; the cleaning should be consistent

· Choose K-leather over synthetic materials because leather is breathable and does not therefore keep the odors trapped in.

· Immediately remove them after the game and place fabric softener sheet in them before placing them in the bag; you can then stuff them with dry newspaper upon reaching home to absorb any moisture and liquid present.

· Air dry them in a shaded dry area outdoors instead of in direct sunlight that can be damaging.

· Ensure the soccer cleats are completely dry after washing or cleaning before wearing them again to your game

· Find appropriate soccer socks; absorbent socks are better and they should be of the right thickness to avoid excessive sweating during play

· Consider getting more than one pair; alternating between games gives the soccer cleats time to air, hence fighting bacteria and keeping odors on the bay

· Ensure your feet are clean and dry every time you wear your soccer cleats and socks; it is also of importance not to reuse socks before washing

If it is too late to prevent the odors and you already have smelly soccer cleats to deal with, you can use the following tips to get rid of the smell.

· Use manufacturer recommendations to wash your soccer cleats; most only need liquid dish soap, water and soft cloth to wash thoroughly

· After washing, rinse properly to get rid of all soap residue and wipe if necessary before then allowing them to completely air-dry

· After drying them, sprinkle baking soda into each of them so it can absorb the odor. The soda should be left for 24 hours or even 72 hours for best results. You can also consider using foot odor removing powder of your choice and then use a hand held vacuum to remove the powder

· Use good quality fabric mist to neutralize odor by killing all bacteria; there are odor products that can absorb moisture, eliminate odors and prevent bacteria so find a good one for your soccer cleats

There are is no reason as to why you should be stuck with smelly soccer cleats. Simple preventative measures can keep the issue out of the way and you can use simple removal measures too when the issue is already existing.