INTRODUCTION: Soccer is the world’s most popular team sport with over 240 million players around the world. About 20 million of the 240 million players are women and 80% of these women are adolescence or juniors. Acceleration capacity is one of the most important physical qualities for a soccer player. The aim of this study was to design, perform and evaluate a training program for young female soccer players with focus on increasing the acceleration capacity.

METHODS: There were 22 young females (14,6 ± 1,0 years, 50,3 ± 5,1 kg, 160,2 ± 3,0 cm) from two different soccer teams participating. They were split into two groups, one test group (TG) (n=8) and one control group (CG) (n=14). The training period was 12 weeks, with soccer training 3 times per week for both groups. In the TG one workout per week was specifically designed to increase the acceleration capacity and took about 40 minutes to perform. The acceleration capacity was evaluated by a sprint test of 10-20-30 meter and vertical countermovement jump test using photocells.

RESULTS: The TG showed a tendency to increased acceleration at the sprint test (p=0,08) and significant improvement at the jump test (p<0.05) after 12 weeks of training. The acceleration training also showed significant correlations between the sprint- and jump test in the TG after completed the 12 week training period (p<0.05). The CG showed decreased acceleration at the sprint test (p<0.05) and the vertical jump height was not significantly different. There were no significant differences between the two groups pre and post training.

CONCLUSION: A 12 week training program can increase the acceleration capacity and the vertical jump height on young female soccer players. In sport were acceleration capacity is important it seems relevant to specifically train those qualities.