Six-week explosive plyometric training improves shooting accuracy among youth grassroots soccer players

Abstract

This article aims to investigate whether a six weeks of explosive plyometric training would be a useful intervention for increasing shooting accuracy among youth grassroots athletes who are engaged in soccer. The intervention was a quasi-experimental design involving a one-group pretest-posttest study that was carried out on 18 male players of 14-16 years who were drawn from a community soccer school through purposive sampling. The test on shooting accuracy that was measured was the "Bobby Charlton" target method. This test was done before and at the end of the 18 sessions of plyometric exercises that were held three days a week. Data analysis was done through Lilliefors normality test, a homogeneity test, and paired-samples t-test at alpha of 0.05 and an estimated effect size using Cohen's dz. The average shooting accuracy increased from 52.78±14.87 (pretest) to 81.11±15.68 (posttest) with approximately a mean gain of 28.33 points (95%CI 20.85-35.81) corresponding to a 53.68% improvement. The change was statistically significant, t(17)=7.99, p < .001 with very large effect size, dz=1.88. Players who were in the "very good" and "good" category increased from 0% to 66.7%. These findings indicate that a six-week plyometric training program substantially improves shooting accuracy among youth grassroots soccer players, supporting its practical implementation in community-based soccer development.