BLUF Resistance training has demonstrable and applicable benefits to youth development within football (soccer) in Australia, with the most important area for far-reaching benefit being a greater emphasis on physical development within the Football Federation Australia National Curriculum. ABSTRACT This article is an overview of the benefit that resistance training can provide to the development of young football players. Football is one of the most popular sports in the world, and success requires a high level of physical, technical, tactical and psychological qualities. However, the approach within football development in Australia has tended to focus entirely on technique and tactics, neglecting the need for physical development. A search of Google Scholar as well as hard cover books, together with a couple domain-specific websites, yielded the information used in this review, resulting in 40 journal articles being used in the finalised version. The purpose of this review is to clearly demonstrate the importance of resistance training to junior development within football in Australia. This paper looks at the current Football Federation Australia National Curriculum for junior development within Australia. It then looks at the physical demands of football and the current state of physical literacy within youth today in order to then highlight the benefit for resistance training within junior football. The paper concludes with some practical applications that can be enacted to benefit the sport going forward. Football is becoming an increasingly demanding sport and the youth that are playing it are becoming increasingly inactive in their day-to-day lives. Movement-based resistance training is becoming more of a necessity for youth competing in sports such as football. The greatest benefit to the physical development of young football players will be achieved via a greater focus on physical development within the National Curriculum as well as the employment of more Physical Director roles at clubs and organising bodies within the sport.
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