Don’t Call It a Comeback – Football Strength Training Workouts to Dominate Year-Round
How our Explosive Football Strength Training Workouts helped me take the field after a 3-year absense and dominate with one day’s notice!
“I knew as soon as I found you on Facebook, I’d be playing within a week!” This was the first thing I said when I saw former teammate and 20+year veteran, Chris Matsuzak.
Chris has been playing football for at least 20-years, and, whenever I talk to him, I end up playing D-line in some Minor League Football game in NJ, DE, PA, or God-knows-where.
I had been planning on playing this coming fall. But, as I said, I found Tooz on Facebook on Friday and was at practice for the “Spring League” on Saturday.
I haven’t been on the field in 3-years, but, of course, continue to train all year long. Writing, planning, coaching, and performing football strength & conditioning workouts is my job. But, anyone in their right mind would tell you that you need a pre-season…you need to taper down and start doing sport-specific (I almost vomited writing that) work inorder to get ready for an actual football season! As one “coach” once told me:
“Yea, strength training is all-well-and-good, but ya gotta do sport-specific stuff to get ready for a game, man. You don’t have any balance-beam, wobble board or cone drills in your program, that can’t possibly work! If all you do is strength train, you’ll be muscle bound!”
Now you see why so many guys are unprepared.
Listen, your football training should have you ready to play a football game at the drop of a hat, all year round. You should also be able to enter a Powerlifting meet and make a decent showing.
We are athletes. Athletes are ready to perform all the time. Not after 4-weeks of some bullshit balancing on a wobble board.
If this were true, why would I, at 29-years old, with a 3-year lay off, be able to, on one day’s notice (and a day after Thanksgiving dinner) be able to get my gear out of the garage, head out to the field, and look like a guy who’s been playing for the last 6-months?
Simple.
Our football strength workout program focuses on several elements at once, all year.
1. Strength
Withouth strength, you have no speed…no explosiveness…no power. We work strength all year. Max Effort work is mixed in with sub max (taking a heavy weight for multiple sets of low reps, i.e., 8 sets of 3 reps).
We don’t have bull-shit strength blocks.
If you spend 4 total weeks working on strength then “move on” to another element of training, please, I beg you, line up across from me or one of my guys and see how your training stacks up.
Strength levels can decrease by as much as 20% in as little as 2-weeks. When strength decreases, so does everything else.
When you use Max Effort work, you are constantly able to increase strength, speed and explosiveness. How do we do this?
- We rotate exercises often, every 1 – 3 weeks (slightly longer for beginners)
- We use weights in excess of 90% (80% for newer guys)
- We work up to a max set of 1 – 3 reps
- We ALWAYS apply maximum force (speed) to the bar
My strength levels are, not to be a prick, much, much higher than everyone elses. All things equal, the stronger guy with good technique will will 99% of the time on the line.
Want to be a better football player? Get stronger.
2. Explosive Power
We lift heavy and we lift for speed. Plus, we use plyos in a very specific way to increase explosive power. The explosivness built was evident the first time I fired out of my stance.
Critics of heavy lifting claim that lifting heavy slows you down. This was started by some skinny-fat douche of a trainer somewhere who doesn’t understand the human body.
- While you may appear to be moving slower with your max Deadlift than you are with your warm-ups, it’s the intent to move the bar quickly that trains the Central Nervous System (CNS) to be fast. It’s the process of applying max-force to the bar – every rep, every exercise.
This is the base of how football speed is built.
Using Plyometrics and jumping exercise is a form of Dynamic Training, and is an excellent way to build explosive strength. However, some over-rely on Plyos and jumping. Dynamic strength must be built in the weightroom as well as while jumping.
Explosive strength can be developed by using moderate resistance with maximum speed. This is the dynamic method. Two simple training methods to accompany the dynamic method are the box squat for squatting and pulling strength and the floor press with dumbbells or a barbell. For both exercises, after the eccentric phase, many of the muscles are in a relaxed state.This is followed by any explosive concentric motion. This will increase the rate of force development (RFD). We also find that maximum concentric work also increases RFD. With the use of extremely heavy weights, bar velocity may be slow, but nevertheless, overcoming a large load dynamically causes a fast RFD.Jumping exercises and/or plyometrics cause the fastest rate of explosive strength because as resistance is lessened, the motion time becomes shorter. This is caused by a sudden eccentric stretch of the muscles and connective tissue preceding a voluntary effort. Of course, the faster the eccentric [lowering] phase, the faster the concentric [lifting, or raising] phase through an increase in kinetic energy.
There are two problems with using only bar weight when doing Dynamic Training.
One, as we mentioned, is that the bar will naturally decelerate as you near completion. The other is that we are strongest near lockout. That’s why you see guys who only squat down a few inches lift way more than a guy who squats the full range of motion. Typically, we are weakest at the bottom, or middle-bottom of a lift, and then very strong at the top. There’s a huge problem with this:
- Often we are under-training the muscles in certain positions, many of them positions that are very near to those used in football. Muscles are active over a relatively short ROM and usually maximum muscle activity occurs near the top end of a movement.
- To under train the top of a movement, i.e., the squat, would be leaving a huge amount of force “on the table.” When running, we typically drive off of a knee angle that is similar to running. If we are under-training this portion of the squat, we are asking for trouble…not only in decreased speed, but also potential injuries!
- Hamstrings
- Hip Flexors
- Calfs
- Lower back
- Quads
- Abs
- Sandbags
- Prowlers
- Sleds
- Thick Bars
- Farmers Walk Bars
- Medicine Balls
- Speciality Bars
- Want to see the real, behind-the-scenes football workout plans we use?
We use chains more than bands, especially with less experienced guys. This style of Dynamic/Speed Training allows us to continually train for speed and explosive strength. Again, no B.S. “Speed Blocks” where all your strength work is out the friggin window.
3. Football Plyos – Used Correctly
Plyometrics are a great way to get faster for football…when used correctly!
Rather than do what most do – overuse the crap out of them so you can only use them for a few weeks a year – we use them most of the year…actually, the day before I got word from Matsuzak I was doing Box Jumps.
This allows us to be big, fast, and strong all year.
First, understand what plyos are and what they do for football players…
Plyos are, by definition, exercises that allow the muscle to reach maximum strength in as short a time as possible. Think about the applications that has for football training! Having your muscles reach max strength in minimum time is key to hitting hard, running fast, jumping high…
Think of a spring. Both your muscles and a spring store energy, then realease it upwards. In our case, we drop into a short, rapid squat (eccentric) before contracting the muscles to propel us up and out into our opponents chest.
When you run, jump, hit somone, your muscles alternate between a period of lenghtening (the eccentric phase) and contracting (shortening phase).
4. Football Specific Flexibility
I’ll admit, this is the one area where I personally dropped the ball. I hate stretching. I can easily get myself up to do a Box Squat that makes me feel like puking but sitting on the floor and stretching is the most boring thing in the world to me.
90% of the time, I force myself to do it. But, I should be more consistent.
It started to show towards the end of the first practice as my hams got tight in my stance. Since then, however, I’m back on track.
Every football player should be stretching at least 2x’s per week.
I’m not talking about the dynamic stretching that you do in your warm-up. I’m talking about static stretching where you hold each position for 30+ seconds. Yoga is a good example and I encourage all of you to do this. Honestly, when I go to Yoga classes its just so much easier to stretch consistently for some reason…
Anyway, if you want to be fast for football, you need to be flexible in your:
And, flexibility will also help prevent injuries for those times when you get twisted an bent the wrong way.
5. Bridge the Gap Between the Weightroom and the Field – Strongman Exercises
There are certian exercises that can make all the difference in the world between what happens in your strength training program and what happens on the field.
Weightlifting is a great base, but, you are limited in how many different directions you can train in. You need to add exercises and movements that allow the body to train at odd angles, in odd positions…just like on the football field.
We use things like:
All these tools allow us to work the body in odd ways. They allow us to work in football-specific positions.
Take, for example, the Sandbag Clean and Push. We can do this exercise from a clean, or in the middle of a Duck Walk.
You grab a heavy sandbag, clean it violently, then pop the hips and push – the same way you would block someone. This builds real-world, football explosiveness.
These types of exercises, combined with the Heavy Max Effort work, the Dynamic Work, the Speed, Explosiveness, and Plyometric work all set the Explosive Football Strength Program apart. This is how we are able to be big, fast and strong at all times, all year.
Honestly, what kind of a coach would I be if you paid me to get you stronger, but I only got you there for 4-weeks before making you weaker?
