This is the first episode of the Football Training Journal – Game Week Prep, Days 1 – 5

This week I’m gonna’ give you a peek inside what I do to propare for a game, one week out. With our first game looming Saturday, I want to give you guys an idea of how to prepare for a game. It’s not just about what you do the night before…its mostly about what you do the months before, but, without a solid pre-game week, a lot of your efforts can be lost.

First, one of the most common problems in the week before a game is doing too much. Yes, you can still get stronger throughout the week, but, you want to avoid excess soreness like the plague. Sore legs will kill performance.

Next is doing too little. Rest is good, lying around every spare minute you have will leave you lethargic and tight.

Third is lack of proper nutrition and hydration. You can’t live on diet Coke for 6 days, drink a glass of water before the game and expect not to cramp up. Well…you can, but I think we know how that’ll work out.
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A brand new explosive football strength workout for you guys, done pre-season (2 weeks before 1st game)

Back again with another plug-and-play football workout. As always, remember that occasionally pulling a workout off the internet or out of a magazine is a nice change, but, you can’t put together a full football training program like this!

You have to have an actual plan, not just a random string of workouts thrown together, Frankenstien style. That kind of training will give you results…but not the kind you’re looking for!

Here is a pre-season football strength workout done by a wrestler turned football player. He’s working on the transition and is ready to give this whole football thing a shot.

This is a combo day, because the season is extremely close, we are combining his upper body days to give more rest time, especially as the season draws near. This is extremely important…if there’s one thing that will just kill your strength in-season it’s doing too much.
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Why the NFL Combines; and all they represent, are bullshit and ruin football training…   

Last night was a huge night in football geekdom. The first airings of the vaunted NFL combines. The tests that decide who can play football, who gets 10-mil a year and who goes home to drive delivery trucks.    

      

Yes, it’s what football is all about, eh?   

The NFL Combine is and always has been total bull shit.And, in a No Child Left Behind esquetwist, has ruined football strength training programs as coaches are now compelled to “teach to the test.”   

Worse, the “combine” style of testing has filtered down from the NFL to college to High School…even into pee-wee ball. What the hell is going on!   

More time and effort is now spent on training for the combine tests than for, ya know, like, getting better at friggin football.   

A few years back I tuned into this freakshow and saw scouts measuring a guy’s hand-span to see if he could catch….here’s an idea…THROW HIM A F’N FOOTBALL!    
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A quick Pre-Season Football Strength Training Workout…4-Days Pre-Game…

Back again with another strength training session. This was a hybrid session, part Rep Effort Upper and part Sub-Max Effort Upper.

Because we have out first actual game situation scrimmage Saturday, I went easy.

One thing people tend to forget about pre and in-season training is that you have to adjust your workouts constantly. Even if the practices are fairly “easy” they are still taking their toll on your joints. But, you can’t just skip your workouts…you worked all year for strength and speed, don’t blow it by being lazy at this critical time.

Most football players fall into two groups:

1. Those who do no training at all and lose their strength and speed

2. Those who Train to hard, too heavy, too frequently and lose their strength and speed

Don’t lose your focus, all of your training is aimed at:

• Getting Stronger
• Getting Faster
• Getting Bigger
• Becoming a better football player..

While we borrow from their sports, we are not Powerlifters or Strongmen or Bodybuilders…we are football players and all efforts must be focused on improving your game.
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Want to get faster for football and be able to hit harder?

…you know, the kind of hits that absolutley crumble your opponents…the ones that can be heard all the way up in the cheap seats… Of course you do, you maniac, why the hell else would you be reading a site about football training!

First, there is no one magic exercise that will make you faster and able to deliver bone-crushing hits…but, there are a few that will absolutely get you there faster than any others….today, we’re focusing on the Snatch Grip Deadlift.

Next to Box Squats, the Snatch Grip Deadlift might be the top exercise to help you get faster for football…with the nice side benifit of having you hit harder than you ever thought possible!

Here’s why:
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In parts I & II of How to Get Faster for Football we went over the key steps to actually improving football game speed.

The fact that they’ve been our most popular articles (both in terms of views and amount of emails they generate) give me hope that not every young football player is duped into believing that weaving through cones while wearing a tinfoil hat, pulling a parachute and sporting $75 stretchy Under-Wear.

Let’s recap.

 Strength is the basis for speed. Cones and gimmicks are an enormous waste of time…unless your goal is to get faster at running cone drills and not football.

 You need to develop explosiveness through high speed exercises
 To really get faster for football, you need to add Plyometrics to your Strength Program

 
I got more than a few hate mails about strength’s effect on football speed. Usually its talkin about how some big guy on the team Squats “like 400lbs” and is “mad slow” but there’s a small dude who isn’t that strong but runs fast. It then goes on to explain how my program sucks and SPARQ training rulez cause NFL flavor of the week endorses it.

Bullocks, I say.

One, your “big” friend isn’t strong if he’s only squatting 400lbs. Let’s say the guy weighs 285. That’s about 1.4 x bodyweight. Now, when sprinting we sometimes produce 2, 3, 4 or even 5x’s bodyweight in terms of force. Looking at those numbers, do you think your big friend will be fast?

 

 

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Which is better for getting faster and stronger for football, Power Cleans or Strongman training? Training geeks have been debating the question heatedly for the last several years. Cleans were once a staple among football strength programs, but, with the explosion in popularity of Strongman Trianing, the Clean has taken a beatin’. This week, guest author, Super Strength Coach, Elliot Hulse of GridIronStrongman.com is here to settle the debate. Here is part I of his guest article, Strongman vs. Power Cleans.

 

Strongman vs. Power Cleans For Football

You might disagree, but hear me out on this… as an ex-college football player and currently as a strength coach, I have found the utilization and teaching of Olympic lifts to be tedious, inefficient and down-right boring.  

As a college athlete I hardly found the patience to learn the correct lifting technique for the power clean.  Although I held the St. John’s University power clean record my freshman season, muscling 335 lbs. (152 kg) off the platform – my technique was completely flawed and the attempt looked more like an Axle C&P in Strongman than the smooth pull of an Olympic Weightlifter.

After undergrad I studied Exercise Science at the graduate level.  The director of the Masters program was an avid Olympic Weightlifting coach and ex-competitor.   He spent hours with the students teaching us the finer points and intricacies of how to perform a proper Clean & Jerk.  Once we were proficient enough at performing these lifts we were granted permission to then coach the university’s athletes on how to use these lifts to better their sports performance.

I remember the very first day that I was given the “OK” to start coaching the athletes; I was assigned to the football team.  Since I had been a former college football player myself, I felt that I would instantly be greeted with fellowship and amity.   This was NOT the case!  In fact, there were a few of the kids who hated the fact that I was there.  I sensed their apprehension in allowing me to coach them, and they especially hated it when I taught them how to Olympic lift.

As it happened, many of the more “meat head-ish” type football players confided in me that they wanted to,  “lift heavier weights and stop wasting time with this BS.”  It turned out, it was during the off-season prior to my debut that these athletes were first exposed to the technicalities of OL.  It was also the first time that they were coached in the weight room by graduate students instead of their sports coach.  They have previously been using a power lifting model that yielded great size and strength gains.  
 
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Ah, the life of a Football Strength & Conditioning Coach. Every single day I get to spend hours reading about strength training, writing football workouts, articles, manuals and programs, and, of course, training both myself and others.

On this site alone there’s around a hundred articles and I’ve written dozens more for other magazines, journals and websites. Not to mention the thousands of football training articles available on places like EliteFTS.com, StaleyTraining.com, Bodybuilding.com and Josh Henkin’s SandbagExercises.com…all about how to get stronger and faster for football.

Yet, the more I attempt to explain the ins and outs of football training, the more questions seem to roll in. We may be in a situation where there’s too much incorrect info out there and guys are getting confused. I answer all questions you guys email to me, but, over the years, I’ve noticed patterns of questions. A lot of guys seem to be asking about the same things.

Sometimes the confusion is warranted. A beginner is going to need as much info as possible. But, there’s plenty of “well-read” football players out there who are operating somewhere in la-la land. All you have to do is look at the forums on Bodybuilding.com to see the mix of confused newcomers and idiotic self-proclaimed experts. Despite all the good football training info out there, guys are as confused as a group of non-native English speakers listening to Shannon Sharpe talk.

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Ah, the eternal questions raised in the world of strength training for football…

How can I get a faster 40?

How do I hit harder?

And, of course, the all time Classic…”Bro, whatya Bench, bro?” …

Yes, yes, if you look like you’ve ever lifted even one weight, you’ll get asked this question at least 5 times a week. America went bench crazy back in the late 80’s – early 90’s and it’d only gotten worse. Most football strength coaches have a love/hate realtionship with the bench press.

It’s a very good overall power builder, but it is far from the most important exercise in one’s football strength program. Many coaches opted to remove the bench altogether. But, after a near revolt by bench loving football players, the bench has crept back in to strength programs.

Now, personally, I like the bench. I’m built to do it, and, breaking the school bench record my junior year certianly helped (thank you, thank you).

In reality, the Incline and Dumbbell Incline are actually better exercises for building football strength. They much more closely mimic the pattern of the arms when blocking or tackling. Also, there’s an odd a carry-over from the Incline to the Bench that doesn’t work the opposite way.

If you increase your Incline, your Bench will usually go up as well. But, as anyone who’s ever watched a bench-only guy try to incline will tell you, it doesn’t work in reverse.

I remember sometime around my junior year of college, I was nearing a 500-lb raw bench. Shortly after I got the big 5-oh-oh, my shoulders started hurting like hell. A sharp, stabbing sensensation in my front delts stopped me from benching for a long, long time. I started to concentrate on Incline because this did not hurt my shoulders.

Well, after having the problem fixed evenutally (rotator cuff problems should be fixed or they’ll never go away), I returned to benching.

However, it had been over 3 years since I last did them. No matter, all that Inclining did me a world of good. The first day back I went up over 400lbs. Not bad for not benching for several years, eh?

The Bench Press and Football Strength Training

So, is the bench worthwhile for football? Many have argued that if you are on your back and need to press someone off of you on the field, you’re not a great player!

Poppycock and Bulderdash I say.
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Here we go with a explosive football strength workout of the pre-season variety.

I realize that most of you guys are in your off-season, but, as a minor league player in a spring league, I’m actually in my pre-season. This session took place on Sunday, the day after a full-contact practice.

I also realize that usually the last thing most of you want to do after getting pounded for hours on the practice field is do your strength training, but, it’s actually the best thing you can do. Yes, you’re sore as hell and as stiff as a board, but, laying around and restricting blood flow is the best path to prolonged soreness.

Getting a strength workout it the day after a practice is an excellent way to:

1. Continue getting stronger throughout the pre-season and in-season
2. Reduce soreness

 

If you’re sore, you won’t perform well on the field. Let’s not bullshit here, on most teams, even if you’re the starter, all it takes is a few bad practices or even one bad game to lose your job and find your ass on the bench. Performing at less than your best is a great way to accomplish this.

 

 

It seems crazy to think that if you’re sore from football practice, you should lift weights. Wouldn’t a strength workout just make it worse?

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