531 football
Post on 06-Feb-2023
3 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
3
Before you embark on any physical fitness
program, please consult a doctor.
This book may not be reproduced or recorded
in any form without permission from the
authors.
Copyright 2010 by Jim Wendler and Bob
Fitzgerald. All rights reserved.
4
Table of Contents Introduction – 5 Weight Room – 8 Annual Plan – 18 Workout Structure – 27 Warm Up – 33 Football Specific work – 46 Linear Speed – 53 Jumps and Throws – 63 Conditioning – 76 Jumps, Throws, Speed – First 8 Weeks (Skill) – 84 Jumps, Throws, Speed – First 8 Weeks (Linemen) – 92 Summer, 9 Weeks (Skill) – 99 Summer, 9 Weeks (Linemen) – 108 Summer Pre-Camp, 6 Weeks (Skill) – 117 Summer Pre-Camp, 6 Weeks (Linemen) – 124 Winter Strength and Conditioning: 8 Week Training Cycle – 132 Going into Summer: 9 Week Training Cycle – 147 Summer Pre-Camp: 6 Week Training Cycle – 156 In Season Training – 163 In Season Conditioning – 165 About the Authors - 167
5
Introduction
Most high school strength coaches are football coaches
first, teachers second, and strength coaches third. This is
understandable, but it also makes it difficult to decipher
and understand all the training information that’s out
there – on the internet, at clinics and through word of
mouth in the weight room – today. As a coach, you don’t
have time to sift through it all. Don’t feel bad about
this, though – full time “professional” coaches can’t do
this either, let alone the part timer who’s not getting
paid anything extra to be his school’s strength coach.
Our goal with this book is to give you and your team the
best training program out there – free of the fluff, BS and
crap that does nothing but waste your time. There are no
gimmicks in this program.
As players and coaches, we understand what it takes to play
this game, and we’ve watched as training for football has
suffered greatly at the hands of both tradition and
“science.” Unfortunately, fault can be found with both
approaches. All the sophisticated speed training in the
world won’t help you if your athletes are fat and can’t
perform a chin-up. All the gassers in the world won’t help
you if your athletes are too weak to press their way off
the ground.
This book was written to give you the best of practical
experience and science. Both of us were average athletes
who performed at higher levels simply because we worked
6
harder at our physical preparation. That’s what made us
better football players.
There’s tremendous wisdom in failure and grit, and good
coaches and teachers are the ones that had to struggle to
be good. Both of us, at one point or another, were players
that everyone gave up on, and it’s that “failure and grit”
that we both had to endure in order to get better. This is
why we believe we’re qualified to write this book. We’ve
done it. We’re among the scrappy few – or many – who had to
run more, lift more and learn the game better in order to
earn an extra minute or two of precious field time.
As lifters and former players, we highly recommend that
you, as coaches, begin training hard. Your players will
look up to you, you’ll earn their respect instantly, and
you’ll become a better coach and person. You’ll be stronger
and you’ll be in better shape, and those are two things
that have never gone out of style. If you want to be better
at everything in life, start NOW. Stop reading, put down
this manual, and get going. NOW.
As for questions, exceptions and substitutions to this
program, we don’t have any. What we’ve put on paper is what
has worked for us and what we think is best. If we didn’t,
we wouldn’t have recommended it. Before you ask us any
questions about how to substitute “this” for “that,” or how
this program would work for you if you trained for more
days or with a different split, give what we’re telling you
its due and work this program into the dirt.
Lastly, we’ve both coached extensively and we know what
you’re going through – and what you’re embarking on in your
7
preparations for the season to come. Getting this program
right is hard work. It’ll take some experimentation on your
part, some serious study, and a good measure of brutally
hard toil and struggle to make this thing run. We know,
however, that it’s been done, it’ll continue to be done,
and that you can and will make it happen. We wish you the
best of luck.
8
Weight Room
Most high school weight rooms have neither the amount of
equipment nor the space to accommodate the optimal lifting
of an entire program. This doesn’t necessarily preclude you
from running an effective strength and conditioning
program, but in order to do some of the things we’ll be
suggesting later on, it’s a good idea to get some sense of
what you’ll need in terms of equipment requirements.
Maybe your budget will cover the purchase of some of this
equipment. With our economy in the shape it’s currently in,
it’s more likely you’ll be asked to make do with what you
already have. This is fine, provided you’re aware of the
alternatives you have available for some of the movements
and drills we’ll talk about later in this manual.
If you’ve just taken over a program recently, the need for
alternatives and substitutions takes on even greater
importance because the chances of getting new equipment
purchases added to your budget are slim. It took one of us
three years of coaching to get one piece of equipment – a
Glute-Ham Raise – approved for purchase. The bad news here
is that we didn’t have a Glute-Ham Raise for three years.
The good news is that we executed a dramatic turnaround
with our program – 0-8 to 7-3-1 – without a having this
piece of equipment in our weight room, so it can be done.
The point here is that a program can be run efficiently –
and even optimally – without the benefit of the latest
state-of-the-art strength training equipment. The key is
9
knowing how you want to structure your team’s training in a
big picture sense, and then knowing as many alternatives
and substitutions as you can for each facet of the program
you’ve put together.
With that said, the purpose of this chapter will be
twofold. First off, it will provide you with something of a
“wish list” in terms of what equipment to focus on if your
budget allows for purchases. Next, as stated above, we want
to let you know that this chapter is only a wish list. It
would be optimal to have each piece of equipment we’ll be
talking about here, but it’s not necessary, per se. For
example, if all you have are a handful of bars and some
plates, you’re an Olympic lifting program, and there’s no
way around it, because that’s the optimal way to train with
what you have. So learn to teach your athletes how to clean
and snatch. If you don’t have any equipment at all, you’re
a bodyweight exercise team, and you’re going to have to
make it work.
Obviously, you’ll need enough barbells and plates to
accommodate a large group of athletes working
simultaneously, and you’ll need rack of dumbbells going up
to at least 80 pounds.
With that said, here’s a list of things an ideal weight
room would have:
Power Racks: In terms of efficiency, safety and sheer ease
of use, there’s no substitute in your weight room for the
power rack. And the more of these you have, the more you
can get done. Two of the main weight room exercises in this
10
program are the bench and the squat, and the power rack is
the ideal arrangement for both. For efficiency, no single
piece of weight room apparatus can be used for more
movements than the power rack. If you have racks, use them.
If you have a budget for buying new equipment, make this
your top priority.
While price is always going to be a big priority, always
adhere to the motto, “Buy nice. Don’t buy twice.” The use
and wear on a power rack, especially in a high school
setting, is incredible. Not only do you have the hundreds
of athletes that are supervised using them, but you have to
account for the kids and faculty that will use and abuse
your racks without your consent - and few people can wreck
a power rack or any piece of equipment faster than a high
school freshman. It’s amazing what harm a weak kid can do.
There are plenty of companies who will lure you in with a
cheaper model, but you’ll always get what you pay for. A
good way to save money on a quality rack is to get it
without weight storage. In many cases, you can buy a
quality 7.5 foot rack without weight storage for well under
a thousand dollars. Using weight trees to hold the weights
for each station is incredibly cost efficient.
Benches: You’ll need a sufficient number of flat bench
stations for multiple groups to train the bench press at
the same time. These can be dedicated bench stations – a
bad idea, which we’ll address in a moment - or they can be
individual flat benches you put inside power racks. If
they’re adjustable to various inclines, this is
11
advantageous, but it’s not a necessity – and can even put
your program at a disadvantage, as you’ll see below.
From a space perspective, a dedicated bench station is not
efficient. These take up the same space as power racks yet
can only be used for one thing: bench pressing. If you
already have these, see if you can sell or trade them in to
get the money to buy more power racks. There are many high
school gyms that have 2 power racks, 3 benches and 2
incline benches. This is a huge waste of space. Getting rid
of the incline and bench presses would allow you to fit
five more power racks in your weight room. Placing a
dumbbell bench inside each one of them would now give you
seven complete stations that you can squat, bench press,
chin (if you have a chin bar in the power rack) and perform
any number of movements in. Now you can accommodate four
athletes per power rack (that’s 28 kids at one time), and
your workouts can move much faster.
Most people will try to get a 0-90 degree incline bench for
their stations, but this is usually overkill. Unless
incline pressing is huge priority in your training, don’t
even bother. A quality flat bench can run you under $300,
while the same 0-90 incline bench will cost you well over
$500. Plus, most 0-90 incline benches are not very well
made. They are sub-par inclines and sub-par flat benches.
Do yourself a favor: get a quality flat bench and save some
money.
Glute-Ham Raise: The finest gift a strength coach can give
an athlete is a set of hamstrings, and the best hamstring
exercise ever invented is the Glute-Ham Raise. We’ll go
12
into alternatives for this piece of equipment later in the
strength training section of this manual, but if you have
the budget for one or more of these, we’d advise you to
pull the trigger. Get your athletes on an intelligent GHR
regimen, and you’ll notice immediate dividends in their
speed, agility and strength levels.
Dip/Pull-up Bars: Dips are the best assistance exercise
we’ve found for the bench press, and there’s really no
substitute for pull-ups (and/or pull-up variations) when it
comes to lat and “pulling” strength. We’re advocates of
sticking with the basics when it comes to assistance
exercises, and it doesn’t get any more basic than dips and
chins. Pull-up bars (and the old Soviet-style “stall bars”)
can and should also be used for a variety of hanging ab
exercises.
Many companies are offering chin and dip stations that can
be added to their power racks. This is a great way to save
money and space. Chin bars will attach directly to the rack
and often have multiple grip options. Dip stations can be
added and removed from the power rack with ease and stored
near the power racks. Add both of these options to your
power rack and your kids will not have to leave the rack
stations for most of their workouts. This is a huge time
and money saver.
45-Degree Back Raise: This piece of equipment provides a
simple and effective means of strengthening – in
conjunction with, or as an alternative to, the GHR – the
athlete’s lower back and hamstrings. Many weight rooms
already have this bench in one form or another, but because
13
it’s not glamorous or “sexy” enough, it’s ignored. If this
applies to you, dust it off and start using it.
If possible, this can be substituted by getting a GHR with
a split pad. Now you can use the GHR for back raises and
glute-ham raises without the discomfort of crushing your
genitals. Again, we can now use the glute-ham raise for
lower back work, hamstring development and even abdominal
training as a Roman chair.
Medicine Balls: Medicine ball work is vital for explosive
strength training, conditioning and warming up. We’ll cover
the various uses for medicine balls later in this manual,
but we suggest having on hand a variety of sizes – from 4-6
pounds up to 20 pounds.
Dragging/Pushing Implements: We suggest dragging and
pushing sleds – or whatever else you can reasonably drag or
push – for a number of reasons. Drag or push for
conditioning, recovery, warming up, or for position-
specific drills. The weight of what’s being dragged or
pushed will vary depending on what you’re trying to
accomplish, but having such implements on hand is very
important.
The best thing about using dragging sleds is that their use
is very easy to teach. Everyone knows how to walk. Sled
dragging for lower body development is idiot-proof. This is
also a great way for you to train the lower bodies of
athletes that have trouble getting a quality leg workout
due to poor form or mobility when teaching the squat.
Plus, there is something primal and fun about loading up a
14
sled and pulling. Not only does this give you strength, but
it will add some fun into the workouts. Challenges with the
sled are always a morale booster and can add some
competitiveness and camaraderie to your weight room.
Jump Boxes or Platforms: You essentially need something to
jump on and off, and whatever you use needs to be both
adjustable and safe. We’ll get into jump training and what
it does in a later chapter, but whatever your athletes are
jumping on needs to be both sturdy and padded at its front
edge in the event of a missed jump. We suggest cutting 1”
thick mats into multiple squares to adjust the heights to
which your athletes will be jumping.
High Jump Pits: If your school has a track team, chances
are you have a couple of these around. You should be using
them on the field as a teaching aid for tackling
instruction (player to player contact without hitting the
ground), but they’re also a great tool for some of the
plyometric and medicine ball drills we’ll be covering in
later chapters.
Bands and Chains: Bands are extremely useful for a variety
of assistance exercises, but we don’t really advocate their
frequent use with your athletes’ main exercises (assistance
work is a different story). The reasoning behind this is
simple:
Accommodating resistances are a good idea on paper, but the
practice has been popularized by strong individuals who all
use equipment. The popularity of chains and bands has
spread throughout the powerlifting world, and lifters have
15
had great success with them. We’ve seen LOTS of athletes
and regular lifters shit the bed with them, though, and
this is for one main reason:
The strength curve for athletes/regular guys is heavy at
the bottom and light at the top, so they need more low-end
work. The strength curve for geared lifters is light at the
bottom and heavy at the top, so more high-end work is
needed.
Using chains/bands on a raw lifter will lower the use of
bar weight and THUS lower the amount of weight that’s used
at the bottom of a lift. Hence, the strength curve is all
screwed up and not suited for a raw lifter.
There are some definite positives, though. The best thing
that bands can add to your program is the elimination of
the necessity of having an expensive pulley system in your
weight room. Lat pulldown machines, cable crossover
machines or large Jungle Gyms (cable crossovers with
multiple lat pull and low row stations) cost a lot of money
and take up room – all for some simple exercises that
aren’t even basic movements! Bands can be used for triceps
work, assisted pull-ups, lat pulldowns, low rows, good
mornings, pull-throughs, and rear delt work – and they can
all be stored in a bucket or on the power racks. This is by
far the biggest space and money saver in the weight room.
Stopwatches: Every coach in your program should have a
stopwatch around his neck at all times. It’s that simple.
If you see a coach without one, make him go get one. When
it comes to football training, it’s vitally important to
16
time all work intervals and rest periods, both on the field
and in the weight room.
Other items you may consider are: Jump ropes, Blast Straps,
TRX Straps or a set of gymnastics rings, dedicated box
squat boxes, chalk, safety squat bars, rackable cambered
bars, chains, tow straps, measuring tape, heart rate
monitors, and an assortment of high-quality lifting belts.
Also, you might want to consider the importance of collars
to secure plates at the ends of barbells. Ideally, every
rep of every set will be coached and spotted so the bar
stays even, but if you’ve ever been in a high school weight
room, you’ve seen some bizarre imbalances and lifts with
extremely poor form. It’s important to coach this out of
your athletes, but in the mean time, invest in several sets
of collars.
No matter what you put in your weight room, the most
important thing is to get the items that make YOUR program
complete. Whether or not you follow this training program
or something very different, it’s important that your
weight room fit your philosophy. If you have a choice in
designing your own weight room, take a moment and write
down the workouts you would like to have your kids do. Now
take into account the space you have and begin building it.
Summary
One of the big hurdles coaches have to compensate for is
unsolicited input from other sport coaches and the school’s
general population. Without exception, these people rarely
use the weight room, but seem to want their input taken
17
seriously - and the equipment they want will usually take
half the budget. Machines such as leg extensions, leg
curls, chest presses and other cable setups run in the
thousands of dollars and take up valuable space.
Compromises will have to be made, but fight like hell to
get your team and your program the weight room they
deserve. The inefficiency of these items is apparent, and
this must be expressed intelligently and calmly to the
athletic director or whoever is going to have the final
say. The success your program has will be in direct
proportion to your influence, so you’re going to have to
make do with what you have. A good coach, however, can make
a great program from nothing, so you must be creative.
And winning doesn’t hurt either.
18
Annual Plan
We talked a lot about what we wanted to say in this
chapter, and how we wanted to lay things out. We decided to
write this disclaimer AFTER we’d written the entire
chapter, as an introduction to the material we’re
presenting here. First of all, for want of a better way to
say this: DON’T FREAK OUT. If there’s something here that
you don’t understand, read it again. It’s NOT that
complicated, and if you pay close attention to what we’re
saying, the different workouts don’t vary THAT much from
month to month. The shell, or skeleton, of the workout
sessions remains the same. We’re presenting a lot of
information here so you can understand the thought process
involved, not to confuse you. If all else fails, just
remember this: to the outside observer, the structure of
the individual workouts will look nearly the same from
month to month.
Rationale
Most coaches we talk to don’t think in terms of an annual
plan for their teams. They’re either thinking week to week
– or even workout to workout – or they simply do the same
things in the weight room every week until the season
starts.
Things are done for different reasons during each part of
the year. We’ll get to this. What’s important for now is
that you, as a coach or an athlete, always keep your eyes
on what’s important: using all the tools at your disposal
19
to either become a better football player or, if you’re a
coach, to create better football players. Numbers in the
weight room mean absolutely nothing if they don’t transfer
to the field. We’ve both seen guys who couldn’t lift crap
in the weight room go out and wreak havoc on the field.
We’ve also seen “workout warriors” who can bench and hang
clean 500 pounds go into games and get tossed around by
guys who can play the game and know about leverages.
Ask University of Pittsburgh strength coach Buddy Morris,
and he’ll offer up Hugh Green as an example. Green, a
three-time All American at Pitt, was one of the best
linebackers in the history of college football. He won the
Walter Camp Award, the Maxwell Award and the Lombardi
Award, was drafted seventh overall in 1981 by the Tampa Bay
Buccaneers, and spent ten years in the NFL – where he was
selected to play in two Pro Bowls despite several major
injuries during his career.
According to Coach Morris, Hugh Green’s all time max bench
press was 315 – and this was during the era where...let’s
just say testing for “ergogenic aids” wasn’t exactly at the
top of the league’s priority list. In other words, Hugh
Green simply knew how to play football, and he knew how to
exploit leverages against bigger, stronger guys.
The primary goal of your strength and conditioning program
is to make your athletes better football players. Getting
them stronger and getting them more mobile will assist you
in doing this, but again, the first thing we want to
caution you not to do is to hang your hat on lifting
numbers. If all things remain the same, and an athlete gets
20
stronger, chances are he’ll become a better player, but his
ability on the field is your first marker, not his numbers
in the gym.
Training for sports really comes down to two things:
mobility and strength. Are you mobile enough to get into
the proper positions for your sport? Are you strong enough
to hold these positions and move from them explosively,
efficiently and with purpose? Think about that for a second
and consider a defensive lineman. Does he have the lower
body mobility to get into a proper stance that will make
him effective? Does he have the strength to hold this
position during the offensive audibles? Can he fire from
his stance in a low position while keeping his head up? Is
this movement strong and explosive? Can he punch through
the offensive lineman and rip through the block while
keeping his hips square to the line of scrimmage? Is he
mobile enough to stay low and keep his ground while
fighting to get movement?
Every position on the field has different scenarios, but
they all revolve around these two things: strength and
mobility. Think about that when you’re reading this manual
and when you’re designing your program.
21
Planning
With that said, we’ll address annual planning. December is
usually a wash for most coaches, because by the time your
team has taken a few weeks off to recover following the
season, the holiday break is on you and you usually won’t
have access to your team until the beginning of January, so
that’s likely where your plan should begin. From there,
you’ll generally have about 30 weeks until mid-June, where
you’ll hopefully be able to have the entire team together
for your summer pre-camp program.
Things change somewhat if you live in a state whose
football programs have spring practice. Spring practice for
high school football programs usually falls during March,
April or May. This means you have anywhere from 12-16 weeks
of general preparation time before your football-specific
practices take over, and your general weight room sessions
take more of an in-season tone.
Remember, however – and we can’t stress this enough – that
the main goal here is to make your athletes better football
players no matter what your schedule involves. To do this,
you need to get them strong and mobile enough to
efficiently get themselves in football positions and hold
them until their assigned task is accomplished.
As an overview, it’s wise to move, as the year progresses,
from the general, to the general-specific, to the specific
– at least in terms of what you’re emphasizing. This is a
rather broad view of things, because you should be working
on specific football skills and drills year-round as part
22
of your programming. You’ll only move to primarily
football-specific programming during spring practice and
when camp starts in late July or early August – in which
case you’ll be transitioning to an in-season strength and
conditioning program.
Keeping Track of Stresses
Even at the high school level, your most important job as a
strength coach is to keep your athletes healthy. Even when
injuries have nothing to do with your program, when kids
miss practices and games with non-trauma injuries, the
coaching staff will put it on you. It’s almost taking the
Hippocratic Oath as a physician: “First, do no harm.”
The way to “do no harm” is to make sure you keep track of
the various stressors that affect your athletes. Think of
the entire layout of your strength and conditioning program
in terms of the different biomotor abilities necessary for
success as an athlete (the “5 S” list): Strength, Speed,
Stamina, Skill and Suppleness (flexibility). Your athletes
start their workout cycles with a finite amount of “gas in
the tank,” so when you expend half of what’s in there on
one biomotor ability during the course of a workout – a
particularly brutal squat session, for example – there’s
really only half a tank left for the rest of it, so you
have to be careful how you program the remainder of the
session.
You also have to know how they refuel this tank. The
Central Nervous System (CNS) is the gas tank, and in most
23
cases, it really only regenerates from hard sessions every
48 hours. In other words, if you have your athletes perform
a brutal squat workout on Monday, they won’t be “refueled”
again until Wednesday at the earliest, so taxing the crap
out of them again on Tuesday is pointless because they
won’t be able to go full speed. When one thing goes up,
another thing has to go down. It’s that simple.
The Plan
That may seem a little convoluted, so let’s simplify things
and explain how this actually works in practice. First off,
strength is the main building block of any successful
program. Get your athletes stronger, and all sorts of good
things will happen. It doesn’t work the other way around.
If an athlete improves his performance in a football-
specific drill – linebacker drops, for example – it won’t
do anything for his numbers in the weight room. Bring up
his squat, however, and there’s a good chance he’ll be able
to move his body a lot faster, increasing his potential to
move very quickly in his football-specific drills. The
stronger you are, the better you’ll move, so start your
off-season program with an emphasis on improving your
overall team strength. We’ll cover exactly how this is done
in a later chapter.
As the year progresses, we certainly don’t de-emphasize
strength, but in order to improve the other biomotor
abilities, the volume of our non-strength related
activities will increase. So, if we’re tacking on 15 more
minutes of linear speed work, those 15 minutes, generally
speaking, need to cut into that hour of strength work – as
24
opposed to being added to it. That’s what we mean by
keeping track of, and accounting for, stressors. You don’t
have to account for these stressors strictly in terms of
time (this is simply an example) – this is done more along
the lines of how much you’re stressing your athletes’
nervous systems – but as a coach, you have to pay attention
to how the different things you’re inflicting on your
athletes are interrelated. Everything affects everything
else. It’s your job to keep your eyes open and figure out
how.
For most football teams, January through June would look
something like this (any unfamiliar terms will be covered
in later chapters, so when we lay out the different aspects
of the plan and what these terms mean, you can come back to
this section with more clarity):
January to Spring Practice: The first plan in the
programming section of this book is an 8-week programming
cycle designed to take you from the beginning of the year
into spring practice (if your school runs spring drills).
If you don’t run spring drills, either take a deload week
or proceed directly to the “Going Into Summer” plan.
This initial cycle concentrates heavily on the compound
lifts – the bench, squat, trap bar deadlift and power clean
– along with a heavy dose of bodyweight exercises designed
to improve hypertrophy and muscular cross-section along
with improving your players general biomotor abilities:
speed, strength, stamina, skill and flexibility. You’ll
introduce the basic dynamic warm-up and ease them into
25
direct speed work, jumps, throws and football specific
work.
Spring Practice: If your program runs spring drills, this
training cycle allows you to plan out an almost in-season
two weeks of lifting where stresses are accounted for and
lifting volume and intensity are toned down to allow for
the exponentially greater volume of football drills.
Going Into The Summer: This is the period that follows
spring drills while your players are still in school. It
changes up the training a bit, while still accounting for
the (still) limited time you’ll have with them. Weight room
volume is decreased, speed work – direct speed work, jumps
and throws – is increased, and things begin getting a more
specific leading into your summer program.
Pre-Camp Summer Program: This six week period is when
you’ll have the most time with your players and the
greatest player participation, since your athletes will
neither be in school – in most cases – nor playing another
sport. Weight room volume will continue to be regulated,
while speed work and football-specific work will take
precedence – although you should continue to think, in the
weight room, in terms of getting everyone in your program
stronger.
Training Camp/In-Season: We address our thoughts on in-
season training in detail in the programming chapters of
this book. Suffice it to say that you should still think of
your in-season training – from August until December – as a
training “block” or cycle just like any other part of the
26
year. You’re going to train differently – less weight room
sessions using decreased volume – but it’s still a training
cycle and you should still have specific goals you want
your players to accomplish – namely, recovering, getting
stronger, and becoming better athletes.
Summary
Again, the general idea here is to start thinking in terms
of annual – and even, in some cases, multi-year – planning
for your program, as opposed to simply thinking about what
you can accomplish in the short term. Each month of the
year has a specific mission that needs to be accomplished,
and each of these missions fit together to get you closer
to the main goal of any good strength and conditioning
program: to make your athletes better football players by
getting them stronger, more mobile, and better conditioned.
27
Workout Structure
No matter what your primary focus happens to be in a
specific workout session, it’s vitally important that you
put some thought into why certain things are done at
certain times during the course of a session. There’s a
progression which, if followed, we and many others have
found to be the optimal way to order a workout. This
progression1
It’s definitely easy to be swayed by hype and exorbitant
claims, but think about this. Some of the most strong and
explosive athletes in the world come from the throwing
events in track and field – athletes who are all big,
strong, fast and mobile. These athletes perform basic
movements. They train with racks and benches in – in many
applies primarily to your off-season training,
but the concepts we’ll discuss here can be applied to your
football-specific practices once your season starts, if you
so choose.
Warning:
Perhaps the worst thing you can do as a coach is to fall
for all the gimmicks you’ll see in the industry today.
Weight training isn’t easy, but it’s simple. Developing a
strong, functional body isn’t easy, but it’s simple, and
the fundamentals of doing so haven’t changed in a hundred
years. A well thought-out, organized and properly executed
regimen of free weights, full range movements and
jumps/throws will outperform and outlast any overly
complicated program or gimmick out there.
1Supertraining, Mel C. Siff, Supertraining Institute, 2004
28
cases – very Spartan gyms. Gimmicks will cost a lot of
money, but they’ll offer few, if any, benefits. Nothing
will ever replace basic hard work in the weight room, so
don’t fall victim to the claims and hype of people trying
to separate you and your program from your money with false
claims of greatness.
After years of experience doing things both the “old” way
and the “new” way, the order we’re going to suggest to you
has been highly effective in developing all the biomotor
abilities essential for football players.
1. Warm-up: This, of course, is the obvious beginning to a session, but what do we really want to accomplish
during a warm-up? In some cases, depending on your
psychological approach to a specific practice session,
you’ll want to get your athletes mentally prepared for
what’s to come. In every case, you want to prepare
their bodies for the stresses of workouts and
practices in both a general and specific way. We’ll
cover this in the next chapter.
2. Football-Specific Work (Skill Development): This type of work comes first, with a fresh CNS, because we’re
looking to learn, rehearse, refine and perfect the
specific skills necessary for the sport. There’s a
time and place for doing football drills under
conditions of fatigue, but in the off-season, when the
emphasis is on learning and perfecting, it’s best to
do this kind of work with a relatively untaxed CNS, at
“full speed.”
29
3. Linear Speed: The idea, simplified, with linear speed development, is to have your athletes moving as fast
as they can with full recovery, so linear speed
development is performed toward the beginning of the
workout. Too many coaches treat their speed work as
conditioning work. You wouldn’t expect a kid to squat
his personal best after doing multiple sets of 10 reps
with limited rest times, so don’t expect your kids to
get faster if you don’t give them TIME to get faster.
4. Jumps/Throws: Since explosive jumps and medicine ball throws are best performed under the same conditions (a
relatively untaxed CNS) as the first two segments of
this program following the warm-up, they, too, should
be drilled in a non-fatigued state. The idea is to
jump as high or far as you can (or as many times as
you can in a given timeframe), or to throw a medicine
ball as far or as hard as you can – and then to do
each drill faster, longer and harder the next time
out. This requires near-full recovery of your
athletes’ CNS.
5. Lifting: It may seem odd to see weight room work listed 5th in a football “strength” manual, but there’s
sound reasoning behind this placement. First of all,
remember that your athletes are football players, not
powerlifters. Secondly, the stresses incurred from the
first four steps won’t impact lifting – especially
maximal strength lifting – nearly as much as lifting
will affect all of the steps we’ve suggested
performing before going into the weight room. If
you’re doing a good job of keeping track of and
30
accounting for stresses, this won’t be a problem, and
doing a decent volume of football-specific, speed,
agility and explosive work before lifting won’t have
as great an effect on your athletes’ lifts as you
think it will. In fact, studies and experience have
shown that such work will actually improve your
athletes’ lifts.
6. Conditioning: The use of the term “conditioning” in this context is a catchall, because there are various
forms of “conditioning” necessary to make up the whole
of a football player’s program. Again, we’ll cover
this in a later chapter. There are certainly times
when it’s appropriate to put your athletes in various
states of fatigue. For off-season work, it’s generally
a good idea to save this for the end, so the biomotor
abilities that require full speed and a fresh CNS are
not adversely affected.
7. Recovery/Stretching: Once a session is over – as soon as a session is over – your athletes are now in
recovery mode. You don’t want to put them through an
intensive conditioning session and then simply send
them to the locker room. Encourage effective recovery
and restoration with a brief cool-down period,
followed by a session of static stretching – or other
more advanced means if you have them at your disposal
- before they’re dismissed.
31
Important Programming Note
Take note of the fact that your time with your players
during any given practice session or workout is limited.
With football-specific work, speed work, jumps and throws,
it’s important to the process that your players be fully
recovered between rests, because this kind of work needs to
be done as quickly and as forcefully as possible. With that
said, the reps you program are going to seem somewhat low,
simply because you can’t sit around all day waiting for
your players to recover.
For example, the suggested full recovery time between two
20 yard sprints is 2-3 minutes. If you’re going to do this
ten times, followed by full recoveries between sets of
jumps, med ball throws and football drills, that’s a
serious time commitment that has to be factored in. Note,
in the programming section of this manual, that as the
volume of your sprints, jumps and throws is increased, the
volume of your team’s lifting will decrease. This is partly
due to the need to account for stresses, but it’s also due
to the time considerations you’ll undoubtedly be facing as
a coach.
Summary
Events, or aspects of a workout, that require motor
learning or the production of maximal force, speed, or
explosiveness should be performed in a relatively non-
fatigued state for optimal results. With each aspect of
your program, remember what the goal of that individual
32
timeframe happens to be, and stick to that goal, because
everything your athletes do affects everything else.
In fact, as stated earlier, doing the football intensive
drills, speed work, jumps and throws first will have a
positive effect on your athletes’ lifting. Not only will
their central nervous systems be ready for a great lifting
session, but you’ll need less of a warm-up in the weight
room. Their bodies are warm and their mobility is going to
be at its peak. This is essential for doing full range
movements in the weight room.
The thinking that these things are going to negatively
affect your lifting is a paradigm that you’re going to have
to erase. While strength training is a huge portion of
developing a football player, it’s not the only thing.
Allowing the weight room and chasing numbers in the weight
room to dominate your program is a surefire way of being a
one-dimensional coach.
33
Warm-up
When the head coach of a program asked one of us to design
a warm-up for the team, he was looking for two major
characteristics:
1. We needed a warm-up that could be duplicated under any circumstances, whether it was performed before practice,
before games or before workout sessions.
2. We needed something that had a set time limit. Some of the dynamic warm-up programs you’ll find online and
elsewhere are comprehensive, but they’re simply too long
to be practical. This head coach wanted a progression
that covered everything in 20 minutes, no questions
asked.
We’ll get to what “covers everything” means later in this
section, but we want to relate a quick story that’ll
illustrate some of the difficulties you’ll encounter when
you try to design and implement a quality warm-up for your
own program.
“When I was asked to do this, the first thing I did was to
make a list of the movements I thought were essential, and
I put them in the order I believed they should be done.
After that, I went out to the field with a stopwatch and
performed the entire thing, timing each individual movement
in order to give myself a better idea of what to keep and
what to take out. Once I did this, I was left with a solid
34
20 minute warm-up plan that I believe met all the criteria
laid out for me by my head coach.
Once this was accomplished, we decided to hold a meeting
about it. The “too many meetings” problem is something
about which I have a lot to say, but it’s probably beyond
the scope of this book, so I’ll just present this story as
evidence of my thoughts on the matter. Just suffice it to
say that we had a long, contentious meeting about what we
were going to do for a warm-up. Given these circumstances,
I’m sure you can imagine how ridiculous things became
whenever we tried to install something new on offense or
defense.
We all sat down in the meeting room, and I stood up in
front of the dry erase board and presented the warm-up
movements one by one – even going so far as to get down on
the floor and demonstrate and explain the purpose of each
individual movement. When I was finished, the JV head coach
raised his hand to speak.
“I can’t do this warm-up,” he said, his voice full of
conviction.
“Why not?”
“There’s no butt kicks. I can’t do this warm-up if there’s
no butt kicks. Why don’t you have butt kicks?”
This coach had a moderately successful career as a Division
II running back, and went on to explain to us why butt
kicks were responsible for every successful thing he’s ever
35
done in his life. As he went on and on (and on), I sat at
the conference table with my head in my hands, thinking,
‘Does it really have to be this hard?’”
As we talked about in the chapter on equipping your weight
room, you’re going to get crap from everyone about every
aspect of your program, and the design of your pre-
practice/pre-game warm-up is no exception, so be prepared
to defend yourself against the onslaught. What we hope to
do here, however, is to present the characteristics of a
good warm-up, to give you the movements your athletes
should perform, and to arm you with the knowledge you’ll
need to 1) know why you’re doing these movements, and 2)
justify the warm-up you’ve designed to the committee of
“experts” who’ll try to explain why you’re wrong.
Basic Principles
A solid warm-up comes in two parts: the general part and
the specific part. These two parts do two different things.
The term “warm-up” comes from the general part, when you’re
eliciting changes in the muscular system to prepare for the
work you’re about to undertake. The general part of the
warm-up entails a series of general calisthenics and
stretches (both static and dynamic) designed to prevent
injury by expanding the range of motion of cold muscles and
joints.
The specific part of the warm-up serves a different
purpose. The idea is to “prime the pump” of your central
nervous system (CNS) in a manner specific to the type of
exercise you’re about to do. If you do it this way, it
36
fires up your CNS in a very specific way, and it’ll play a
very large role in enhancing your athletes’ performance in
whatever part of the workout follows the actual warm-up.
Even if you don’t do things in exactly the way we’re laying
out here, you should still take care to think of your warm-
up in these terms – from the general to the specific. Too
many coaches don’t take this seriously enough, and as
athletes, we’ve all been there: playing for the coach who,
on a freezing cold day, thinks it’s enough to tell the
entire team, out on the field before a game, to bend over
and touch their toes for 30 seconds. First, consider the
reasons for each movement. Then, consider the order you’re
putting them in. Think long and hard about each of these
aspects and the warm-up virtually designs itself.
Static vs.Dynamic?
In our experience with designing warm-ups, we’ve found that
there are two schools of thought. The first school is all
dynamic. These are coaches and trainers who believe that
static stretching has no place in a pre-workout, pre-
practice or pregame warm-up. “Old-school” static
stretching, they claim, takes all the tension and stretch
reflex out of muscles, ligaments and tendons, rendering
them weaker and more prone to injury. On the surface, this
seems to make a lot of sense, but experience has shown us
otherwise.
The second school of thought believes too much in static
stretching, acting as though football players should be out
37
on the field contorting themselves like Hindu snake
charmers before every workout.
So where does the answer lie?
Somewhere in the middle, as usual. In Bob’s first year of
coaching, the warm-up he designed was completely dynamic.
We didn’t static stretch at all, and we paid the price for
it with a rash of pulled hamstrings and groins. The
following year, we decided to make the warm-up a mix of
dynamic movements and static stretching as described below,
and guess what happened?
That’s right, no more injuries. Take that for what it’s
worth when you’re trying to decide which of these camps
you’re in. Our advice to you is to start your own camp,
right in the middle.
The Warm-up
The following progression is an ordered sequence of
movements that effectively serves both purposes mentioned
above. Your team should be able to complete this
progression in approximately 20 minutes. Once we’ve laid
out all the movements we’re suggesting, we’ll go over some
of the potential hazards you’ll face in setting up and
implementing your warm-up with your own program.
Prelude: We start everything out by getting the kids in two
straight, even lines and having them run a lap around the
field – or, in pre-game – around half the field. This
concludes by running through or around the near goalpost,
38
then streaming into their warm-up lines, which are spaced
out on the field such that each player has a 5 yard by 5
yard zone in which to move.
1. 3-Way Jumping Jacks (10 repetitions each):
a. Flings: Dynamically stretches the shoulders, chest, groin and hips. These are done in a fashion similar to
jumping jacks. The beginning of the fling has you
starting looking like a "star" i.e. your hands are
straight out to the side and legs are held wide. From
this position, cross your right arm over your left and
your right leg over your left. Go back to the "star"
position and reverse the process.
b. Seal Jumps: Start in the same position as a Fling, but instead of crossing your arms and legs over, your feet
will be together and your hands will be clapped,
straight out in front of you with your arms extended,
at the top of the movement.
c. Jumping Jacks: Done in the conventional manner.
Why: This series of jumping jacks, done correctly, is a
great low-intensity complex of movements to start off
your warm-up. It serves to raise core temperature and
dynamically stretch the shoulders, chest, groin and hips,
setting the stage for the more intense movements to
follow.
2. Bodyweight Squats (10 repetitions): Interlock your hands over your head. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Just get
your feet about shoulder width apart and do the
equivalent of a parallel squat. This is great for
39
increasing core temperature and initiating an increase
in range of motion for the hips, knees and ankles.
Why: These continue to increase core temperature, and they
initiate an increase in the range in motion for the hips,
knees and ankles.
3. Low Pogo Jump (2 sets of 5-10 seconds): With your toes upturned (dorsiflexion), knees and elbows slightly bent
(hands in front of you), simply jump up and down,
initiating ground contacts as fast and frequently as you
can from the start of the drill to the finish. Imagine
jumping rope without a jump rope, and you’ve got it.
Why: Increases core temperature, stimulates CNS, increases
range of motion in ankles and knees.
4. High Pogo Jump (20 repetitions): Same concept as low pogo jumps, only this time, you’re getting more height
on your jumps. Both forms of pogo jumps are great for
beginning to stimulate the CNS.
Why: Increases core temperature, stimulates CNS, increases
range of motion in ankles and knees.
5. “Breakdowns” (10 repetitions): Begin with feet together, standing erect. On the “breakdown!” command, drop
quickly into the athletic “breakdown” position – feet
slightly wider than shoulder width, knees bent, lower
back slightly arched, head up, and with your weight on
the balls of your feet. From here, you’ll jump back into
40
the starting position and drop back into the breakdown
position to perform one rep.
Why: Increases core temperature, stimulates CNS, develops
and reinforces a football-specific motor pattern.
6. Forward Lunge (10 repetitions each side): Everything is performed at 90 degrees here in terms of knee flexion.
Head and chest should be up, and hands should be in a
natural position similar to how they’d be if you were
taking a running stride with that particular leg.
Why: Raises core temperature, stimulates CNS, increases
range of motion in entire lower body and lower back.
7. “Down!” Command: Entire team hits the floor, “up-down” style, finishing in the bottom position of a push-up.
8. “Over!” Command: Entire team rolls over to a supine position (on their backs).
9. Supine Leg Kicks (10 repetitions each leg): One leg at a time, dynamically kick your leg (held straight) as far
as your hamstring flexibility will allow. The heel of
the inactive leg should be anchored to the floor.
Why: Dynamically stretches the upper and lower insertions
of the hamstring muscles – the areas typically at risk for
the most serious pulls and tears.
10. Supine “Hold It” (15-20 seconds each leg): Hold leg behind knee (or hold toe) and pull straightened leg as
41
far as you can, resisting slightly with the affected
muscle group (hamstrings). This is a static hamstring
stretch.
Why: There are two ranges of motion (ROM) you want to
address in a warm-up: 1) The active range of motion, which
entails the positions your athletes can get into on their
own. This is increased by dynamic stretching. 2) The
passive range of motion, which entails the positions your
athletes can get into through manual (external) placement
or the pull of gravity. The passive ROM is increased
through the use of static stretching. This particular
movement is a static stretch for the hamstrings.
11. V-Sit Rollover (10 repetitions): Roll back onto upper back, then back down, with legs in a “V,” and reach
forward as far as possible at the bottom of the
movement. Repeat.
Why: This is a dynamic lower back and hamstring stretch,
done at this point in the warm-up because your athletes
will be positioned on their backs.
12. Seated 3-Way V-Sit Static Stretch (15-20 seconds each position): Perform this one exactly how it sounds. Reach
to each foot with the opposite arm and hold, then reach
to the middle with both hands.
Why: This is an old-school static hamstring and groin
stretch, and it’s an effective continuation of the static
and dynamic hamstring stretches you’ve already performed.
42
13. Hip Crossovers (10 repetitions each side): With knees bent and pulled toward your chest, and your arms out the
your sides, palms down, in a “T” position, turn your
hips from right to left, trying to touch the ground with
the leg on the side you’re turning toward. Try to keep
your knees locked together here, and your shoulders on
the floor.
Why: This is a dynamic stretch that targets the hips and
lower back. The ability to turn the hips effectively is
crucial for football players at every position, and this
movement promotes mobility in the region.
14. Piriformis Stretch (15-20 seconds each side): Cross one leg over the other, figure-4 style. With one hand on the
outside of your bent knee, and the other hooked under
your ankle, lean forward and pull your knee and foot
toward your chest.
Why: The piriformis is a muscle in the gluteal region of
your lower body – essentially, it’s an ass muscle. Tight
piriformis muscles cause lower back, knee and sciatica
pain. Static stretching of the piriformis will increase the
ROM of the entire hip region.
15. “Over!” Command: Entire team goes back to the bottom position of a pushup to await the next command.
16. Cobras (10 repetitions each side): Begin on your stomach with your arms outstretched. Bend your left leg and try
to sweep across your body and attempt to touch your
right hand. Repeat on the opposite side.
43
Why: This is a dynamic stretch that promotes mobility in
the hips, the torso and the quadriceps muscles.
17. Hip Circles (10 repetitions each way for each side): This is a tremendous exercise for hip mobility. Get on
all fours – hands and knees. Keeping your leg bent, move
your entire leg in a circular pattern. Try to get a
large ROM during this exercise and be sure to do it
forwards and backwards.
Why: Again, hip mobility is crucial for all speed, power
and change of direction movements in football. This is a
series of dynamic stretches designed to increase hip
mobility.
18. “Step Forward” Hip Flexor Stretch (15-20 seconds each side): From the all fours position, lunge forward with
your back knee on the ground. Position your forward foot
past your forward knee. Place your hands on your hips,
or raise the same hand as the side being stretched over
and behind your head. Straighten the hip of your rear
leg by pushing your hips forward. This is a static hip
flexor stretch.
Why: This is a static stretch for the hip flexors. Once
again, as a football coach, tight hips are your enemy.
44
Dynamic Mobility Drills
The second part of the warm-up involves a series of drills
designed to be done “there and back” over a distance of 20
yards. The idea is to have the entire team in a series
lines across the width of the field or gym floor, with
everyone starting from the same line. You have three
options for starting each movement: on the coach’s whistle,
when the player in front of you reaches the 10 yard mark,
or have a designated player call a cadence. The third
option, having the team go on cadence, seems to pacify most
head coaches in terms of convincing them that these drills
have utility in a football sense.
Players pass the finish line to the right (their right) of
the line, then go to the back of the line. The first player
in line takes his turn again when the last player in his
line has finished his trip.
Why: Most of these dynamic mobility drills are self-
explanatory. During the course of a football game, players
will run, scrape, side shuffle and backpedal. The purpose
of the “high knees” aspect of these drills is to continue
to increase the active ROM of the hips. These drills will
also continue to raise your athletes’ core temperatures to
a point where they’re ready for the more CNS intensive work
to follow.
1. 50% Run: Simple “not a jog, not a sprint” run.
2. A-Skips: A basic, rhythmic skip, bringing the knees as high as possible at the top.
45
3. Side Shuffle: Shuffle to the side in an athletic football position, with head and chest remaining at one
level, and without allowing your feet to either click
together or cross.
4. High-Knees “Alley” Run: This is a sideways run that simulates a linebacker’s scraping motion, except each
forward stride (when your knee comes across the body)
will be made by kicking your knee as high up and across
as you can.
5. Running A’s (Don’t Pass Me’s): You’ll need a coach to pace these. He’ll be doing a slow walk (this can be
anywhere from 5 yards to all 20), while the athletes
pick up and put down their feet, running in place as
fast as possible (with high knees) without passing him.
6. Backpedal: Butt down, head up, back straight, “nose over toes.”
Summary
This warm-up isn’t set in stone. We designed it so that one
exercise easily segues into another, making it more
efficient time-wise. You may want to add exercises,
subtract them, or do things in a different order. If you
remember the “butt kick” story that opened this chapter,
you’ll understand that it doesn’t matter all that much what
you do as long as you have a solid mix of dynamic and
static stretches followed by dynamic mobility movements.
46
Football-Specific Work Let’s reexamine the main point of this manual, which was
covered in the chapter on annual planning. The primary goal
of this or any strength and conditioning program is to make
your athletes strong enough to get into football positions
and hold them, and mobile enough to explode out of them and
make plays. You’ll notice here that we still haven’t said
anything about getting them “strong enough to bench press
400 pounds,” or “fast enough to run a 4.4 second 40.”
The point here is to improve your athletes as football
players, and the only way to see whether what you’re doing
in the weight room or elsewhere is transferring is to
actually get them on a football field – or, in some cases,
a gym floor – and watch them play football. And the only
way they’re going to learn how to play football in your
system – and then learn how to play football with speed –
is to perform drills and movements specific to what they’ll
be doing on the field.
This may be stating the obvious, and you’re probably
thinking, “Yes, that’s why we have practice.” That’s not
what we’re talking about here. The concept we’re trying to
get across is that football-specific work should be thought
of as a major, major part of the off-season workout plan as
a whole.
Let’s take linebackers as an example. Once a linebacker has
the basic fundamentals of a solid stance, tackling and hit
and shed technique down, what’s the first thing they’re
usually drilled on? In our experience, it’s their trigger
47
step – the first step a linebacker takes out of his stance
based on the direction he sees his key moving. This, of
course, can be different depending on the program, because
a linebacker in one system can be playing an entirely
different position as a linebacker in another system, even
if he’s lined up in a similar position on the field.
Regardless, this is a good example of what we’re talking
about here. Let’s say you’re coaching two linebackers, one
of whom has mastered the trigger steps for your system, and
one who hasn’t. The first player is going to take the
correct first step most of the time (hopefully), and he’ll
take a direct line to his assignment. The second player’s
first step will be a “false step.” This false step will
require a series of corrective steps when he realizes he’s
made a mistake. By the time he’s righted himself, the
player who didn’t false step will already have three or
four steps on him toward his objective, and so will the
ball carrier. The receiver he’s assigned to cover will also
have a 3-4 stride advantage toward either getting open if
it’s man coverage, or getting open in the incorrect
linebacker’s zone before the correction can be made.
If the correct player runs a 4.7 in the 40, and the
incorrect player runs a 4.5 but is spotting the correct
player four strides in a 10 yard race, who’s going to win?
This is an easy, obvious, football-specific example, but it
should serve to drive home the fact that it’s essential to
integrate football-specific drills into the workout program
itself – and not treat this kind of work as existing
independently from the workout sessions you’re performing.
48
You can’t just “train like animals” and hope it carries
over.
The question then becomes one of how this is best
accomplished. The first thing to consider is the placement
of the football-specific sessions within the workout as a
whole. In the off-season, we believe it’s best to do this
work first. Performing these drills with a fresh CNS makes
for an optimal learning environment, where players are able
to perform their assigned tasks at full speed, and at full
recovery. In the off-season, much of what you’ll be doing
in your football-specific sessions will be new material for
your athletes, and the best way to develop new motor
patterns – or to learn new skills – is in a non-fatigued
state where all the athlete needs to concentrate on is the
acquisition of the new skill.
What you want to do, when teaching a new skill, is to get
to a point where your athletes are performing this skill as
fast as possible. Take wide receivers as an example. Let’s
say you’re teaching them a series of release moves. You
want to first teach them exactly what they’re supposed to
be doing, then get them to do it fast. If they’re doing
this in a fatigued state, they won’t be going their
fastest. You need them in a state of untaxed CNS, where
they can take their steps faster and faster every time out
– with full recovery – in order to increase their actual
game (competition) speed. Again, there’s a time and place
to do football drills in a fatigued state – and to use
football drills for “conditioning” purposes – but this
isn’t it.
49
When you’re trying to decide exactly what to do, this is
when you have to actually be a coach. Every system is
different – even down to the level of the stances you’ll
want your players to assume and the first moves they’ll
make out of these stances. With that said, we’ll offer some
guidelines on how to construct the drills you’ll be using
in your off-season football-specific periods. Later on, in
the programming sections, we’ll offer examples of what
we’re referring to in this chapter.
Guidelines
1. Examine your system. Put some serious thought into what it is your players actually do on the field within the
context of your system. If you’re a triple option team,
and your playside receiver is cracking on 75% of your
plays, take that into account and don’t have them
running skinny post one-on-ones for this entire period.
Work them on stalking and cracking and whatever else
they’ll have to do, in the proper proportion to what
they’ll actually be doing in game play situations. If
your offensive linemen punch, teach them how to punch.
If they don’t, don’t waste your time. Develop a series
of drills that echoes what you’ll need them to do on the
field, in a very specific sense.
2. Specificity. To add to point #1, you can’t be specific enough in this football-specific period. Your general
work takes place in the weight room and with the other
aspects of the program. This period is ENTIRELY specific
to football skills, strategies and tactics. Teach,
50
coach, and implement the things you need into your
system. Turn your athletes into better FOOTBALL PLAYERS.
3. Focus on the purpose of the period. The same concept applies to every individual segment of this program. The
purpose of the 15-30 minutes – or whatever you deem
appropriate – you’ll be devoting to football-specific
work is football-specific work. DO NOT TURN THIS PERIOD
INTO A CONDITIONING SESSION. This is especially
applicable if, as we suggest, you’re doing a wide
variety of work afterward. We’d rather see a player do 5
high-quality reps of a movement at this point than 15
reps in a fatigued state, because doing things in a
fatigued state with both hinder his ability to learn and
perfect new motor patterns AND tax his CNS – which will
adversely affect the work that follows.
4. Make it a progression. Start your athletes off from the most basic elements of what you need them to learn, then
progress from there every day. Take defensive backs, for
example. First, you’d teach them their stance, and you
might take an entire football-specific period to teach
them the first backpedal step out of a stance. The
following session might be devoted to simply teaching
them how to backpedal. The one after that would
incorporate the first two components, then teach change
of direction and break techniques. Remember, the
overriding factor here is to teach each position to do
things as fast and explosively as possible.
5. Make drills reactive. Once you’ve taught your athletes the basic motor patterns and techniques necessary in
51
your system, you’ll then devise drills – or use pre-
existing ones – to simulate game situations. Our advice
to you is to make these drills reactive, as opposed to
pre-programming movement patterns. When you’re deciding
which drills you want to use, ask yourself what the
drill has to do with the actual technique of the sport.
When, in the course of a football game or scrimmage
situation, will a player be asked to sprint to a cone
and perform some pre-set move, or maneuver his way
through an agility ladder with his head down? He won’t.
He’ll be reacting to an outside stimulus, then acting on
this reaction. Train this reactive ability. Don’t pre-
program.
6. Make Drills Competitive. This has been said a thousand times before, in a thousand different ways, and it’s a
huge part of the infamous “atmosphere vs. programming
debate,” but it’s 100% true. Athletes need to compete –
both so they can cultivate their competitiveness and to
stave off the boredom of a long, occasionally tedious
off-season. In other words, setting up your off-season
workouts in a competitive manner will make them more fun
for your athletes, and they’ll end up working a lot
harder for you.
52
Summary
We can tell you how to get your players faster and
stronger, and we can tell you how to set up your workout
plan, but we’re not about to tell you how to play or coach
football. As a coach or a player, that’s up to you. The
football-specific section of your strength and conditioning
program is where you take our guidelines, plug in what you
already know about the game, and coach. We can’t tell you
what system to run – although we both have strong opinions
on the subject. That’s 100% up to you, and so is the actual
content of what you’ll be doing during this period.
By adhering to the guidelines we’ve given you here – by
concentrating on a progressive, competitive sequence of
reactive drills that align with the on-field goals of your
program, you’ll be well ahead of the game in terms of your
off-season preparation.
53
Linear Speed
Technique
When you’re thinking about linear speed considerations for
your team, put a game tape into your DVD player or VCR and
watch how often – and for how far – your athletes actually
run straight ahead during the course of a game. A long,
linear run will happen occasionally – the vast majority of
the time this is done by skill position players – but what
you’ll find, on most plays, is that your athletes will run
for a set number of yards (usually ten or less) before
they’re forced to change direction. They’ll have to cut,
jump or make a football play before either stopping the
forward movement action altogether or starting again.
Now, some coaches advocate this approach – the short sprint
approach – for the entirety of their running and
conditioning programs. “My guys don’t have to run more than
20 yards at a time during games,” they’ll say, “so we don’t
have them run more than 20 yards in practice.”
While we agree that “top end” speed isn’t as vitally
important for most football players as it is for, say,
Olympic 100 meter sprinters, we also don’t agree with the
repeated short sprint approach, at least in terms of
conditioning. We’ll get to this in a later chapter.
What’s important to think about with linear speed is the
length of the average football play. Time-motion studies
indicate that the length of the average play is at least 6
54
seconds. The average football player can cover a 10 yard
sprint in less than 2 seconds. This begs the question, “If
most guys are only running 10 yards during a typical play,
what happens for the other 4 seconds?”
Assuming a player begins a play with a 10 yard sprint – and
this is certainly a faulty assumption in most cases – he’ll
be changing direction, initiating and avoiding contact, and
doing all sorts of other things during the course of these
4 seconds. In some cases, he’ll even begin a second (and
even a third) sprint action in order to make a play, and a
handful of times during games, he’ll have to break on a
play and assume top speed for distances far longer than 10
seconds, and in most cases, he’ll be starting these sprints
from something other than an ideal sprint start position.
Think about this for a minute in terms of how we judge how
fast our players are. Most times, when we’re talking about
speed, we’re judging this by how fast a player is in a 40
yard dash performed under ideal conditions where the player
is permitted to assume a fundamentally sound sprint start
position and run the prescribed distance with no
distractions, impediments or changes in direction. If the
athlete has been trained properly for this test, his
running mechanics will be perfect from the time of first
movement.
What happens, however, during a game, where a player will
be asked to start a linear sprint from some awkward
position? What if he has to get up off the turf and run
down a ball carrier? What if he’s shedding a blocker,
55
taking two off-balance lateral steps, and then going? What
happens then?
Given these circumstances, your first consideration for
linear speed development is to make sure the player’s
mechanics are sound as early in that particular sprint as
possible. In other words, he can be starting out from a
completely awkward position, but if he’s strong enough and
can control his body well enough to explode out of this
position into a fundamentally correct first sprint step, it
will take him far less time to run to a play than the
player who can’t control these factors and takes two more
awkward steps before assuming proper form.
Form Coaching Points
As a football coach or a strength coach, nobody’s expecting
you to have the technical prowess of an Olympic sprint
coach, and you likely won’t have time to break down the
biomechanical form of 40+ athletes when you’re all together
on the field. Here, however, are some things we look for
when we’re talking about “assuming correct form” as quickly
as possible during football plays.
• The athlete should be relaxed when accelerating. If
they’re tight and rigid, their movements won’t be
natural, and running will look like hard work. It
shouldn’t.
56
• Athletes should be leaning forward at almost a 45-degree
angle, with a straight line coming down through their
head to their extended back leg.
• Arms and shoulders should be square to the direction in
which they’re running, with no appreciable rotation of
the trunk, with their elbows bent at a 90-degree angle.
Their hands, in this position, should be moving from
their hips to shoulder height.
• Their weight should be on the balls of their feet for the
entire acceleration phase, with their toes pointed in the
direction they’re going. At the “top,” again, the
athlete’s body should be a straight line from head to
rear (extended) leg, with high knee drive from the
forward leg in line with the direction he’s sprinting.
When a player assumes top speed – which will happen rather
infrequently during games – the “forward lean” position
gradually turns into a more erect stride, simply because
the player is not capable of running any faster at that
instant. The transition from acceleration to top speed
should be a smooth, natural one, and it will be for most
athletes if they remain relaxed and square to the line on
which they’re sprinting.
Teaching
How do we teach this? More importantly, how do we teach
players how to assume the correct sprinting positions from
57
the awkward positions they’ll find themselves in during
practices and games?
First, get them stronger. This is why, in your annual plan,
you’ll be emphasizing overall “total body” strength before
you start increasing volume in the other segments of your
program. Athletes need to develop the ability to control
their bodies. That’s what we mean when we say, “strong
enough to assume and hold football positions, and mobile
enough to explode out of them.” You’ll notice that the
first part of this quote refers to strength. You can’t
explode out of a position if you’re not strong enough to
get into it in the first place.
Part of getting stronger entails increasing lean body mass
and dropping fat. This isn’t a nutrition book, but there’s
no way around this. Think about it. If you have a race
between a strong, muscular 200 pound kid and a weak 200
pound kid who’s really a 130 pound kid carrying 70 pounds
of fat, who’s going to win? It’s not even going to be
close. When you’re thinking about getting your kids faster,
spend some of your time considering their body composition.
The excess weight isn’t helping them.
Now, once we’ve spent some time getting them stronger and
building up a good base of overall body strength,
especially in the posterior chain (hamstrings, lower back
and “core”), we can think about the various ways of
developing and emphasizing proper acceleration form. We do
this in two ways:
58
Hill Sprints
The best way to teach proper acceleration form is simply to
put an athlete at the bottom of a hill and have him sprint
up. The hill in question shouldn’t be too steep – just
enough of a gradual grade to make an athlete lean forward
in order to hold his form without slowing him down. You
essentially can’t run wrong on a hill – either you assume
the proper acceleration lean, or you’re going to fall flat
on your face or fall backward. It’s that simple. We usually
run through our first few weeks of linear speed workouts on
a hill for this reason.
Sprint Starts from Various Positions
We’ll start players out in the following positions in order
to teach and emphasize the proper acceleration lean and
“straight line” extension necessary in the crucial first 10
yards of a sprint. Notice that both of these positions
require the player to begin the run with this lean.
1. Falling Start: Start with one foot forward and one foot back, with your weight on the balls of your feet and
your arms in “mid stride” position. Free-fall forward as
far as you can before losing control, then
simultaneously drive your back knee up and forward
explosively and extend the leg that stays on the ground.
2. Push-up Start: Start at the bottom of the push-up position, with your entire body flat on the ground. The
first movement is to drive one leg up into your chest,
with your weight on the ball of that foot. You’ll
59
simultaneously push yourself up and drive into the
sprint from here, attempting to achieve full extension
on your first sprint step. This drill will allow you to
see who needs to get stronger, because and explosive
progression from the first move to full extension
requires a high degree of total-body strength.
3. Sprints from Various Football Positions: You’ll obviously be working on this more in the football-
specific portion of your program, but once you’re
familiar with coaching the above technical progression,
you can make your sprint sessions more football-specific
(and specific to your program) by having your players
sprint from positions they’ll be sprinting from in
games. A word of caution here – this doesn’t mean
putting your linemen in three point stances and having
them run 20-yard sprints. That’s just stupid. In this
section, I’m simply referring to drills like having your
wide receivers sprint out of release moves, or having
running backs sprint out of a stance to simulate meshing
with the quarterback. Don’t go crazy with this. If
you’re not comfortable with what you’re prescribing,
save it for your football-specific periods and use your
linear speed sessions to concentrate on linear speed
from more “conventional” start positions.
Central Nervous System Considerations
We discussed the placement of linear speed work in the
daily schedule in the chapter on individual workout
planning. The purpose of this next section is to give you
60
some guidelines on how often to train linear speed, and how
much volume to prescribe in your individual sessions.
As discussed earlier, linear speed is a CNS-intensive
activity, meaning it taxes the central nervous system. Your
athletes will need at least 48 hours of recovery between
CNS-intensive sessions for their central nervous systems to
regenerate and be relatively untaxed and “fresh” again. In
other words, you can’t train linear speed every day, and
more is not always better. In fact, when it comes to the
frequency of your linear speed sessions, more is definitely
NOT better. This is why, when you see our suggested
templates, we recommend performing your linear speed work
twice per week – three times, tops – on your CNS-intensive
lifting days.
When you perform this sort of work too frequently – every
day, for example – your CNS becomes fatigued. With a
fatigued CNS, your nervous system simply doesn’t work as
well. The mechanisms by which your muscle fibers are
activated are impaired, and the abilities both to learn new
motor patterns and to perform movements at top speed are
severely limited. In other words, you can do linear speed
work with a fatigued CNS until the cows come home, and your
team won’t get any faster.
The solution? Rest, recovery, regeneration, and close
monitoring of the volume of work your players are doing.
Now, how do you know how much work to prescribe in a daily
session? This is where linear speed work gets a bit tricky,
because this will differ for just about everyone on your
61
team. Our general rule on this is simply that volume will
increase every week until a deload occurs (every fourth
week) – so the volume, for the most part, is waved. How do
you know what this volume is? You don’t. This, once again,
is where you have to actually coach. Here are some
guidelines for establishing the amount of sprint volume you
have your players perform.
1. Everyone is an individual. Some athletes will be able to do more CNS-intensive linear speed work than others.
This is because their work capacities are more highly
developed, for whatever reason. It’s also the reason why
we can’t simply prescribe some cookie-cutter template
for this kind of work. Some athletes will simply be able
to tolerate more of this work than others before their
CNS’s are completely shot.
2. Learn, first, when enough is enough. When form breaks down, you’re done. It’s that simple. Let’s say you
prescribe five 10’s, at 100% intensity, with full
recovery, but on the 3rd sprint, a player’s form
completely breaks down. He’s done, and you’re not
getting anything else out of his linear speed work in
this session, so it’s time to move on.
3. If they’ve gone somewhere they haven’t been before, don’t take them further. If you’re timing your players,
and someone sets a PR at a given distance, shut him
down. He might not be tired or hurt physically, but I
can guarantee you his CNS will eventually feel the
effects of doing something he hasn’t previously done –
in this case, exceeding 100% of his “max.” There’s no
62
sense in compounding this problem by risking injury when
you’re not in a competitive setting. This is why Olympic
100 meter sprinters don’t set world records in
preliminary heats. They’re conserving the bullets in
their CNS guns.
4. Don’t use resisted running devices. We don’t sprint players with parachutes, and we only use sled-resisted
running for various forms of conditioning with certain
positional players. Think about this. With something
CNS-intensive like sprinting, the idea is to get in the
ideal “straight line” acceleration lean position as
quickly as possible. When you add a random external
resistance like a parachute, you’re hindering the
ability to get into this position quickly. When you
force the athlete to compensate for this you’re creating
new motor patterns that aren’t present in the actual
performance of the sprint. This negatively affects
sprint mechanics to the point where it serves to
actually slow the athlete down when he goes back to
sprinting without resistance.
Summary
There were two main concepts discussed in detail in this
chapter: sprint mechanics and central nervous system
considerations. Like anything else, speed work should be
taken, in the context of your annual plan, from the general
to the specific – and in this case, specific means teaching
your players to hold football positions and explode out of
them as powerfully and efficiently as possibly, time after
time after time.
63
Jumps and Throws
Simply put, the arts of jumping on boxes – or over hurdles,
or anything else – and throwing medicine balls explosively
are the primary reasons why we don’t advocate the Olympic
lifts as the major focus of this program.
Think about something for a second. When you grab a barbell
and snatch, clean or clean and jerk it, you certainly do
have to be explosive to progress to heavier weights and get
the bar up. We won’t argue this point, and we do actually
program the power clean as part of our off-season training.
Even though you need a significant explosive component to
perform these lifts correctly, however, there’s a
deceleration – a slowing down of the barbell, whether it’s
conscious or unconscious – phase where you have to slow
down, otherwise the barbell is going to fly right out of
your hands. This is what happens when you complete a lift.
You go into the “catch” position – either in the rack phase
of a clean or at the top of a snatch – and the barbell has
to be under control, otherwise you’re going to lose it and
either damage your equipment or hurt yourself.
Now, think about jumping onto a box or throwing a medicine
ball as hard as you can. Is there a deceleration component
there? With jumps, if you’re trying to achieve a
challenging height, there certainly isn’t, because all you
have on your mind is getting off the ground explosively
enough to make it where you need to go. The same holds true
64
for broad jumps, hurdle jumps, depth jumps, bounding, or
anything else you want to prescribe. With explosive
medicine ball throws, what’s holding you back there? You’re
taking a weighted ball and trying to move it as fast and as
far as you can, are you not?
Both of these techniques work explosive strength in a
highly effective manner without the hassle of teaching the
Olympic lifts to 30-40 kids, most of whom don’t have enough
control over their bodies to learn to execute them properly
without getting hurt.
Jumps
The most basic jump in our jump progression is a simple two
legged box jump. In order to do this, you obviously need
something to jump onto. This should be a sturdy, stable
platform or set of platforms that, ideally, you could
adjust in height in one or two inch increments from about
18” to 50”+, although unless you’re dealing with superior
athletes, you’d be fortunate to have one or two players
each year – or decade, quite frankly - who can jump onto a
50”+ box at the high school level. To adjust your heights
we suggest purchasing 1” thick rubber matting and cutting
the pieces to fit whatever you’re jumping on.
When your athletes start performing jumps in excess of 80%
of their max jump height, there’s a risk of injury, and you
want them landing on something that won’t slip out from
under them. Rubber matting suits this purpose nicely.
You’ll also want a box of an intermediate height that
65
athletes can use as a “step down” box. The initial jumps
they’ll be performing won’t entail jumping down yet –
that’s an advanced movement – so you’ll want to make sure
they can simply step down after completing a rep.
A quick word about spotters...
The one thing you have to do as a coach is stay on top of
your athletes and make sure they know how to spot the
various movements their teammates will be doing. When a
football player finishes a lift, or a jump, the first thing
he’s doing is thinking about the outcome of what he just
did. If he did it successfully, he’s happy and thinking
about that. If he failed, he’s angry, and he’s dwelling on
it. What you need to do is establish a system by which
players do two things. 1) They need to automatically move
to an assigned spotting point once they finish a movement.
2) Then need to pay attention once they’re there.
To spot a box jump, we usually have one player standing on
each side behind the athlete who’s taking his turn. That
way, if he falls either backward or to one side, his
teammates are ready to catch him and prevent injury. We
also suggest padding the front top edge of whatever they’re
jumping on. You don’t want your athletes taking risks by
jumping to challenging heights on unpadded wood or concrete
platforms. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
In our experience, there’s no hard and fast rule as to how
far or close to stand from the box when you’re trying to
execute a jump. This is instinctive. The best thing we can
tell you is to stand to the side and watch your athletes
66
set up in profile. You’ll just know the correct jump angle
– again, instinctively – and you’ll be able to move them up
or back accordingly.
Technique
The main idea, starting with your feet in the prototypical
shoulder-width position, is simply to descend quickly, roll
to the balls of your feet, and jump onto the box. Arm swing
should be utilized, and all the momentum it generates
should be thrown into the “flight path,” or angle you’re
taking in order to land on the box. Don’t slap your feet
down on the box. Land softly, on balance, and absorb the
force. This will help reinforce good balance
characteristics and begin to teach your athletes the all-
important skill of force absorbtion.
Box Squat/Box Jumps
I don’t think anyone’s sure what the proper name for these
are, so this is what we’re calling them. With this one,
what you’ll be doing is taking a box that puts you slightly
above a parallel squat, sitting on it with an arched and
tight upper and lower back, and exploding off into a box
jump onto a higher platform. This is a box jump variation
that can be used once basic box jumps are mastered.
Reactive Jumps
When you’re training your athletes in any kind of speed or
agility work, you want them to develop reactivity. What
this means is that you want the time their foot is actually
67
on the ground to be as short as possible. The shorter the
duration of ground contact, the faster an athlete is going
to run, cut and react.
Depth jumps are a type of reactive jump. With depth jumps,
what you’re doing is jumping off one platform, hitting the
ground with a solid base, then taking off again onto a
higher platform. The first platform doesn’t need to be very
high, because you don’t want the athlete to gather himself
for the second jump. This first ground contact should be as
short as possible. The athlete, even though he is being
asked to absorb force in landing, then generate force to
take off again, will essentially be bouncing. That’s
essentially how it should look. If this is not the case,
the athlete is either not at a high enough level of
preparation, or the starting platform is too high. Choose a
platform of a reasonable height to make ground contact as
short as possible.
Box Jump + Off
If you have access to a high jump pit, position it behind
your box jump platform and have your athletes, upon landing
their initial box jump, reactively jump again and land
safely (flat on their backs) in the high jump pit. This is
another reactive jump drill designed to shorten ground
contact.
Hurdle Jumps
If you have them, place a series of hurdles of moderate
height, spaced reasonably close together, and have your
68
athletes bound, double-legged, over them in series. Once
athletes have reached an appropriate level of preparation –
through strength work and learning to box jump – this is a
great drill to improve reactivity.
Why: It’s been said many times that vertical jump height
and box jump height directly correlate to faster sprint
times. This is not the case, and this has been disproved
many times by sport scientists and sprint coaches. When an
athlete improves either of these jumps, there are other
factors in play, and sprint speed is not directly
connected. The athlete, for example, could have changed his
body composition, allowing him to both jump higher AND run
faster.
The thing to examine is the time of the ground contacts.
That’s how jumping helps. In order to run or change
direction, the athlete first needs to absorb force, and
then he needs to produce it – and this needs to happen
FAST. If he’s not strong enough to do this, he won’t be
fast. It’s that simple. Work in the weight room, and work
with basic box jumps, will make your athletes stronger.
Advanced work such as depth jumps, hurdle jumps and
bounding will develop the biomotor ability to shorten
ground contacts.
A Word on Proper Box Height
How do you know how high of a box to use? This is fairly
simple. The first thing you need to know is an approximate
max for the player. Let’s say his highest box jump is 40
inches. In our experience, any box jump of less than 80% of
69
your maximum height is not explosive and doesn’t require
the kind of effort necessary to heighten explosive
strength. Therefore, find your athletes’ maxes in the box
jump, then work with heights at 80% and above.
Medicine Ball Throws
In our experience, medicine balls are essential for success
in any football program. To be perfectly honest with you,
we’d be tempted to give up our power racks before we’d give
up our medicine balls – almost, anyway. That’s how
important we believe they are. They’re absolutely essential
in building explosive strength for both the upper and lower
body, they’ll make your athletes faster, and you can use
them in a variety of other ways – in your warm-up, for
conditioning purposes, for abdominal exercises, and for
position-specific drills. In fact, we can directly
attribute our medicine ball routine to the ability of our
players to deliver a blow – an ability that we believe
stems directly from our use of explosive “chest pass” style
throws.
Technique
The idea is to explode out with the ball and throw it as
far as you possibly can. There’s no holding back with these
movements. There’s no limit on how far you can throw –
other than your own capacity for throwing – and the object
of the game is to throw the balls as fast and explosively
as you possibly can. With that said, you don’t want your
athletes using medicine balls that are too heavy for them.
70
Generally, balls between 6-16 pounds should be appropriate
for this purpose, with most players utilizing balls between
8-12 pounds. If you’re looking to order these for your
team, you wouldn’t go wrong by ordering fifteen 8-10 pound
med balls.
Also, the type of medicine balls you purchase can be
problematic. You don’t want hard rubber ones that roll,
because with explosive throws, you’ll end up chasing the
ball down the field every thirty seconds. Leather balls are
good for this purpose because they don’t roll. However, if
your players are doing these drills on the field – where
they should be doing them – and they’re wearing cleats,
they’ll end up stopping the balls with their feet and
tearing them open after a while. We’ve had to enforce the
“no stopping med balls with your cleats” rule with a
vengeance.
Additionally, you want to mentally condition your players
not to try to catch thrown medicine balls – at least on
throws executed with large amounts of force. They’ll try,
and you’ll have a yearly broken nose as a result if you
don’t crack down on this immediately.
Once you’ve got the equipment, partner your players up for
these drills. If you’re short on med balls, you can even go
three and four-way on these. These are full-go, full speed
efforts, so your players, especially at first, won’t need
tons of reps to get the desired training effect.
71
Half Squat Throw
Beginning in a half-squat position, with the ball held
evenly – chest-high, as though preparing the throw a
basketball chest pass – in your hands, simply fire your
hips and glutes and throw the ball as far as you possibly
can. This entails throwing the ball at roughly a 45-degree
angle, as though it were being shot from a cannon. Ideally,
your momentum will pitch you forward into a broad jump at
the conclusion of this throw.
Box Squat Throw
This is performed using roughly the same motion as the half
squat throw, only you’re ascending from a slightly above
parallel box. Again, your momentum should pitch you forward
after the release of the ball.
Box Squat Dive Throw
Set up a box such that a high jump pit is about two feet or
so in front of it. Start from the box, with feet at
shoulder width or slightly wider, in the same position you
used for the box squat throw. This time, instead of
pitching forward, you’re going to explosively throw the
ball at a 45-degree angle and follow it through the air,
landing in a full, laid-out dive in the high jump pit.
Broad Jump Throw
From the same starting position as the other throws,
perform a standing broad jump. When you land, reactively
jump again, simultaneously chest passing the medicine ball
as far as you can. Do not gather yourself for this second
jump. As with all depth jump or bounding movements, you’re
72
looking for your players to have the shortest ground
contact time possible.
Double Broad Jump Throw
This is performed the same way as the broad jump throw,
only you’re adding a second jump – jump, jump, THROW! Both
broad jumps should be as far as possible, with minimal
ground contacts, and again, the final jump should be
executed at the same time as an explosive throw.
Kneeling “Coil Drill” Throw
This drill has excellent sport-specific transfer for
offensive linemen. From a kneeling position, with the ball
in chest pass position, simply throw the ball as far as you
can, again at a 45-degree angle. Your momentum when the
ball leaves your hands should land you face down in a
pushup position. Catch yourself with your hands, push
yourself back up, and await your partner’s throw.
Depth Jump Throw
This is executed the same way a conventional depth jump is
– a step off a platform, followed by a quick absorption of
force and explosion (the throw) – except instead of jumping
onto another platform, you’re landing with both feet and
throwing the med ball as hard and as explosively as you
can.
A Word on Chest Pass Technique
When coaching your players in the proper throw-release
technique for these drills, you’ll find that a lot of them
are conditioned to play basketball, and they’ll throw the
73
med balls at first like they’re shooting jump shots. In
order to throw a medicine ball as far as you can, you need
to use two hands. When the ball is released, the hands
should be even, with the palms turned over, thumbs down,
facing the outside.
How Much is Enough?
Take a snapshot, in your mind, of an athlete in profile
launching a medicine ball at a 45-degree angle. Picture the
ball sitting on his fingertips, just about to be released.
This is the position you should be watching for when you’re
coaching. The athlete should be in a straight line from the
tips of his fingers all the way down to his toes. If he’s
not – his back is bent like a question mark, or his knees
are still flexed – one of three things is happening. Either
1) He’s using a medicine ball that’s too heavy for him, or
2) He’s not strong enough to perform this step in the
progression, or 3) He’s done.
The same applies to box jumps. In just about any full speed
CNS-intensive movement, we know the athlete is finished
when there is a breakdown in his form. If you’ve prescribed
a set of 10 box jumps at a certain height, for example, and
your athlete completes the set but just barely clears the
height on his last three reps, those last three reps – and
maybe more – were not effective for what we’re looking to
do with this period. They were conditioning jumps, rather
than explosive strength jumps. Although it’s admirable that
the athlete perseveres and completes all the prescribed
reps, he did so in a fatigued state, and these reps will
not be effective in increasing either his explosive
74
strength or his reactive ability. Again, these drills need
to be performed at full recovery.
How to Prescribe Programming
There’s no magic number for either jump drills or medicine
ball throws. Some of your players will barely be able to
perform one rep of any of these movements. Others will be
at a more advanced level. All of them, we can assure you,
will eventually experience a breakdown in form at some
point during the period. We suggest starting with your own
“magic number,” except in the form of a highly conservative
baseline number that will be increased weekly. Trust us,
it’s better to start too low with these drills than too
high.
You’ll see this later on in the programming templates, but
after you’ve made an assessment of what you’ve got in terms
of athleticism, set a number for the first week, i.e.,
“Today we’re going to start with 2 sets of 3 box jumps, and
2 sets of 10 medicine ball half squat throws.” You can work
up from there. This initial number may be a bit arbitrary,
but if you’re increasing volume each week – while still
operating under the multiple biomotor ability scheme laid
out in the chapter on annual planning – you’re eventually
going to come to a point in your programming where
something has to give. In other words, if you keep
increasing the volume, you’ll eventually know,
instinctively, when they’ve had enough.
75
Summary
Olympic lifting is a useful discipline, and nobody is
arguing its merits for the development of speed, power and
explosive strength. However, there is more than one way to
skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to do it with a
group of 30+ trainees of wildly varying levels of
preparation. Not everyone can clean and snatch, but
everyone with at least one arm and one leg can jump and
throw.
Chapter Appendix: Jumping Rope
In the developmental stages of a football player’s career,
one of the best friends he can possibly have is a quality
jump rope, and he’d be advised by both of us to carry the
thing around in his back pocket if he can. Jumping rope,
for a variety of reasons – coordination, footwork, agility,
GPP, reactivity, etc – is one of the best things a football
player can do, and we encourage you to implement this type
of work into your program as aggressively as you can.
76
Conditioning
Being in shape to play football isn’t a matter of talent.
It doesn’t take talent to get in shape. It takes effort –
and effort and a solid work ethic can be built in the
weight room, on the practice field and wherever else you
condition your athletes. The recipe for success in football
is a simple strength program and getting your kids in shape
– and the only way you can give your team a chance to win
is to get them strong enough to kick ass in the first
quarter and in good enough shape to keep kicking ass in the
fourth quarter.
If you’re a high school coach, you’re not choosing your
team. Rather, your team is given to you based the area in
which your athletes’ parents choose to live. Your job is to
build the athletes you’ve been given, and the talent pool
you get each year is largely based on the population of
your school and the popularity of football in your area. If
football is big in your community and your school has a
large enrollment, you’ll have a bigger and better selection
of athletes. If you coach in a rural area or a place where
football isn’t emphasized, you have a bigger challenge on
your hands. Either way, you simply have to take what you’re
given and make it work.
With that said, there’s no excuse for your team to be out
of shape. There are, of course, genetic limits to your
athletes’ strength and speed. This isn’t a popular
statement, but if you’ve coached or played sports, you know
it’s true. This, however, doesn’t mean you should
77
deemphasize building strength and speed. These are two of
the main qualities in sports that determine winners and
losers.
Let’s also be very clear about our goals with strength
training here. The goal with your football team should not
be to develop X amount of 300 pound benchers and Y amount
of 400 pound squatters. Your goal should be the improvement
of the individual and the improvement of the team as a
whole. If you take a raw athlete and improve his squat from
185 to 300, you’re going to have a faster, stronger and
more confident football player. You’re also going to have a
believer, and that something that can’t be measured in
tangible terms.
Philosophy
Over the years, we’re sure you’ve heard a lot of “coaches”
espousing the dogma that football doesn’t require extensive
conditioning – that plays only last a few seconds, after
which you jog back to the huddle and rest for 90 seconds.
What’s clear to us, when we listen to these people speak,
is that they’ve neither played nor coached football in
their lives. They’re so-called “experts” who only either
theorize about training athletes or train very few who
actually get on the field and play.
Football is NOT simply a 5-10 yard burst followed by a rest
period. Get that out of your head right now before you go
any further with this chapter. This game is a battle that
involves running, cutting, fighting, scraping, throwing,
kicking, punching, swimming, ripping, grabbing, pulling,
78
pushing, shoving, colliding, diving and throwing yourself
in front of moving objects. Throw in the fever pitch of
emotions athletes will experience, and you have an athlete
that, although he seems like he’s in shape during your
conditioning drills, is badly out of shape on the football
field.
The “short burst” philosophy is theory. The game is
reality.
Now, we’re not telling you to throw caution to the wind and
simply run your team into the ground. You have to use your
head and time things properly. The thing to remember is
this: if a player comes to your off-season workouts out of
shape, it’s his fault, but if your team shows up out of
shape for the season, it’s yours.
Here’s our challenge to you:
Field the strongest and fittest team you can each season.
Get your players strong in the basic lifts, get them lean,
and make sure they can run. Most importantly of all,
instill in them a sense of camaraderie, confidence,
humility and an attitude that nobody will ever outwork
them. If you do this, it won’t matter what the scoreboard
says. You’ll have a team of winners.
Training
We break football conditioning down into three components,
each of which is designed to elicit a different training
effect. The main things we’re looking for here are fitness
79
in football intervals at game speed, cardiovascular
strength and health, and psychological toughness. If you
combine these three elements in a football player, you’ll
have a kid who can go hard from whistle to whistle for an
entire game.
Football-Specific Intervals: What you’re looking for here
is to get your athletes to give an all-out effort for the
duration of a football play – anywhere from 3-6 seconds –
followed by a jog back to the huddle, followed by a 20-30
second rest. You also want them to be able to do this
without regularly putting them in a lactic environment –
where lactic acid is produced and their bodies feel that
burning sensation where they feel like they’re running
underwater. There’s a place for these sessions – we’ll get
to that below – but as a regular training method, they
don’t have much of a place because they take too long to
recover from and impede progress.
With that said, it’s wise to start this sort of training
with longer intervals in between reps, in order to keep
your athletes below their anaerobic thresholds – the heart
rate above which lactic acid is produced. Early in the
year, these sessions can have rest periods as long as 90
seconds between reps, with the goal of getting this period
down to an actual 20-30 second football interval by the
time camp rolls around. This conditioning can and should be
as closely related to actual football movements as possible
– and it can and should be incorporated into practices in
the form of specific football drills, so you can be
creative with it to suit your needs. Examples of this type
of conditioning by position are:
80
Linemen: One-man Blocking Sled Push – Begin in the end zone
and instruct athlete to explode out of his stance and drive
the sled downfield for 4-6 seconds. Set a time period for
this drill (10-15 minutes), set the rest periods as
described above, then lessen them every week – generating
more quality reps over the same time period.
Receivers: One-man Blocking Sled Jam and Sprint – Have your
receivers release in a variety of ways, drive the sled for
2-3 yards, then break into various pass patterns, followed
by a jog back to the huddle – using the timed rest period
pattern described above. Defensive backs can be added to
this mix for one-on-one drills with timed rest periods.
Running Backs: Gauntlet Sled or Sled-resisted Runs - As
with other positions, start your running backs out of
football positions and have them explode through in game
intervals. Periodize rest periods as outlined above.
Linebackers: Trigger, Scrape, Fill, Drive Sled – Have your
linebackers begin in their stance, trigger step at game
speed, then scrape (alley run), plant and drive a one-man
blocking sled for 2-4 seconds. Periodize rest periods as
outlined above. You can also run one-on-one drills as
outlined above matching outside linebackers with either
slot receivers or tight ends.
Entire Team: Sled Resisted Runs or Hill Runs – Your entire
team can benefit from both timed sled-resisted runs and
hill sprints at game intervals if you’re looking for a less
complicated method of football-specific conditioning.
81
Simply have then run for 3-6 seconds, then periodize the
intervals as outlined above.
These are just a few ideas we’ve used successfully in the
past. Based on the offenses and defenses you run, you have
the freedom, as a coach, to be creative and devise
conditioning drills that mimic game play as YOUR team will
experience it. If you run a no-huddle spread offense, for
example, your rest periods on offensive plays can be as
short as 15 seconds, so you’ll need to get your team ready
for that kind of tempo. Your one-on-one drills will depend
on the routes your receivers will be asked to run and the
coverages your defense uses.
Perform some variation of these intervals 2-3 days per
week.
Tempo Runs
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we suggest having your entire
team participate in tempo runs. These are runs of between
50 and 120 yards, performed at about 70% of their maximum
speed, with anywhere from 45-75 seconds between reps. The
idea here is not to gas your players out, but to allow them
to recover from the previous day’s lifting while helping to
make their cardiovascular systems stronger and more
efficient.
Here are two sample tempo running templates you can follow.
Note the total volume here. The purpose of these runs,
again, is not to exhaust your athletes, and they should be
fully recovered from these runs on the same day they’re
82
performed. If your tempo runs have a negative effect on
your next day’s training, decrease the volume until your
team has built sufficient work capacity to complete these
circuits and recover on the same day. Additionally, the
templates given here tend toward the top end, in terms of
volume, of what you want your players to be doing. In other
words, they’re adjustable based on what you, as a coach,
see with your trained eye.
Linemen (distances in yards, begin rest periods at 75
seconds, then work down each week):
Set 1: 50, 50, 50 (walk back after sets are completed)
Set 2: 50, 80, 50, 50
Set 3: 50, 50, 80, 80
Set 4: 50, 80, 50, 50
Set 5: 50, 50, 50
Skill Players (distances in yards, begin rest periods at 75
seconds, then work down each week):
Set 1: 60, 60, 60
Set 2: 60, 100, 60, 60
Set 3: 60, 60, 100, 120
Set 4: 60, 100, 60, 60
Set 5: 60, 60, 60
83
“Go Crazy” Psychological Preparation Day:
This day, done once per week, tops, is where “old-school”
coaching methods have their place. This is where you can
have your athletes seriously get after it – pushing
themselves, learning their limits, and learning that their
bodies are capable of doing more than the athletes think
they can. This is the place for hill sprints, sled drills,
300 yard shuttle runs, burpee circuits, simulated games,
and anything else you feel can build their mental toughness
and show you who the leaders are on your team.
If you do this, chances are your athletes will be training
in a lactic environment – the drawbacks of which were
discussed previously. Since recovering from that type of
training takes a lot longer, we suggest performing this
sort of training on Friday so your athletes have an extra
day to recover for their Monday session.
This type of training can – and has been – debated until
the cows come home, and the science behind the “don’t train
in a lactic environment for football” argument is sound,
but in our experience, football players instinctively need
this. They need to spend some time in that fatigued area
where the mind needs to come to the rescue of the body by
either quitting or driving through until the finish. It
builds determination and mental toughness, it makes your
team more confident when they’ve repeatedly completed
difficult tasks, and it lets you, as a coach, know who the
leaders and followers on your team are. There’s nothing
wrong with being a follower unless your leaders suck, and
84
as a coach, it crucial to find out who’s who. This is where
it starts.
Programming Templates
Jumps/Throws/Speed – First 8 weeks (Skill) Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
85
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 2 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
86
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 2 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
87
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 2 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 4 (Deload Week) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery)
88
Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps
89
Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 2 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 2 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps
90
Week 7 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 3 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 Box Jumps from Box: 80% x 10 Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Box Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 2 sets 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from falling start, 3 x 30 from falling start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 Box Jumps from Box: 80% x 10 Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Box Squat Throw: 10 reps
91
Week 8 (Deload Week) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery)
92
Jumps/Throws/Speed – First 8 weeks (Linemen) Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 2
93
Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
94
Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
95
Week 4 (Deload Week) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 8 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 8 reps
96
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets, 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 8 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 8 reps Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 8 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 8 reps
97
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets, 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 8 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 8 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 8 reps Week 7 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps
98
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets, 8 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 10-15 minutes of very basic drills Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from push-up start. Box Jumps: 80% x 2 sets 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Week 8 (Deload Week) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery)
99
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Going Into the Summer: 9 Weeks (skill): Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes
100
Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 2 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from football position, 4 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes
101
Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from football position, 4 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes
102
Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Week 4 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery)
103
Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from football position, 4 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 6 x 20 from football position, 4 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps
104
Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Depth Jumps: 2 sets 5 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes
105
Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Depth Jumps: 2 sets 5 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Week 7 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Depth Jumps: 2 sets 5 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday
106
Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Depth Jumps: 2 sets 5 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Week 8 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time).
107
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Week 9 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
108
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Going Into the Summer: 9 Weeks (linemen): Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday
109
Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Week 2 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 4 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps
110
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 4 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps
111
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps Week 4 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
112
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 4 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Friday
113
Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 4 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
114
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 7 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery)
115
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 8 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
116
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 9 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps
117
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps Summer Pre-Camp: 6 Weeks (Skill) Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time).
118
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 2 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Week 2 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles
119
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position, 2 x 40 from football position
120
Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position, 2 x 40 from football position Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time).
121
Week 4 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps
122
Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position. Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles
123
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position, 2 x 40 from football position Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be used at this time).
124
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position, 3 x 30 from football position, 2 x 40 from football position Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Hurdle Jumps: 2 sets through series of 5 hurdles Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Broad Jump Throw: 10 reps, Double Broad Jump Throw: 5 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit and/or depth jumps can be used at this time). Summer Pre-Camp: 6 Weeks (Linemen) Week 1 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
125
Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 8 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 2 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps
126
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
127
Week 3 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps
128
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 4 (Deload) Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps
129
Week 5 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps
130
Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Week 6 Monday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here). Wednesday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 5 x 10 yards (full recovery) Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
131
Friday Dynamic Warm-up Football-Specific Drills: 15-20 minutes Linear Speed: 6 x 10 yards (full recovery), 2 x 5 x 20 from football position. Box Jumps: 80% x 10 reps Box Jumps From Box: 80% x 10 reps Throws: Half Squat Throw: 10 reps, Kneeling Coil Throw: 2 sets of 10 reps (throws utilizing high jump pit can be incorporated here).
132
Winter Strength and Conditioning: 8 Week Training Cycle We are going to be operating on a 3 day training week. So there’s no confusion, the following outlines a full training cycle. Here are some general notes about the training program: Set and Rep Scheme:
• Where a 5/3/1 set/rep protocol is listed, please refer to the 5/3/1 training book.
• The extra sets of work (for example: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5)) are based on the specific training max for that cycle.
• The extra sets are never taken to failure or used to determine a rep max.
• The reps on the assistance work can change as you see fit. What’s written is simply a guideline. Since many of the lifts are bodyweight-oriented, the reps are going to be determined by the strength of your athletes. It’s your job as a coach to assign suggested reps for your athletes, so pay attention and learn their capabilities.
• The 5/3/1 philosophy of “start too light” must be enforced. You’re not in a race with time. You’re in a race with your own impatience. The winner of that race doesn’t come in first – it comes in better.
• The exercises listed should be done first to last, if at all possible. Don’t make the mistake of trying so hard to get everything done that you end up with a half-assed session. Get your players through their squat and bench work, and don’t sacrifice the main lifts for the sake of fitting in all the accessory work. It’s better to get two good lifts done in a workout than it is to get five mediocre ones.
133
• Get the main lifts in. They’re the ones that will have the most impact on your kids and their results. A properly executed squat will give kids most of the strength they’ll ever need in their lower bodies.
Coaching Points:
• It’s imperative that you focus on full range of movement and good form. Become a student of good technique in the weight room. The majority of your team will have horrendous lifting form. This can and should be addressed every day.
• Pay attention to form and don’t let a set continue if the athlete is using form that compromises the lift or his health! We don’t chase numbers. We chase wins. Pay attention to how, rather than how much.
• Chins/Pull-ups should be done with a variety of grips.
• Back raises can be performed weighted, using weight vests, bands behind athletes’ necks, weight plates held behind their heads or holding dumbbells.
• Dumbbell lunges must be done with proper form – with large strides and an upright torso. Don’t take mini-steps in order to handle more weight. This defeats the purpose of the exercise.
• If an athlete is too weak to perform chins and pull-ups, use bands either hung from the bar or strung across the spotter bars of the power rack. Partner-assisted chins are also a good idea. Fat Man Rows (also known as Inverted or Body Rows) are also a worthy substitute.
134
Week 1 Monday Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set. Dips: 3 sets of as many reps as possible. Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength. Wednesday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Friday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5)
135
Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 3 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up. Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete. Week 2 Monday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Wednesday Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set.
136
Dips: 4 sets of as many reps as possible. Curls: 4 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength. Friday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Week 3 Monday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up. Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete.
137
Wednesday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Friday Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set. Dips: 4 sets of as many reps as possible. Curls: 4 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength.
138
Week 4 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Wednesday Bench: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up. Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete. Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
139
Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Week 5 Monday Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set. Pushups/Dips: 3 sets of each, for as many reps as possible. Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips/pushups). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength. Wednesday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) One-leg Bulgarian Squats: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform.
140
Friday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 3 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up. Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete. Week 6 Monday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Wednesday Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max
141
reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set. Dips: 4 sets of as many reps as possible. Curls: 4 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength. Friday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) One-leg Bulgarian Squats: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Week 7 Monday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up.
142
Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete. Wednesday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength. Friday Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) *Chin-ups/Pull-ups: Do 1 set in between every set of squats and military presses (including warm-ups). Sets should not be taken to failure. Rather, take ½ of the athletes’ max reps and have them perform that number per set (or even less). For example, if an athlete can do 10 perfect chins/pulls, have them do sets of NO MORE than 5 reps. If an athlete cannot do a chin-up/pull-up, have them do band assisted chins/pulls. When in doubt, have them do fewer reps per set. Pushups/Dips: 3 sets of each for as many reps as possible. Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps (have athletes superset these with dips/pushups). Glute-Ham Raise/Sit-ups Circuit: 3 sets of each – reps depending on athlete’s strength.
143
Week 8 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) One-leg Bulgarian Squats: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 12 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Wednesday Bench: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) Chins/Pull-ups: same sets/reps as before - perform between sets of bench press and squat. DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 12 reps Triceps Pushdowns/Biceps Curls: give the kids 10 minutes to pump up. Sled Rows: Attach a 100 foot tug of war rope to a dragging sled. Pull the sled toward you, hand over hand. Each athlete should do 3 sets of this. The weight used depends on the strength of the athlete. Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (55%x5, 65%x5, 75%x5) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 12 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
144
Dips/Chins: superset these two exercises - 10 minutes of as many sets/reps as they can perform. Spring Football: 2 Week Training Cycle In this section, we’re proposing a hypothetical two-week spring practice period. If your program doesn’t participate in spring drills, start with the workouts listed for the next training block, but read this section anyway, because it’ll further your understanding of our suggestions for training camp and in-season physical training. If your spring football period is one week, simply adjust your scheduling accordingly and move on to the next training block when spring drills are over. Here are some general things to keep in mind during this period:
• Don’t go for rep maxes at the end of any set – just do the prescribed reps.
• Get the athletes in and out of the weight room in 45 minutes.
• These workouts are very important for maintaining and building strength. Do not have a passive attitude as a coach toward these workouts.
• You are only training twice per week, so make sure you schedule these weight workouts so that they don’t interfere with your football practices - and allow your athletes to have success in the weight room as well as on the practice field.
145
Week 1 Day 1 Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chin-ups: 3 sets of as many reps as possible Dips: 3 sets of as many reps as possible Lying Leg Lifts: 3 sets of 25 reps Day 2 Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raise: 3 sets of 10 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
146
Week 2 Day 1 Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chin-ups: 3 sets of as many reps as possible Dips: 3 sets of as many reps as possible Lying Leg Lifts: 3 sets of 25 reps Day 2 Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raise: 3 sets of 10 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
147
Going Into the Summer: 9 Week Training Cycle Program notes:
• These 9 weeks will see a decline in total weight room volume and an increase in speed work.
• The lack of volume does not mean you shouldn’t push the athletes to make them stronger.
Week 1 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible). 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 15 reps DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Dips: 5 sets of 10-20 reps (reps based on athlete’s strength) Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps
148
Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 3 sets of 10 reps Shrugs: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 2 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible). 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 15 reps DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Dips: 5 sets of 10-20 reps (reps based on athlete’s strength) Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps
149
Friday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 3 sets of 10 reps Shrugs: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 3 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible). 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 15 reps DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Dips: 5 sets of 10-20 reps (reps based on athlete’s strength) Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps
150
Friday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 3 sets of 10 reps Shrugs: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 4 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible). 45-Degree Back Raises: 3 sets of 15 reps DB Lunges: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
151
Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Dips: 5 sets of 10-20 reps (reps based on athlete’s strength) Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) DB Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 3 sets of 10 reps Shrugs: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 6 (Deload Week: Use Deload Percentages) Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps DB Step-ups: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
152
Wednesday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps (or pick a specific amount of total reps to do in workout) Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Standing DB Military Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many as are needed) Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 7 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps DB Step-ups: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
153
Wednesday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Standing DB Military Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as many/few sets as possible) Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 8 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps DB Step-ups: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
154
Wednesday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Standing DB Military Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Week 9 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps DB Step-ups: 3 sets of 6 reps/leg Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
155
Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press and dips. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Curls: 3 sets of 10 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Standing DB Military Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
156
Summer Pre-Camp: 6 Week Training Cycle Notes:
• Your summer pre-camp program is the first time all year where you’ll have your entire team together at one time for an extended period of time. There are no other sports going on, so you’ll be dealing with a significant increase in the number of athletes you’ll be coaching.
• Because of these additional numbers, and because
football-specific work, speed, jumps and throws will be receiving greater emphasis during this period, the key to effective lifting is to keep things extremely simple so your team can rotate in and out of the weight room as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• The key to efficiency in a full team setting is to get
the lifting program to the point where it runs itself – in terms of your kids knowing where they have to be and what they have to do as soon as they get in the weight room. If they know, on any given day, exactly what they have to do, you don’t have to worry as much about managing logistics, and you’re free to do what you do best: coach.
• For this reason, the actual lifting – the exercises
performed and the order in which you’re performing them – will stay the same for the entire six weeks.
• Also, bear in mind that some of the new arrivals will
be somewhat detrained, at least in a football/lifting sense, because they’ve been competing in other sports for nearly the entirety of your off-season program, so numbers may have to be adjusted, at first, to accommodate them.
157
Week 1 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 15 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x5 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 30 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
158
Week 2 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 15 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 30 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
159
Week 3 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 15 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 30 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
160
Week 4 (Deload Week: Use Deload Percentages) Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) 45-Degree Back Raise: 3 sets of 15 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 30 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
161
Week 5 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 3x3 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
162
Week 6 Monday Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Military Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of military presses (and even trap bar deadlifts if possible) Band Good Mornings: 3 sets of 20 reps Med Ball Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps Wednesday Bench Press: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Chins/Pull-ups: perform a set of 3-5 reps between every set of bench press. Pushups: 5 sets of 20 reps Face Pulls: 3 sets of 15 reps Lying Leg Raises (or Hanging Leg Raises): 3 sets of 25 reps Friday Power Clean: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Squat: 5/3/1 (5/3/1 set/rep protocol) Glute-Ham Raises: 40 total reps (done in as few sets as possible or as many sets as needed) Roman Chair Sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps
163
In-Season Training As a coach, in-season training is probably the easiest aspect of the yearly weight room plan to figure out, but it’s the one most programs seem to have the most problems with and questions about. Here are some points to consider when installing our system of in-season lifting:
• The goal of in season training is to play the last game of the year stronger than you were for the first game.
• This is not a time to maintain or to accept losing of strength.
• This is not a time to introduce new exercises.
• This is a great time to reinforce technique.
• Do not go for rep maxes on the last sets of the exercises.
• Scale back your athletes’ training maxes to 90%. Use submaximal loads to build strength!
• Train twice per week.
• If you have a doubt about doing a certain assistance exercise, don’t do it. Live by the words from the movie Ronin: Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt.
• If you do not train, you are wrong.
• You are not in the NFL or in college, don’t do what they do (maintain or not lift at all). You are coaching high school athletes and they need to continue to train.
• Ask your players how they’re feeling. As a coach, you’ll have a handful – or hopefully more – of players you can trust to act as barometers for the entire team. If a kid you trust tells you the team is beaten up, they’re probably beaten up and you should tend
164
toward the lower end of the volume/intensity spectrum. By the same token, be skeptical when they tell you they’re feeling great. Save their max effort work for the field.
• Kids will feel stronger and more confident every game if they know they’ve trained harder than their competition – or if they’ve even trained at all.
• It doesn’t take a lot of time – maybe 30-45 minutes, two times per week.
• We recommend training on Monday and Wednesday.
Day 1 Squat: 5/3/1 set/rep protocol Bench: 5/3/1 set/rep protocol Dips: 3 sets Chins: 3 sets Day 2 Trap Bar Deadlift: 5/3/1 set/rep protocol Military Press: 5/3/1 set/rep protocol Glute-Ham Raises: 3 sets Sit-ups: 3 sets
165
Conditioning General Guidelines
• You can choose any of the drills listed in the conditioning chapter of this manual, or design specific drills of your own, but for the football-interval days (Mondays and most Fridays), the work-rest ratio should be 3-6 seconds of all-out effort followed by rest periods ranging from 20-90 seconds.
• Your goal in these interval sessions is to begin your
athletes with 90 second rests, then work them down – by lessening the rest periods slightly each week – to 20-30 second rest periods by June. Reducing the rest period by 5-10 seconds each week – while keeping the total time of work (20-30 minutes) the same – will accomplish this task. After several weeks, you’ll find your athletes performing more reps, at a higher rate of speed, within the given time parameters.
• Tempo runs are to be performed on Tuesdays and Thursdays according to the charts in the tempo section. The chart given is a “top end” guideline. When your players first begin running tempos, monitor the total volume of their runs. You can keep volume down at first by omitting the longer sets from the tempo workout.
• Friday will occasionally be a “dealer’s choice”
conditioning day where you can essentially throw in whatever you want. You don’t have to do this all the time – i.e., not every week – but you can and should do this often for the psychological reasons outlined in the conditioning chapter.
166
Schedule Monday: Football interval conditioning Tuesday: Tempo runs Wednesday: Football interval conditioning Thursday: Tempo runs Friday: Dealer’s choice or Football interval conditioning
167
About the Authors Jim Wendler is Senior Editor and Sales Manager of Elite Fitness Systems. He is the author of several books and training manuals, including the 531: The Simplest and Most Effective Training System for Raw Strength. He has amassed thousands of hours coaching and consulting athletes and coaches all over the world. Jim played football and graduated from the University of Arizona where he earned three letters. His best lifts include a 1000 pound squat, a 675 pound bench press, 700 pound deadlift and a 2375 total in the 275 pound class. He continues his passion for strength today and has pushed his strength farther and his conditioning harder than he’d ever thought possible.
168
Bob Fitzgerald is an associate editor at Muscle and Fitness magazine, the “Angry Coach” on the Elite Fitness Systems Q&A board, and has been a respected high school football coach for nearly a decade – helping produce, over the course of his coaching career, nearly four dozen collegiate football players and two, from the same high school, who went on to play in the NFL. Bob resides in New York City with his family, where he trains several athletes privately and consults with high school football programs across the country.
top related