Strength Report – The Friday from Hades

When we came to PV a few months ago we found a downtrodden, used to losing group of young men. There was no pride in the program, nothing but “Hey, we tried”. The words compete, fight, and adversity were not in the vocabulary of these young men. We had to shock the system and change a lot of things. The first thing we changed was the strength and conditioning program.

We are together Monday through Friday. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are scheduled lifting sessions in which we use a percentage scale to increase strength and explosiveness. Also on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday we have a scheduled running session. Mondays are Agility 1 (line drills, plyometrics, and dot drills, etc.), Tuesday is a speed focus day (stance/starts, speed endurance, buildups, etc.), and Thursday is what we call ‘Old School Conditioning’ (ladders, gassers, stadium steps, timed sprints). Wednesday is our active recovery day in which we do some football specific activities.  That leaves us with Fridays, also known around our team as HADES.

When we as a staff sat down to map out our strength and conditioning phases, we made a decision. We wanted to do something different to end the week in our strength and conditioning program. I wanted to make it challenging yet rewarding with a sense of accomplishment at the end. This workout happens only if we have a great week in our strength and conditioning sessions, as well as attendance, and school-related behaviors.  I saw it as a culmination of all their hard work in the weight room as well as the speed/conditioning/agility sessions. It mirrors the season almost exactly. Work all week preparing for a battle on Friday. Once Friday arrives, it is on! Hades simulates game level intensity in short bursts. Once it is over you know whether you were victorious or not. There is no question.

Hades is a full body one-set-per-exercise workout in which the players have 8-10 exercises per-session. Each set is one minute long. The recovery or break period between lifts is only about 20-30 seconds. We do not want them to become comfortable in the weight room on this day. Our Monday-Thursday workouts are timed as well but we usually give them between one and two minutes between sets. Here, it’s up-tempo go time! A typical Hades lifting session would encompass bench, squat, power shrugs, power pulls, power cleans, hammer jammer, leg extensions, lat pull downs, burpees, pushups, and abdominals. The possibilities are endless. Our theory with this workout is never do the same things two weeks in a row. Each lifter has a partner, one lifts, one pushes. By push I mean constructive motivation. When the lifter starts to tire they step in and encourage them to dig deeper. The favor is returned in one minute’s time. Every coach in the program is involved as well. This is our day, too. We have been there every day with those kids and it’s time to get paid. Each coach is pushing the kids to get one more rep. No one falls through the cracks during Hades.

Once the first whistle blows, it is an all out attack on the weight. Each lifter is being pushed by their partner. The only goal of the workout is to get as many reps as possible with perfect form. It’s constant work for one minute. There is no stopping. If you stop, the team lets you hear it. The first time we did this I wasn’t sure our kids were ready for it. They could barely finish, but they finished. Some felt as though they would throw up. Next week we did it with some grumbling but, again, they finished.  As the weeks went by they started to compete with each other. You heard “I got 25, how many did you get?”, “You want to change things – do 30 instead of 29”. 

Now it’s a sense of pride each week to survive Hades. We have had to make the workouts harder because the kids are acclimating to them so fast. A simple lifting workout has been turned into a total body, team-building, competition-breeding slugfest. At the conclusion of Hades, we always have some sort of intense breakdown, letting everyone in the school know the football team is working. After the lifting session is over, we conclude our Fridays with a fun activity. It is still some sort of team building competition but it usually takes the form of hay bale relay races, tire pulls, big tire flips, pushing the truck, speed football, etc. We are looking at just about everything to create the competitive atmosphere while still having fun.

The mere mention of it in our locker room has kids standing up to the challenge because they know it will not be easy but they and the team will be better for finishing it.  Here is a list of both Hades exercise options and team building activities:

About the Author:  JohnAllen Snyder has been a high school football coach for seven years in Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. He is currently the Assistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator as well as the Strength and Conditioning Coach at Pequea Valley High School in Kinzers, PA.