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Strength Report – New Mexico Military Institute’s Strength Programby: Joe ForchtnerHead coach and Director of Human Performance, NMMI © More from this issue Before we designed our program, we sat down and discussed what advantages and limitations New Mexico Military presented us with as far as training our athletes. Our goal, obviously, was to maximize our advantages and minimize the effects of our limitations. The advantages were: 1) structure – we knew that our kids were going to be at workouts and we knew they were not going to stay out all night partying, 2) support of the coaching staffs – our coaching staffs have faith in us and are willing to let us try new/unconventional things. The disadvantages were: 1) strict schedule/weight room availability – all athletic teams train during the same block of time, 2) rest/recovery – our students wake up every day at 6 AM. Weight room availability limited the amount of time that we could physically get into the weight room. At that time, we could only use the facility 2-3 hours per week . Our kids’ recovery is limited because they don’t get as much sleep as most college athletes. So, we decided that less time in the weight room could actually work to our benefit if the program was designed properly. In order to do this, we had to be flexible in our approach. It would be difficult to design a program to fit our two-day calendar week, so we created a three-day per week program. Our players are junior college athletes. We get one off-season with them, which is basically the spring semester. Over the past five years, using the weight room twice per week, we’ve averaged the following improvements over the course of that one semester: 13.5% increase in 3-lift total (clean, squat, bench); .22 second improvement in pro agility time; .14 improvement in 40 time; .09 improvement in 10-yard dash time, and a 1.75 inch increase in vertical jump. Our goals for developing our football players in the weight room were: 1) maximal power output – explosive capability, 2) maximal force production – strength, and 3) hypertrophy – size. The three lifts that would be the foundation for our program were the clean, squat and bench. For clean, we only use pulls but will do them from the various positions in the Olympic teaching progression (power position, mid thigh, top of the knee, bottom of the knee, floor). We don’t high pull. Max Effort Exercise Our athletes will always have five work sets of their max effort exercise – the reps will stay the same within those five sets but the percentages will increase by 2.5% every set. During the sub-max cycle, we always progress to two levels (5%) below max effort, as you can see in each column labeled “PHASE 1”. In the max cycles, the sets auto-regulate. The athlete’s ability to accept that he is not going to be able to make it through the entire progression every single week is key. Athletes are going to have days in the weight room where they aren’t at their strongest for a variety of reasons. If a player fails at 90% x 4 on his fourth set, he does not progress to 92.5% for the next set. He drops back down to the last percentage at which he successfully completed the prescribed reps. After three weeks, we aim for around a 3% increase, after six weeks around a 5-6% increase, nine weeks around 8%, twelve weeks around 10% and fifteen weeks around 13-15%. |
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