Strength Report: Develop Complete Athletes – Liberty Universitys Unique Strength Program

Building true strength and power on the football field has less to do with fine tuning minor details and more to do with building more horsepower in the “engine” of an athlete. From there, details can be modified to turn the advanced athlete into an elite athlete. The process of creating more horsepower in the athlete is more methodical than most think and we use methods that are not practiced on a large scale.

Last year, we had over 82 football players clean at least 300 pounds – more than almost every other program. Our emphasis on the clean is not to boost numbers but rather to gauge the power that our athletes can exhibit on the football field. The heavy clean maxes are used less for bragging rights and more as an indicator of the total effort developed in the weight room.

We train the whole body every time we are in the weight room. Every set is called out and we essentially run football practice in the weight room. A football coach has never emphasized just upper-body or lower-body in practice because he knows that a player uses his entire body to play the game. We have the same philosophy in the weight room. The entire body needs to be trained to be used efficiently. In fact, “isolation” work or single joint exercises such as a biceps curl or triceps extension “confuses” motor patterning and neuromuscular efficiency that is needed for whole body movement.

Our football players are coached to train the neuromuscular system to work and fire more efficiently through the use of weights. An elite athlete can contract up to 85% of his motor units (the individual muscle fibers along with the neurons that signal them to contract). Athletes do not come to us with this ability as it is only achieved at the elite level. Therefore, our training is geared to increase the number of motor units that the athlete can use through improving neuromuscular coordination, motor unit recruitment, and synchronization of muscular impulses. When we accomplish this through the use of weights, the athlete will become stronger and be able to call upon this strength in a game to be physically dominant.

This neuromuscular efficiency is built through proper repetition and percent of 1RM (1 repetition maximum) ranges. Many people erroneously believe that doing sets of 10-12 repetitions is working speed because the weight that is being moved is light.

I’ve received Russian training methods that were tried and found to be superior than those used here in the West. According to the Russian training methods, 1-3 repetitions in a main lift is great for speed and strength but not helpful for muscular hypertrophy (building muscular size). 4-6 repetitions, while not as great as the previous repetition range, is good for speed and strength. It is also good for muscular hypertrophy. The 7-12 repetition range is bad for speed and strength but instead great for muscular hypertrophy. These repetition ranges demonstrate why doing a set of 20 repetitions clean is detrimental to the development of the athlete. The force and speed that the athlete can put into the movement of the bar dissipates over the long set and it loses the desired training effect.

We use another method instead called the compensatory acceleration method that makes use of the optimal repetition ranges.  There are three proven methods to develop strength. They include the max effort method, the repetition effort method, and the compensatory acceleration method. Although we use all three at various times, the compensatory method is used for the clean to develop explosive ability on the football field. Simplified, the compensatory acceleration method involves taking a submaximal weight and moving it as fast as possible. If the weight is chosen correctly, an athlete can actually put more force against the bar than he would when actually maxing out. Acceleration needs a high force production and the faster the bar is moved, the more force is needed. If an athlete improves his or her ability to produce force, even heavier weights can be lifted at slower speeds. Therefore, the athlete’s strength potential increases. This is why we do not need to train the clean heavy.

The weight range that is used to achieve this effect is what is called the speed-strength to strength-speed percent range which includes 66%-85% of a 1RM (1 repetition maximum).  Using 1-3 reps in this percent range is enough to develop this explosive strength that is needed on the football field.

Just as our training methods are different from the status quo, our ways of evaluating the progress of our football players are also unique. While we lead the nation in heavy cleans,  we are more concerned with other measures of evaluation because of how they relate to football.  If we see broad jump numbers decrease, this raises more of a flag than if our vertical jump numbers or main lift numbers decrease. This is because the broad jump represents the rate of force development of the players in terms of horizontal displacement. This means that the athlete is efficient at generating great levels of force to jump forward rather than just up. This efficiency relates to sprinting speed and power on the football field.

The practice of learning to represent greater rate of force development is achieved in part through methods such as our speed school as well as our clean technique. Our speed school is offered a couple of times a week. It is an extra workout where acceleration and plyometric drills are practiced to improve explosive strength and speed. Our approach to teaching the clean also centers on rate of force development. We teach that if a player’s feet leave the ground during a clean, he loses all ability to produce more ground reaction force. This means that he can no longer push more force into the ground. This reduces the amount of power he can use to extend his hips to clean the weight up to his shoulders. We instead teach to shrug the shoulders back and up first, making sure to bend at the hips so that shoulders are out in front of the bar. We then teach to throw the hips through while keeping the feet on the ground. As a result, our players have become much more explosive.

Our philosophy not only differs from the mainstream norm in lifting technique and principles but also in the general order of programs. We start every workout the same way with a warm-up that includes a dumbbell complex. The complex not only serves to warm the player’s muscles and provide a mobility drill but also to mentally prepare them for the workout ahead.

Plyometrics for speed development is then focused on. This can be simplified by doing such movements as jumping split squats. After that, in most off-season workouts, power development is focused on through the use of Olympic lifts. Strength development is then focused on through the use of the squat and bench. After this, compound-assisted lifts are used to develop further muscle size and address weaknesses and imbalances. We then end the workout with more speed emphasis with plyometrics and can use hurdle jumps or the jumping split squats again. The way in which this is arranged and the individual components that are used is what develops the complete athlete. Power and speed should always be trained first. Following this formula, the nervous system is trained in the optimal possible way and is not fatigued before it can be trained to work more efficiently.

When developing the athlete, time is always a factor. Basic principles need to be understood and followed in order to ensure success. Coaching a football team to be bigger, stronger, and faster involves narrowing down the essential elements that will improve the performance of the greatest number of players. We take a player with a small engine and increase the size and horsepower of it. This is done through careful examination of the science of strength and performance. Only after careful study of this science can your program be suited, as ours is, to develop the complete athlete.

About the Author:  A 1983 graduate of Liberty, Bill Gillespie returned to his alma mater in 2005 as the Director of Strength and Conditioning. He previously was the assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Seattle Seahawks. Gillespie began his coaching career at Liberty and worked at the University of Washington for 11 years.