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The Strength Report: Developing the Explosive Athlete - Wide Receivers (Part I)

by: Yancy McKnight
Strength & Conditioning Coach, Rice University
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Our football players are put through a year round periodized speed, strength and conditioning plan. Depending on what time of year it is, our focus for our football players will also change. The annual plan is broken down into six different phases: Winter Development, Spring Development, Summer Pre-Season, Pre-Season Camp, Fall In-Season and Bowl Preparation or Transition. Our football players are also grouped and categorized by strength and skill level along with the position they play on the field.

The winter development program begins in January and runs through February. This cycle will last roughly six to eight weeks in length. During this cycle we are primarily training for a one-repetition max on Power Clean, Back Squat and Bench Press. We will also test all of our football players on the 40-yard dash, pro-agility, three-cone drill, vertical jump and body composition. Our strength training cycle emphasis will be on maximal strength and technique improvement. The running program emphasis will be on sprinting technique, programmable pattern agility drills and moderate anaerobic conditioning. The wide receivers will lift five days a week and run two to three times weekly. The strength workout on Monday, Wednesday and Friday is a total body workout. Tuesday and Thursday are used for Olympic technique and for all auxiliary work. The speed, agility, plyometric and conditioning program will be on Tuesday and Thursday. We keep Friday as an option for conditioning if, as a staff, we feel like there is a need for conditioning drills.

The spring development program begins in March and will go to the end of May. This phase is broken into two phases: Phase I: spring football practice 4-5 weeks long and Phase II: 7-8 weeks in length. During Phase I our players will be going through three to four football practices weekly, so during this phase our wide receivers will perform two total body workouts weekly. The emphasis for this cycle is to try to improve developmental strength. The volume is lowered but the intensity will remain higher. The other concern during this phase is recovery where the wide receivers volume of running during practice will increase significantly. Therefore the workload and volume on the lower body in the strength program will decrease.

We will still train heavy on the core exercise but the assisted exercises will be decreased drastically compared to the winter development phase. Phase II is a crucial time of the year for our players. This will be the cycle that will lead them up to the summer pre-season. The wide receivers will go to a traditional four-day split strength routine. Monday and Thursday will be utilized for Olympic speed movements and Tuesday and Friday as a multi-joint strength movement. The emphasis for this phase will be on strength endurance in the strength program. The speed program emphasis will be on general conditioning. We will increase the yardage volume for the conditioning workouts and decrease the rest interval times. The WRs will run three days: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. After the completion of spring football is a great time for our wide receivers to put on some lean muscle mass and size if needed. If an athlete were injured during spring football practice this would be a time we would rehabilitate the injury and recondition the player.

The Summer Pre-Season phase will last eight weeks running through June and July. At this time we will gear our total program toward football specific agility, conditioning and strength training. During this phase the wide receivers main focus will be on starting speed, deceleration, multi-directional reactive and programmable drills and metabolic conditioning. The strength program is not de-emphasized but the top priority is that we have wide receivers that can move, change direction and are able to sustain endurance for four quarters. Monday is the day that we will work max velocity acceleration drills, horizontal multi-jump plyometrics.

We will also perform moderate anaerobic conditioning drills at the end of the speed workout. Tuesdays and Fridays are dedicated to reactive and programmable movements cone agility drills, deceleration drills, and multi-direction pattern movements and metabolic conditioning. Our metabolic conditioning is the length of an average play time in a football game and we vary the rest time from 20 to 40 seconds. We are trying to mimic the style of offense we run and what our defense will also see at some point in the year. Thursday is very similar to Monday, except we will not work max velocity speed but we will work on sub-maximal speed. This is when we will introduce resistance to our speed work, harness pulls, incline sprints or stadium sprints. Since the goal of spring development phase II is to put on some mass and size, our wide receivers during the summer pre-season will need to focus on improving metabolic and explosive strength. With explosive strength we are looking to increase bar velocity and speed of the movement. Since we group and categorize our players, our upper level wide receivers – The Blue Group – will lift total body three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (See attached chart). The White Group, which is the intermediate group, will stay on a four day traditional split routine: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

(Part II of the Strength Report with Rice University will be in AFM’s June issue).

Yancy McKnight is entering his second year as director of Rice’s strength and conditioning program. He came to Rice after two years as head strength and conditioning coach at Louisiana Tech and was previously associate head strength coach at Oklahoma State. A 2001 graduate of Missouri Southern, McKnight earned NCAA Division II honors as an offensive lineman.





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