Strength Report – New Mexico Military Institute’s Strength Program

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.

We divided a single workout into three phases:

1.  Dynamic effort
2.  Max effort
3.  Repeated effort

Each phase would have a different focus area – clean/clean support, squat/squat support, and bench/bench support. The importance of having proper sequencing not only within a single workout, but within a three-day cycle, was crucial. There will be some fatigue carryover from one workout to the next, but proper sequencing minimized this. Because we will work each area (clean/squat/bench) on every lifting day, we need one full day of rest between each lifting session. Our sequencing within a three-day “cycle” looks like this:
Dynamic Exercises

For our dynamic exercises, we use movements that will allow our athletes to accelerate all the way through the full range of motion. In my opinion, movements like jump squats and bar throws are superior to speed squats and speed bench because they allow the athlete to accelerate through the end of the range of motion. Our dynamic exercise for the bench phases are bar throws and plyometric push ups. For squats, they are jump squats and split squat jumps. Research varies as far as an optimal percentage for these movements, but the majority of the research that I found shows that between 20-30% of 1RM is the best. We keep our reps between 4-6 because maximal power output has been shown to occur around the 5th rep.

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

We program our improvements into the progression and don’t test mid-semester. This took about a year and a half of tweaking to get the percentages right, but now it works well for our situation. Our program is broken down into three week blocks. Three weeks allows us to complete two cycles (three weeks is 6 days in the weight room with each cycle being 3 lifting sessions). The first cycle of the three-week block will be sub-max, the second cycle will be max effort. So, our first two three-week blocks looks like this:

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%.

Repeated Effort

For our repeated effort work, we work the exercises that support the squat, bench and clean. For bench, we work close grip bench (with Grip 4orce Trainers), DB bench/incline (time under tension, unilateral options), and push ups (Tabata, complexed). For bench support, we work horizontal and vertical pull, rhomboids, rear delts, rotator cuff and scapular stability. We generally perform some kind of unilateral leg exercise for our repeated effort squats – step ups (DB, BB or goblet) or lunges (BB, DB, Reverse, Side, Front). Our repeated effort cleans are usually some form of complex (Clean+Front Squat, Clean Deadlift+Clean+Front Squat, etc.) We will also incorporate RDLs and glute hams.

About the Author:  Joe Forchtner is the Head Football Coach and Director of Human Performance at the New Mexico Military Institute. He recently was named head coach after serving as defensive coordinator at NMMI. Forchtner has contributed additional articles to both American Football Monthly and Gridiron Strategies.