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AFM Magazine


Strength Report – Seven Phases

by: Kurtis Von Bargen
Outside Linebackers Coach Trinity College
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Sam Houston State’s Strength and Conditioning Program

TRAINING PHILOSOPHY

The goal for our strength and conditioning program is to improve each player’s athleticism using a variety of different training methods. Our approach is to implement a simple and effective, yet sound program. A program that relies on hard work, focus, and determination as its main ingredients for success. This approach is not only successful, but is complementary to Head Coach Willie Fritz and his staff’s overall vision for the program.

Football is a game played on your feet from the ground up. This is why it is important to use free weight, ground based, multi-joint movements with a major emphasis on variations of the Olympic lifts (the power clean, power snatch and push jerk). We squat and front squat to below parallel, and do various forms of step ups, lunges, and single leg squats. Bench press is also considered to be a very important exercise in our program.

Our speed and conditioning program is divided based on objectives for that training phase. Days that emphasize speed and agility are done prior to the strength training session, while strength training is performed first on days when conditioning is a priority. Outside of the weight room, we train for linear as well as multi-directional speed. In our linear speed training, we will spend the majority of our time improving our football players ability to accelerate. The ability to accelerate is the type of speed we need to develop to be successful. We will do our resisted training and over-speed training on a slight incline/decline outside our stadium. Our agility training consists of drills designed to help our athletes make good transitions when changing directions, and includes various cone, agility bag, and line drills. Our conditioning falls under two categories, general and position specific, both of which we train year-round.

TRAINING PROGRAM

Before our players begin training with us as freshmen they must go through an orientation process. During fall camp, new freshmen and transfer players will lift every session separate from the returning athletes. Most of the newcomers will not have the correct techniques, especially in the squat variations and the Olympic lifts. Therefore, much of this time is spent teaching and re-teaching with PVC pipe and empty bars. Transfer players are removed from this group if they demonstrate good form and technique. Freshmen will progress through this training for the duration of fall camp.

We divide our football players into three different groups – skill, big skill, and line. These groups all have a program that is unique to their skill group, and in many cases to the individual. Players have different needs in regards to both the individual and their position. These needs must be addressed in both the strength training as well as the speed and conditioning program.

We have seven major phases of training in our program – post-season transition, winter off-season, spring in-season, May transition, summer training, fall camp, and in-season. Each phase has a different goal and purpose. We feel if any one of these phases are lacking, it is detrimental to the program as a whole. In our winter training program, we will train a four-day split program of Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday with no conditioning for the first three weeks. We will then transition to a Monday-Wednesday- Friday lifting program and Tuesday-Thursday movement program for the remainder of the winter. In our summer training program, we train the same four day split, but add in four days of running for the first half of the summer. In July, we will transition to the Monday-Wednesday-Friday lifting split, with running every day Monday through Friday. Our in-season and spring in-season are two or three days a week programs, depending on our travel schedule, open dates, etc. Our transitional programs are five days a week programs consisting of three lifting days and two running days.

THE WORKOUT

The following is an overview of what a typical training session during the winter or summer off-season might look like.

Every day, when our athletes begin a workout, we start with a dynamic warm-up consisting of 8-10 movements of 20 yards. This is coupled with an intense session that utilizes several forms of multi-directional hip mobility exercises. These mobility exercises are performed with hurdles set at various heights.

Next, we will do a bar warm-up with 40-60 kilos for two sets of 8-10 reps on various exercises such as the overhead squat, squat press, and/or overhead lunge. The total time spent on the warm-up is 12-15 minutes. We will perform one or two major exercises such as squat, power clean, front squat, power snatch, bench press, etc. This is followed by three or four assistive lifts that complement that day’s major lifts and balance out the athlete’s development. We also include various forms of torso work as part of the training session. This would consist of everything from plate work, med ball exercises, hanging leg raises, to various forms of stabilization work. We conclude each training session with dynamic and/or partner-assisted stretching.

Our running program complements our lifting program in the winter, whereas in the summer our lifting program is complementary to our running program. On our speed days we run prior to lifting. We begin our running sessions with a dynamic warm-up that is longer in duration than our pre-lifting warm-up. This is followed by drills working on running mechanics and some form of field plyometric, such as jumping, bounding, or skipping. Speed and/or agility training would follow. Selection, volume, and intensity are determined by the training goals of that phase.

Typically, our speed training consists of sprints between 10 and 60 yards, with full recovery between reps. Our agility training includes basic cone drills, agility bags, and hoop drills. We will start to work more on our Pro Agility and L-Drills the closer we get to testing. Conditioning generally includes shuttles of various distances, hill runs, and sand pit work. As fall camp approaches, we will transition to more position specific versions of pattern running. After our running session is completed, we will do 5-10 minutes of static and/or dynamic stretching to end the running session.

This is a snapshot of what we feel works for us in the training of our team. The evolution of our program has come through much trial and error. It is based off of many variables that are constantly changing. p

About the Author: Kyle Speer has served as Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for all sports at Sam Houston State University since August, 2003. He has previously coached at the University of Northern Iowa, Baylor University, Arizona State, and Abilene Christian University. Speer earned his Master’s Degree from Baylor and his undergraduate degree from Abilene Christian where he played football.

  

About the Author:  Jarrett Lambert enters his second season in 2012 as O-line Coach and Director of Strength and Conditioning at Lake Travis High School (TX). He previously coached the defensive line at Permian High School in Odessa. Lambert has also coached on both the junior high and middle school level. He played football at Angelo State and was captain of the 2002 team.






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