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AFM Magazine


STAYING SHARP Nine In-Season Training Tips

by: Steve Morris
Explosive Football Training
© More from this issue

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Failure to properly work out during the season will lead to weaker players, more injuries and more losses as the season wears on. Weightroom training during the season confuses many players and coaches. There are so many demands on time and the body that any mistakes made can cause a chain reaction of failures from the weightroom to the field.

The old theory of not training at all during the football season is completely out of date.

After about 14 days, you can begin to lose strength at the horrendous rate of 5 - 10% per week. For those who don’t like math, that means that everything your players worked so hard for in the off-season will be gone before Thanksgiving. No one wants weaker, injury-prone and less conditioned players going into the playoffs.

It is possible to not only maintain but improve strength throughout the season. Strength is what drives:

•  Speed
•  Football conditioning
•  Explosiveness
•  Agility

Whenever strength decreases, so do all of those qualities.

The solution is to continue to get stronger and maintain as much muscle mass as possible during the season. Follow these nine in-season training tips and you’ll have big, strong, fast players all the way through to championship game day.

1. Use Max Effort to Gain Strength.

Maximum strength is the foundation of all other elements of athleticism. The stronger you are, the faster, more explosive, more agile and better conditioned (potentially) you are. There is a limit to this, but, unless you have a weightroom full of players squatting 850 lbs., you don’t need to worry about that.

If you can only do one thing in the weightroom during the season, it should be to focus on maintaining and increasing strength. This usually leads to two questions:

“Can’t we just do medium reps to keep
our strength up?”

“Won’t low reps in-season lead to injury
and burn-out?”

The answer to both is a resounding no.

The cruel trick the strength training gods laid upon us is that no matter how much weight you can use on higher rep exercises, the opposite is never true. No matter how hard you try, moving your 8-rep max up will do absolutely zero for your top-end strength.

It’s like jogging to get a faster 40-yard dash time – it just doesn’t work.

The truth is that lower reps are not only better for strength all the time, but, they’re safer. Your guys are tired, sore, and beat-up. They will break form on high-rep sets. But you can get them to hold it together for a few low-rep sets. The secret is to get into the weightroom, do a heavy lift, say, bench for 3 - 4 triples, then move on to some more moderate-rep work for the back, shoulders, neck, traps, etc.

This way, you do the strength work when your athletes are freshest and they increase strength.

2. Use the 80/20 Rule.

Basically, all year long, follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your results are going to come from about 20% of your exercises. During the season, this must be strictly followed.

In the example above, even if you had your guys come in and just do the heavy exercise, and for whatever reason had to cut the session short, they still improved. In-season is not the time for excessive work or unnecessary exercises, so have them work on a small number of high-impact exercises.

The same player from the bench example above might do:

Bench - 5 x 3
Rows - 3 x 8
Shrugs - 2 x 12
Neck Harness - 2 x 12 (superset with neck)

That’s it. Get in, get out.

3. Cut the Volume.

You need your guys to do a certain amount of volume to maintain their muscle mass and weight. But, excessive volume will lead to soreness and burn out. Keep your strength work to low reps, follow it up with a few exercises with moderate reps and be done. You can still go high rep on abs work, but keep the rest of the exercises to between 15 and 24 reps, total.

You also have to pay attention to overall volume. Remember, when your players are sprinting around on the field, they’re working their legs. Keep that in mind when planning their leg workouts in-season.

4. Eliminate the Negative (most of the time).

The negative, or eccentric portion of the lift is what causes the most soreness. While eccentric strength is necessary for speed and jumping ability, we can manipulate the amount we do in-season to drastically cut soreness, especially in the lower body.
    There are two easy ways to accomplish this:

•  Use weighted sleds as your accessory leg work.
•  Use the Olympic lifts and deadlift variations for legs.

Working on a weighted sled offers the opportunity to hit the hamstrings, glutes, hips, calfs and quads without ever doing a negative. When you step, your back leg comes off the ground, thus eliminating the eccentric. This is why many guys complain that their legs are “blown up” during the sled pushing/pulling, but then say they have no soreness the next day.

Using Olympic lifts and deadlift variations provides the opportunity to increase strength with a low rep, “big” exercise while minimizing or completely eliminating the negative. Simply put, a clean, snatch pull, deadlift, snatch grip deadlift, etc. can be dropped after each rep is completed. Pull, set, drop the bar - pure concentric work.

A quick in-season leg workout can be as
simple as:

Snatch grip deadlifts - 6 x 2
Sled pull - upright - 2 x 20 yds.
Sled pull - backpedal - 2 x 20 yds.
Sled pull lateral - 1 x 20 yds. (each side)
Hyper extensions - 2 x 12 - 15
Weighted sit-ups - 3 x 8

The sled work can be completed in under 10 minutes and will flush a lot of blood and nutrients to the muscles, joints and tendons of the legs, helping aid recovery.

 5. Jump More.

Keep your players explosive by having them do simple plyometrics before practices and before workouts. A few jumps, in whatever form you choose, help build explosiveness and “turn on” the central nervous system, getting it ready for action.

You can have them do:

•  Single box jumps
•  Long jumps
•  Vertical jumps
•  Seated long jumps
•  Lateral box jumps

Five to seven total jumps are plenty. Do them right after warm ups but before lifting/practicing.

6. Work the Neck and Traps.

Make sure your players have strong, flexible necks and strong traps. These areas can literally save their lives, so don’t skimp here. This is one place where volume can be a bit higher in-season. A neck harness attached to a band or some weights will do the trick. Work the neck forward, backward, and side to side. You can start every weight room session this way. The neck tends to respond to training very quickly, so start now and keep your guys safe. Traps, shrugs and face pulls get the job done.

7. Train the Abs Hard.

You can never do too much abdominal work. If your abs are weak, so are you. Leg exercises depend on abs strength, as does lower back health, agility, speed, and the ability to tackle, run, jump, throw and just about everything else.

Your players will hate me for this one, but you can add sit-ups to the end of every conditioning session and practice. In the weight room, weighted sit ups, standing or kneeling band crunches, full contact twists, and medicine ball sit ups should be mainstays. Do your abs work at the end of the sessions, not before. A pre-fatigued mid-section is never a good idea when lifting heavy.

8. Use the Best Recovery Techniques.

This almost never gets talked about, because recovery can be a boring topic. But the faster your guys recover, the more work they can do, the more practice, the more lifting, and the better they become.

High school players tend to ignore this advice, but, it effects everyone from Pop Warner to the NFL. You need to be working as hard on your recovery as you do on your training.

Look at a typical week for a football player in-season:

Monday - practice, lifting, conditioning

Tuesday - heavy practice, conditioning

Wednesday - heavy practice

Thursday - uppers, lifting

Friday - walk through

Saturday - Game

Sunday - Off or film sessions

That’s a metric ton of work. While everyone’s schedule will be slightly different, the amount of work is usually the same. Now, what has been done to recover from all this? Usually nothing.

The recovery schedule should look like this:

Saturday, post game - ice bath - 20-minutes

Sunday - stretching, foam rolling

Monday - ice bath - 20-minutes, including epsom salt in the water

Tuesday - stretch

Wednesday - hot epsom salt bath - 45-minutes, stretching, foam rolling

Thursday - stretching

Friday - hot epsom salt bath - 45-minutes, stretching, foam rolling

And, every day should be filled with a great nutritional plan featuring plenty of protein, vegetables, water and some fruit.

That is how you get your guys to recover quickly and be able to handle the heavy workload. For those that can afford it, a deep-tissue massage would be included on Wednesday evening, but that’s usually not in the budget.

9. When in Doubt, Go Heavy and Get Out.

Again, your guys are under a lot of stress with practices, games, lifting, conditioning, school, family and social lives. We need to make sure that they are getting stronger and faster and remaining injury free, but we can’t over-tax them any further.

Have them recover hard and get in the weight room and get work done quickly, then get out. If you’re not sure what to do, have them do a heavy lift, an accessory lift, and abs work. That’s not perfect, but, it’ll get the job done in a pinch. s

About the Author: Steven Morris is a strength coach in the Philadelphia and South Jersey areas and owner of Explosive Football Training. He has been playing football, lifting and coaching for 15 years. You can learn more about his methods and download a free training report at https://FootballStrengthWorkouts.com






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