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AFM Magazine


Strength Report – Bridging the Gap Between the Weight Room and the Field for Linemen

by: Steve Morris
Explosive Football Training
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If you want to get faster or build the kind of strength that has you dominating your opponents on the field, you need to lift heavy and you need to lift fast. Nothing can beat the speed produced (by building strength) with big, compound lifts like deadlifts, squats, and front squats. These are the base lifts for a lineman - they build strength and increase real football speed like nothing else.

But, even the mighty barbell and dumbbell have their limitations. Even the best designed football strength and speed program will have some “holes”. Banging away at the big lifts with their variations and accessory exercises, is an excellent base. It increases raw strength and muscular size.

But, even with that base, strength leaks can develop.

Strength leaks are just what they sound like; areas where you lose your strength because the muscles aren’t as strong as those around them. In football, we see this all the time. The lineman who squats a ton but can’t block anyone because when he attempts to transfer that power from his legs through his hips and core into the upper body, it’s lost in transition.

This can be for a number of reasons – weakness in the hips, weakness in the lower back at certain angles, weak core-strength in real-world situations, weak shoulders at odd angles, etc. Basically, anything that’s neglected by a barbell or dumbbells will show up, especially against a good opponent.

There are two ways to overcome these strength leaks and help your linemen go from just weight room strong to football strong.

1. Sandbag Lifting

Lifting heavy sandbags is an excellent way to transfer what you’ve gained in your strength program to the field. Sandbags work your body from odd angles, and work the stabilizers and ligaments and tendons (often ignored by training programs). Because of this, they have a real ability to close the gap that’s often created.

There are several ways to use sandbags with your linemen:

•  High-rep conditioning work (for times when weather doesn’t permit you to go out and sprint)
•  Real-world strength work
•  In place of regular barbell exercises

Many assistance exercises can be replaced with sandbag movements. This is a great change of pace, plus, it will give you that on-the-field kind of strength.

For example, replace DB presses with sandbag overhead presses. Replace swings with sandbag swings. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Every time you substitute a heavy, loosely packed sandbag for a barbell exercise you change the way it works the body.

Take a look at the standard push press vs. the sandbag push press. Both work the shoulders, triceps, upper and lower back and abs. But, the sandbag variation also calls many stabilizer muscles into play in the shoulders (keeping the bag stable requires you to squeeze it together as you press), lower back, hips and abs. This is key because it trains the body to be strong in fluid ways. That is, not simply standing in one spot lifting a perfectly balanced barbell up and down.

Your linemen, both offensive and defensive, will benefit from “big” sandbag exercises – ones that will build strength from many different angles and positions.

For example, the sandbag clean and push. This is a variation of the clean and press that is perfect for football training because it is highly specific, especially for linemen. It will require great leg strength, a transfer of power from the legs through the hips and to the upper body and muscular coordination.

All you need is a sandbag and a little bit of room. Load the bag to a moderately heavy weight. Note that you’ll have to experiment with weight. If you simply attempt to load the bag to the same weight that you use on a barbell clean and press, you’ll end up embarassed and injured. Sandbags are much harder to lift. Once the bag is loaded, clean it to the shoulders in any way you see fit. Use the various handles, mixed grips or just grab the bag itself.

Then, clean it to chest height. When I say clean it, I don’t mean ending up in one of those split-the-legs-eight-feet-apart kind of clean positions. No, I mean finish the clean in a good football position – just as you would be pre-block, tackle, jump, and sprint.

From that position, pop the hips hard and push the bag as far as you can. Think of it like a standing power clean meeting an incline press. It’s the exact motion used when blocking, making it an excellent movement for linemen, linebackers, and backs. It is maybe one of the most football specific training exercises in the world (See photos).
Sandbags can also be used for:

•  Squats (on the shoulder, in a bear hug, zercher style, or held overhead)
•  Deadlifts (side-to-side or as a hockey deadlift)
•  Presses

    If you’re having your big men use them for conditioning, go with basics like:

•  Bear hug and squats for high reps or for time
•  Shoulder and squat for high reps or time
•  Shoulder and lunge for high reps, time, or distance
•  Clean and push/press for high reps

Any way you choose to use sandbags with your linemen, they are building tremendous real-world, on the field core, and odd-angle strength along with power in the stabilizer muscles. This can be the difference between winning and losing a close battle up front.

You have two choices when it comes to buying sandbags. You can use the low tech option of buying a duffle bag and filling it with sand. This is cheap, but they don’t last long and most football players are not known for being easy on equipment. This can lead to rips and the occasional sand shower.

Or, you can buy pre-made bags like those made by Ultimate Sandbag. These are more durable. They use “filler bags” so you can change weight easily, and they have various handles attached. They’re more expensive, but they’re high quality and they’ll withstand heavy use by your players.

2. Athletic Enhancement Days

Many linemen work hard in the weight room, getting big and immensely powerful. They might stretch once in a while. And, if they’re smart, they’ll also be lifting odd objects like sandbags. This can produce big, strong but stiff linemen. The days of just being big and slow are gone - defensive linemen are now strong, quick, powerful and can move in all directions. O-linemen may still be bigger, but they’ve had to work to keep up with the more athletic D-linemen and blitzing linebackers.

The best way to help bridge the gap is to perform athletic enhancement exercises and devote entire days to simply becoming a better athlete.

This has nothing to do with standing on stability balls or wobble boards or slinging a body blade around. This is about adding exercises to your football strength workouts that literally enhance athletic ability. I have seen this literally change linemen from on-the-bubble starters to full blown all-stars.

These movements go in a few different levels:

Level 1 – Basic Movements and Jumping

•   High knees
•  Butt kicks
•  Lunges
•  Lateral lunges
•  Lateral jump and sprint
•  Jump rope
•  Heavy jump rope

These fit nicely into your workout as a warm up. They can be done quickly and not only prepare the body for the heavier lifting that’s to come, but, also help move your body through space in an athletic way. If you can’t jump rope, how are you going to have feet quick enough to block, run, and tackle.

I know, you rarely hear about jumping rope anymore. That’s because they cost about $10 and there’s not much profit in jump rope programs. You get the rope and jump - over and over, one leg, two legs, side to side.

Level 2 – Medicine Balls

Medicine Balls are largely considered too old school for most guys these days. Yet, they can do so much to make you a better athlete. They fell out of favor for a long time, then came back after being pushed hard by the “functional training” crowd, and, because of this, a lot of guys didn’t take them very seriously.

Medicine balls help with becoming more athletic. They help you become more “fluid”. They get you moving through multiple planes of motion, and they absolutely train the abs and obliques in a way that is so important to becoming a better player. They help the abs get strong enough to transfer power from your legs through your upper body, and, they train them to be able to do this from just about every angle possible.

Here’s the type of medicine ball exercises you can use to become a better player:

•  Side to side twists with a partner
•  Over-unders with a partner
•  Twist and throw
•  Overhead squats
•  Overhead throws
•  Sit-up and throw
•  Shuffle and chest pass
•  Clean and push
•  Chops

How to Incorporate These Exercises Into Your Program

With both sandbags and medicine balls, you have some options when adding them to your program. You can use them on weight room days, i.e., substituting a heavy sandbag exercise for a barbell exercise and using a medicine ball exercises as your abdominal work for the day. It’s best to use sandbags as part of your weight room workout unless you’re using them for conditioning.

Or, you can devote a full training session to these movements. A full, athletic enhancement training session should last 15–30 minutes. It might look like this:

Warm up

•  High knees, butt kicks, lunges, side lunges, reverse lunges for two sets of 10 yards each.

•  Jump Rope - 4 x 25 - 50 reps (vary the type of jump – two feet, one foot at a time, side to side, etc.)

Medicine Ball Work:

Side-to-side twists - 4 x 10, each side

Over-unders - 2 x 10

Overhead throw - 5 throws, measure distance

Shuffle and chest pass - 2 x 10 yards each side

Overhead squat + sprint - 3 x 10, after last rep, go into full sprint for 10 yards

Sit-up and throw - 2 x 15

Medicine ball chop - 2 x 10, each side

Stretch and go home.  

As you can see, it’s a quick workout but it’ll work wonders for the athletic ability of both offensive and defensive linemen.

About the Author:  Steve Morris is a strength coach in the Philadelphia area. To learn about his one-on-one online strength and speed conditioning program, visit his web site – https://FootballStrengthWorkouts.com. He is the owner of Explosive Football Training.






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