Inseason Training for Football

March 30, 2010 in PROGRAMS 2 Comments

I’m no expert, but I coached HS football a long time and I just have a few ideas:

1. The “heavy” day should be the day after a game…actually, right after a game works well, too, especially for underclassmen who play on the day before the Varsity, having them train on the Friday, for example, helps a lot.

2. The “other” day should be stuff that doesn’t take a lot of nerve. Don’t Snatch and Clean and Jerk, so to speak. Box Squats, Straight Leg Deadlifts, some dumbbell work and a few machines would work well, but don’t have the athlete tax his nervous system. If you have kettlebells, of course, you can do Goblet Squats, the Get Ups, and the Swing as restoratives, too.

3. Don’t be surprised if he gets really stronger, maintains, or drops way down. Any reaction to the training program is normal. We used to find a lot of kids improved their cleans a lot in the football season. My idea then was that they were finally cleaning once a week with supervision. Now, I have another idea: sled work, driving the legs, sprints and the games were all training the system to clean better. Benching and squatting tend to drop, but that seems normal vis-a-vis the work load of football.

4. Don’t be afraid to cut the volume, but strive to keep the intensity up. 5 x 5 just isn’t going to work, but 2 x 5 would be fine. Pyramids would be 2-2-1, that kind of thing. If you read my 40 Day Workout stuff, you see where I developed the ideas.

5. Watch the acne. If he starts breaking out, getting colds, that kind of thing…he is really overtraining. HS kids can handle a ton of volume, then seem to crash.