Summer is the most critical time of the year to develop speed, strength, and explosiveness.
Designing a summer strength and conditioning program for your players is the focus of every high school coach in America this time of year. The summer program is the most critical time of year for developing speed, strength, and explosiveness. Conditioning your players to prepare them for the rigors of the upcoming season is also of the utmost importance in developing the summer program. Coaches want to make sure they are making the most out of their training and giving their players the best chance to succeed this fall. Linear and lateral change of direction and momentum displacement is a large part of our overall summer program, but we will focus on three main areas that are critical to a successful summer strength and conditioning program for your football team – proper warm-up, lifting, and conditioning.
WARM UP
At Battle Ground Academy, we use a variety of warm-up drills in order to facilitate proprioception and kinesthetic awareness in our players. The number one goal of any warm-up is to raise the core temperature in order to prepare the body for the movements that are going to be performed during the workout session. We also like to incorporate movements that are going to challenge our players and increase their flexibility and athleticism in the process. We often use complex and combination movements such as lunge+twist or a lunge to a knee tuck in order to try to achieve this. Our warm-up is very structured, and it sets the tone for our training session. This is an example of our daily movement and mobility warm-up:
1. Jog 40 yards and back with good technique.
Warm-up - 10 reps each
Neck rotations
Arm rotations
Trunk twist
Windmills
Eagles
Scorpions
Push-ups
2. Mobility Drills- Perform 4 drills of 20 yards each
Forward lunge
Backward lunge
Over hurdles
Over hurdles backward
Under hurdles
Lunge twist
Arch lunges
Lunge tuck
Lunge to knee tuck
Walking knee tucks
Frankensteins (no arms)
Walking figure 4 pull
Walking figure 4 sit
Cowboys
Walking groin arch
Walking side raises
Walking high knee
Single leg toe touch
Walking shuffle
3. Movement Drills - perform 3 drills
for 2 reps of 20 yards each
Shuffle
High knee rhythm run
Short cycle
Fast short cycle
Backpedal
Power skip
Lateral run
4. Back Stability - Curl Ups, Plank,
Side Plank (L and R), and Bird Dogs
5 x10 seconds each.
LIFTING
The strength coach must first develop a sound lifting program in order to have a successful summer program. Our program at Battle Ground Academy is an Olympic-based lifting program. That is the foundation of my philosophy. The first step is to determine who you are and what you believe in as a strength coach. Do you believe in the Olympic lifts, or do you adhere to more of a power lifting philosophy? There are arguments for each of these philosophies, and it is up to each coach to determine what works best for your situation. I truly believe it is not as much about what you do as how you do it.
The next thing that needs to be determined is how many days you are going to lift. The three-day total body, four-day explosive/strength split, or the four-day upper/lower split all work and each has their own positives. It is the job of the coach to determine which style works best for him, and how he wants to incorporate it into your program.
After determining these factors, the coach can then put together the exercise order as well as the set and rep scheme for the program. The ability level and developmental level of your athletes must be taken into account when developing your program. I would not recommend using a lot of advanced conjugate lifting techniques with young athletes. High school athletes are not ready for chains, bands, etc. They need to be built from the ground up in order to have them ready for the more advanced training they will participate in later in their career.
We believe that we have to develop our young guys slowly, and if a lot of them are playing early, then we have concerns for that season. We do not rush their training. Our incoming freshmen are at a totally different development and skill level than returning players who have been in our program for multiple years. We lift with these freshmen at a separate time, and work on giving them the proper foundation to be successful in our program going forward. As long as the program is progressive and applies the principles of progressive overload with developmental high school athletes, it will be successful. I encourage coaches to keep it simple and really focus on the meat and potatoes of training the entire body during summer lifting sessions.
CONDITIONING
Conditioning for us is simple. We are going to train to mimic a football game. We are going to have our players move in complex movements that take 8-12 seconds to complete and then give them the appropriate recovery to train their anaerobic system. They will complete movement patterns that will challenge them and make them uncomfortable.
An example of conditioning would be alternating lateral runs with straight ahead sprints every 5 yards for 20 yards and then finishing with a 15-yard straight ahead sprint at the end. We change the demands and exercises for this type of drill to keep our players from settling into a comfort zone in their conditioning. We will have them backpedal, sprint, lateral run, shuffle, run curves, etc. in order to constantly change pace and challenge them. We will do this type of activity over and over with a proper work to rest ratio in order to help our players get ready for the upcoming season. We also work to increase work capacity in the weight room. We use supersets and triple sets to keep our pace high and help us to develop general conditioning for our players.
CONCLUSION
he philosophy, frequency, volume, and intensity all need to match the athletes and needs of the program. The summer is also a time to implement outside the box training methods in order to keep the interest of the players. We try to keep things fresh and new for the kids. This is a time of the year where we would incorporate some outdoor strong man training, team competitions, and use different daily and weekly awards to help keep the athletes excited about what we are doing.
A summer strength program will always be successful if the players are excited and are willing to put in hard work during the summer training sessions. I do not believe in cookie cutter programs, because in my experience every high school situation is unique and challenging in its own way. Extensive professional development and study as well as practical experience should be the coach’s guide to consistently developing a successful summer strength and conditioning program.
About the Author: Fred Eaves is the strength and conditioning coach at Battle Ground Academy in Franklin, Tennessee. He has 16 years of experience that includes coaching at LSU, Tennessee, and Tennessee-Chattanooga. Eaves has been the strength and conditioning coach for three high school state champions.