There are many ways to improve your strength and conditioning program. Here you will learn what to include in your program, how to incorporate Olympic weightlifting, and what your program calendar should look like.
The emphasis of getting stronger, bigger, faster, and becoming more flexible has overwhelmed American football. Today’s athletes look for cutting edge training techniques and new trends in the world of strength and conditioning. The desire to be #1 brings out the best competition among athletes. This can also have a negative impact because of shortcuts taken with techniques, mechanics, and flexibility. Athletes fail to realize the importance of fundamentals which ultimately allow proper development throughout your body. An athlete running a 4.9 forty cannot decrease it to a 4.7 overnight, as the same goes for strength, conditioning and flexibility. These things take time to improve.
To start off, a solid strength and conditioning philosophy is essential and should be presented to your players. But in order for your players to believe in your program, you must practice what you preach, so stick to your word and stand by your philosophy. Today, strength and conditioning programs are systematic, sequential, and progressive, taking a dynamic evolution to strength and conditioning. So, when training athletes, there are many areas to build the complete athlete. Within these areas of training are components and sub-components, all of which are very important to the development of an athlete and cannot be overlooked. Too much emphasis in one area can lead to major deficiencies in development. It’s important that each area is addressed and prescribed to achieve maximum athletic potential.
At Fairmont State, we focus on many areas including Olympic weight lifting, power lifting, muscular endurance, injury prevention, rehabilitation, functional training, balance training, core training, plyometrics, speed development, agility training, conditioning, joint mobility, flexibility and nutrition. This may look like a long list but one routine or exercise from a single area may only take a minute. That may lead to the question, ‘Why waste one minute to perform an exercise?’ Well, before you run you must walk and before you walk you must crawl. Therefore, every area of training that has a level of importance must be addressed with sequential progression. The level of difficulty in what we are referring to when dealing with progression is where strength and conditioning programs differentiate themselves. Our drills and exercises change throughout the course of a workout as well as the course of a phase. The time it takes for your athletes to advance on to a more complex sequence and series of exercises is dependent on your prescription of exercises. This is where you can get creative with week-to-week progression of workouts.
Getting bigger and stronger is great, but the key for today’s game is to become explosive. When talking about developing that explosive power, we centralize most training around Olympic weightlifting, plyometrics, and speed workouts that will, in turn, increase maximal force production. Through these types of training, force is improved by the CNS (central nervous system) in which motor units are working at high-percentage intensity levels while increasing the firing rates of all the recruited motor units. Never sacrifice the speed of the movement or the rate at which your muscles fire for higher weight or technique. This increase in force will greatly improve the stretch-shortening cycle and stretch reflex actions within your body. Basically, the stronger you get or increase relative strength, the more force you can produce. The more force produced allows you to become more powerful as an athlete. Of course, to truly develop these areas, your athletes must master fundamentals and techniques of training. There are many variations and combinations of these lifts but all have one similarity – the focus and perfection of technique.
Many coaches tend to move very fast when implementing Olympic weightlifting into their program. It must be clearly understood that the proper steps are taken before attempting these complex movements. Only you can allow your players to move on to a full Olympic lift. You allow this when the complete movement and mobilization of joints has now been achieved. These multi-joint lifts translate into explosive power that you want in your team. So, demand the correct technique and training.
Olympic weightlifting provides some of the greatest benefits that can ultimately be seen on the field. This type of training isn’t something an athlete can jump into without learning and practicing the right technique. One slip or fault in movement could seriously injure the athlete. Also important to know is that Olympic lifts play hard on your central nervous system. Your body will fatigue, so on top of technique you must incorporate optimal rest time. That way the speed of the movement at maximum effort can be achieved. The goal with many of these lifts is to develop explosive hips and improve hip-flexor oriented movement from an athletic stance. Having a strong core and base is a must if you really want powerful hips. We focus a lot of time into strengthening the core before attempting these explosive exercises.
In order to start using these complex movements it is important to correct your body’s weaknesses. Implement exercises that work on muscular imbalances, deficiencies, mobility, and flexibility which will improve technique tremendously. You should also break down each phase of an Olympic lift. This will correct the movement patterns of these exercises and also help to identify weaknesses in your players. Only when perfect technique has been achieved with each phase of the movement should you allow athletes to move on to the full Olympic lift.
The reason you encompass functional training, injury prevention, and joint mobility into your program is to ensure that when Olympic weightlifting techniques are achieved, a load can now be applied to the body without any negative responses. Young athletes today seem to do enough squats and bench presses with a focus on the anterior chain and often brag about how much weight they can put on the bar. It seems that, somewhere along the line, technique was lost or never learned. Now, as a result, imbalances and deficiencies are created throughout their body. Many high school athletes demonstrate a major lack of development in posterior chain, core strength, mobility and flexibility. These areas must be addressed routinely.
To correct this, we use many variations of squats: single leg squats, Romanian dead lifts, single leg RDL’s and various glute-ham complexes. In addition to those we use different types of unilateral movements in which we work both the anterior chain and posterior chain. Many of the exercises that target these areas, especially the posterior chain, are included in every training facet, whether it’s incorporated into our warm-up, weight lifting, core work, or speed and conditioning. We are constantly working to improve the function of an athlete’s body and correct any weaknesses.
There are many different training philosophies, but when it comes to periodization there’s not much alteration. The strength phases seen throughout most programs around the country are anatomical adaptation, hypertrophy, maximal strength, conversion to power, and maintenance/transitional/competition. Simply put, these strength phases underlie the overall progression of your entire strength program. Each phase serves a purpose, providing many benefits.
To understand each phase is imperative. Achieving the objectives of each phase lies between the communication between you and your team. Just simply explain to the players theprinciples behind each phase so they understand and know the difference between them. I always make sure to emphasize the goals and objectives for today’s workout or at least announce them at the beginning of that week. Now the team is mentally on the same page as you are. To organize this approach, map out your periodization for the year.
Start by listing the months in order and identifying the season, corresponding with each month. Leading into the off-season workouts you would first see the transitional phase. When the winter semester begins, start your strength phases with preparation phase 1 and preparation phase 2. The strength phases associated with this season are anatomical adaptation, hypertrophy and possibly maximal strength. If your school has spring drills or spring football, you can incorporate a competition phase for the duration of that time.
Following the competition phase will either lead you to the continuation of winter prep 2 or another transitional phase, which then leads into summer workouts. When summer phase 1 arrives, you would start with hypertrophy working into max strength. Phase 2 would be a continuation of max strength and then a conversion to power. After summer workouts are complete, fall camp and two-a-days have arrived. Here is when you start in-season training or the competition phase. Even though this competition phase is tapered down, we use a max strength/conversion to power set and rep range with lifts. After the season is complete, you will finish the calendar year in a transitional phase that is more along the lines of active rest.
One thing you must understand when creating your own periodization breakdown is that the calendar year for most schools is different. So basically your breakdown of phases is dependent on holidays, school breaks, scheduled events and activities. Also important to note is that when in the competition phase, the coach has to determine the volume and load of workouts. Generally, in-season workouts are 2-3 days where complex movements that tend to tax the CNS are performed on the first day and push/pull lifts are performed on the second. The second lift day is designed to have lifts that encompass mental building with positive reinforcement. If you have a third day, it should be used for light lifts and more re-hab/pre-hab type exercises.
The thought put into creating a calendar incorporating seasonal phases and strength phases is beneficial for your team. But these phases become pointless if you haven’t taken the proper steps in developing an athlete. Using all areas and facets of training can allow your players to reach peak performance and obtain the greatest results while maintaining their health. Communication between you and your players is important as well as understanding how their bodies respond to training. So, mastering the science behind the biomechanics of movements and physiology of the human body can be your greatest asset when designing and implementing your workouts. A superior strength and conditioning program is built from a combination of great programs while understanding the needs of your team. Always do your research and be open-minded because, in order to be an effective coach, one must be willing to be a student of the game.
About the Author: John Marano became the full-time strength and conditioning coach at Fairmont State in 2010. He also is the offensive line coach. Marano served as a graduate assistant at Fairmont State from 2007-2009 and also interned at West Virginia. A linebacker for Fairmont State, he was team captain and MVP in the 2006 season.