Posts Tagged ‘Football’
Top 3 Exercises for High School Football Workouts
Planning your high school football workouts can be very difficult. There are literally thousands of exercises to choose from, so, how do you know which to use? Aside from the basics like Squats, Deadlifts and Bench Press, how do you choose?
Well, you need to select the exercises that are best for making your stronger and faster on the football field. Your football workouts should ALWAYS strive to make you stronger, which, in turn, makes you faster.
The Power Clean
I realize that not including the Power Clean in an article about football training of any kind is a right bit of sacrilege, but, they simply weren’t in the top 9. I am not, however, anti-Power Clean. In fact, if used correctly, they can add a few slabs of muscle on the upper back and traps and increase explosiveness.
However, two things need to be taken into account:
1. Can the Coach actually teach them?
2. Where and how will you place the exercise?
Now, the Power Clean is NOT that complicated. It’s just not. Anyone with half decent athletic abilities will be able to pick it up quickly. The bigger problem is, many guys just have no idea how to teach them. I suggest either taking the USAW Club Coach or Sports Certification course (you’ll learn a lot, even if you’re pretty experienced), finding an Olympic Lifter to teach you, or, getting Jim Schmits’ Olympic Lifting Manual and DVD.
Once you know how to teach it, it will only take a session, max, to have an athlete learn how to do them.
Second, where and how do you use the Power Clean to help increase speed and explosiveness.
Foundational Exercises For Football
Building a program that helps maximize your performance on the football field is a lot like building the house of your dreams. In both cases, a solid foundation must be the base in which all other aspects are built upon. Follow this simple rule and you will have laid the groundwork for optimal performance that can be built and improved upon for your entire career. Get ahead of yourself, and you can plan on dealing with frustrating plateaus and sub-optimal performances.
Lets take a closer look at the building blocks that have proven to develop speed, explosive power, and athletic performance. Focus on mastering the following foundational exercises and you will be rewarded come game day.
Level 1: These should not be a surprise to anyone. They are staples in most football programs
for good reason. If you have been stuck on any of the following exercises for a while, I would strongly suggest that you review your technique. It is very common for a first time client at our facility to make a couple technical adjustments and add 10 lbs to these lifts on day one.
All level one goals are based on body weight. Relative body strength is truly the foundation in which all other athletic qualities are built.
Squat / deadlift variations: A good starting goal is a 1RM in the squat or deadlift at a load that represents 2x the athletes body weight. We have seen steady improvements in speed at our facility as athletes approach these numbers.
Power clean: A 1RM in this lift at 1.3 – 1.5 x the athletes body weight is a great foundational start. This ensures that our strength is being transferred to power.
Bench press: 1.5 x body weight in this lift is our first foundational goal.
How to Prepare a Defensive Game Plan in Youth Football
We are volunteer youth football coaches and we don’t have unlimited hours to spend on coaching. However, youth football is pretty much the most coaching oriented sport there is, in other words the coach can be the difference in winning and losing more than any other sport. So you must do the following to win games and give your team the competitive advantage it needs. The following game process takes about 3-4 hours on a Sun. night.
Step 1. You need the game film from your opponent’s previous game. There are usually no high bleachers at youth football games so get an endzone view of the teams offense. Always film behind the team you are scouting so you can see exactly what they are doing. Make sure you can see all the players and their numbers on every play.
Step 2. Watch the film and diagram every single play the team runs including repeats. I usually use cardstock. Write down the play number and the down and distance to the best of your knowledge and a caption for each play i.e. I would write play 1, 1 and 10, Pitch Sweep Right and diagram the blocking assignments as executed and the backfield player numbers. For a playoff game I would take the extra time to write down every player’s number.
As you diagram the plays you will learn their playbook and start to get an idea of the coach’s play calling philosophy. This is the most time consuming part of the process as you have to keep pausing and rewinding to get all the blocking assignments and the plays drawn up correctly.
Football Training and Fitness
Years ago players used to have a pint and a fag at half time, in the 1950?s and 60?s it was common for them to do so, and certain clubs even gave the players free cigarettes. Things have changed a lot since them days and nowadays its all about the fitness of a player. Being fit means working out, doing exercise and maintaining a healthy diet.
Fitness along with accuracy is the most important part of your game. Without it you will fail to succeed at the top level. Being able to run about a pitch for 90+ minutes is a tough task, using all sorts of muscles as you twist, turn and jump along the way. Look at the like of Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, they constantly run up and down the football pitch for the duration and hardly ever break a swear, why? Because outside of the game they are training like mad, its their job. They will train all week practicing and developing their fitness.
To improve your fitness you should:
If not already doing so take up jogging/running, start light and increase it gradually along the way, aim to do this at least 3 times a week, jogging for around 10 to 20 minutes if possible
Look at what you are eating and drinking, its no good if you spend half your life at McDonald’s and drink lots of coffee!! Be hard on yourself and it will work in the long run. Try to eat three meals a day, and don’t skip breakfast, as you have heard a million times before, ‘its your most important meal of the day.’ And drink plenty of water, this will hydrate your body, I found drinking a glass or two of water before bed is a real good way to hydrate yourself and you will wake up feeling better in the morning. 70% of your muscle is made up from water, this is why you need to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, and don’t mistake hunger pains, they could be pains telling you to drink water instead.
American Football: A Game With An Extensive Set Of Different Positions
American football, born from the English game of Rugby that came into being in the 17th century, is quite a thrilling game. The game is very complex, with multiple specialized positions and in-depth game plans involving them. This, though, is precisely what makes the pastime so fascinating to watch regardless of whether one is sitting on aluminum bleachers at a high school match or in a professional stadium for a National Football League game.
A few on-field units are employed by each club during the game. A team’s offense is the group of players that actively tries to advance the ball downfield and either into the opponent’s end zone to get touchdowns or to a yardage close enough for a field goal to be kicked. To start a play, the quarterback, who is in essence the leader of the offense, takes the snap from the center, or chief offensive lineman. He has the option to hand the pigskin off to the running back or throw it downfield to an open receiver. The quarterback is additionally accountable for relaying the pre-snap strategies the head coach creates to the rest of the players on the unit. On certain plays, the running back attempts to bring the ball downfield using gaps in the defense. On passing plays, wide receivers run diverse routes downfield and attempt to get open to more effortlessly catch a pass from the quarterback. Offensive linemen stop defensive players to the best of their ability so that they cannot disrupt the quarterback while he tosses or the running back while he runs. The hybrid player that is the tight end serves as an extra lineman on many plays and an extra receiver on numerous others. The player referred to as the fullback lines up behind the offensive linemen and serves as a fairly mobile blocker who the running back frequently tries to stay behind. It should be noted that the fullback is frequently exchanged for one more tight end, and that any player on offense can operate as a blocker, reliant upon the situation.