Top 10 Exercises For Football Strength And Speed

Way too many football players and strength coaches develop favorite lifts (usually one's they're good at) and stick to them no matter what. I've run into guys I trained with a decade ago and they are still doing the same workouts! I don't mean the same philosophy, I mean the actual same football workout! Same exercises, sets, reps and sometimes, sadly, weights.

While we need to rotate exercises constantly to avoid accommodation, we can't just add any-old exercise and hope for the best. Plus, often, the exercises we hate the most are the ones that do us the most good. Many guys hate movements like lunges, but, if you want to get faster for football, you need to do them.

Here are the top 11 Exercises for to Get Faster and Stronger for Football. Add them to your rotation and work 'em hard.

1. Deadlifts - Deadlifts are the King Maker...they might be more responsible for building football speed and strength than any other exercise.

Deadlifts are ultra-important for several reasons:

o They build tremendous starting strength. Many football players are woefully lacking in the ability to get explosive and apply strength quickly.

o Deads strengthen the Posterior Chain; building power and strength in the hamstrings, glutes, calfs, and the entire back (the muscles responsible for getting you faster for football).

o Deadlifts, like Squats, build insane strength in the hips; the seat of power for football.

o They build slabs of muscle. Nothing will make you grow from your calfs to your traps like heavy Deadlifts.

o The Deadlift can be extremely useful for injury prevention. Some believe that the moderate to high hamstring activity elicited during the deadlift may help to protect the Anterior Cruciate Ligament during rehab.

Deads can be used as Max Effort, Dynamic Effort or moderate rep exercise. The classic 5 x 5 protocol applied to the DL can put more muscle on your frame than most other exercises combined.

2. Box Squats - Box Squats and Box Front Squats are essential for building tremendous leg strength and explosiveness while taking almost all stress off the knees. They are the cornerstones (along with deadlifts) of any football strength training program that can make a player stronger and faster for football.

Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell Club, who's club has done more to popularize Box Squats than anyone else in America describes the benefits of Box Squatting in one of his articles:

Many trainers have found that a great deal of flexibility can be developed while box squatting: by going lower than normally possible, and by using a wider stance.

You can isolate all the correct squatting muscles by sitting extremely far back on the box. By sitting back on the box to the extent that your shins are positioned past vertical, the glutes, hips, hamstrings, https://www.totogj.com/blank spinal erectors, and abs are totally pre-stretched and overloaded simultaneously, producing a tremendous stretch reflex.

Box Squats eliminate many of the problems encountered when doing traditional squats. Gone are the knee problems associated with the knees traveling way past the toes. You are also limiting the stretch reflex, so Box Squatting becomes much like a Deadlift in it's ability to build explosive strength.

Box Squats also teach an athlete to stay tight and explode up using the hips, hams, and glutes. This is essential for any sport that requires running or jumping...which is pretty much all of them! They are key for building football speed and strength.

Some other huge advantages of Box Squatting include:

o Less soreness than traditional squats, allowing you to recover faster and train more often
o No guessing on depth. Set the box to where you want to go and simply sit back on it.
o Box Squats can increase real-world flexibility. If you widen the stance, push the knees out, and descend under control, you will develop excellent mobility and flexibility in the legs and hips.
o Build tons of strength in the glutes and hips - critical to blocking and tackling.

Use Box Squats for either Max Effort or Dynamic Effort training.

If you go heavy, either work up to a max set of 1 - 4, or do multiple sets of low reps

If using the Box Squat as a speed exercise, it's best to use bands or chains and go for 12 sets of 2 reps with 60seconds rest.

This will all be explained in the workouts section where you will see a living, breathing example of sets and reps for the Box Squat (and all other exercises).

3. Clean you can use it for Timed Sets, High reps, moderate reps, or you can go super heavy and treat it as a Sub-Max movement. If you'd really like a challenge, try doing a 1-Arm DB Incline, now that's real "core" training!

9. Sandbags - Lifting and carrying sandbags are excellent ways to "bridge" the gap between the weightroom and the playing field. Sandbags are excellent strength and conditioning tools for wrestlers, football players, and fighters. They will also help with just about any other sport that requires strength, speed, and stamina.

Sandbags shift and fight you every inch of the way. They never relent. Picking up and carrying or shouldering a sandbag feels a lot like wrestling a live opponent. While all the work in the weightroom helps build max strength and speed, using sandbags will be an excellent compliment to your heavy training.

There's a lot of great resources on sandbag training, but I recommend you check out Josh Henkin's sandbag training course.

10. Prowler - The Prowler owns all when it comes to conditioning for football. It can be pushed and pulled for time, distance or speed. It can be loaded heavy or light. See where I'm going with this?

The Prowler is also great because you can use it laterally, which as I said earlier, most athletes neglect. So much of sports is played moving laterally, yet training that way is ignored.

Use the Prowler as a finisher or on a non-lifting day as a way to condition. Because of the lack of eccentric movement, the Prowler will not cause much soreness, which is a huge advantage for athletes. One of the biggest issues when designing a training program for an athlete is how to give strength, speed and conditioning their proper due without compromising any of the elements.

Using the Prowler is simple, go light for time for recovery and GPP work. Go a little heavier for sprints and go heavy for strength work.