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Weekly Letter What is a SPEED PROGRAM? These are typically programs where you come in and do sprint drills like you run the 100 or 200 in track. Football players don't run like this! A 100m sprinter will accelerate for almost 60m where as people who run fast 40's will reach top speed much quicker. The players on the field that you often think of as fast are usually the ones that can accelerate quickly and reach top speed in a matter of steps. This type of technique won't win you many 100 m races, but it will allow you to separate from a corner as you come out of a break. This type of technique will also allow you to come rush the passer, fill gaps, burst through holes, and knock the crap out of people when you get there. What you need to focus on is power production and acceleration ... not speed ! Power is what wins in football. Most people confuse a quick first step as speed. This is quickness and quickness (and explosiveness for that matter) is achieved through proper positioning and enough power to accelerate you out of the positions you find yourself in. If you spend your spring doing sprint drills to run a faster 40 you may end up running a faster 40, but how many 40's do you plan on running on Friday nights in September. Football is about quick hands, quick hips, quick feet, proper positioning or leverage, and enough POWER to dominate the person on the other side of the line. So what I am saying is " Football is about Power "! How do you train for POWER? Power starts in the weight room, but it does not end there. Power is result of the effort you put into each rep, set and cycle. If you combine this with technical work, positioning drills, and knowledge of game speed and situations you will be able to apply the work you do in the weight room to what you do on the field. How many of you know a player that is awesome in the weight room, but garbage on the field? I see football players clean 280 without ever using their hips. Their main emphasis is to "pull themselves UNDER the bar!" If you were training to be an Olympic weight lifter that is an awesome cue. But you are training to be a football player, and the last thing you want to be FOCUSED on is "pulling yourself UNDER the bar" or better yet, "into the ground!" The main emphasis of a clean in a football weight room is explosive hip power (vertical, first step, drive block, separation, making contact, lateral burst, etc), yet some players never use their hips! They simply rock back and forth, swing the bar up, pick their feet up off the ground, and pull themselves under the bar. And the worst part is they can't even rack the weight properly.they catch it with their hands! The second emphasis of the clean is the catch. You need to be able to catch and stabilize the weight with a solid core and hips. If you bottom out (butt on your heels) you are letting the weight fall on you with out you having to control anything. Jump It up, Rack it aggressively on the shoulders, and Control It by anchoring yourself into a power position. So in a nutshell power starts in the weight room, but it is not the exercises that make you explosive. it is the way you do the exercises (effort, intensity, technique) that give you results. Once you start doing the exercises in a results oriented manner you are halfway home in your pursuit of power. After I get POWERFUL what do I need to do next? The next step is learning how to use it. Once your body is capable of producing these explosive forces and you understand how to orient your body to use them, you need to start to adding quickness and athleticism to your drills. We all know the big strong guy in the weight room that can't throw a baseball or run a 40 under 6 seconds, but "Man! That guy is STRONG!" Well, the fact that we DON'T want to be this guy is the reason behind combining athleticism development exercises with your weight program. On the field, it is not always the biggest or the strongest that wins, but usually the guy who does the most with what he has . If you spend time getting more powerful and you spend time learning how to do more with it, you have a chance to be great. This is where our program comes in. CAP_Football Athleticism Development Classes (Spring 2006) We start each session with a Focus Meeting (describing the goal of the workout). I believe each athlete needs to know why they are here, what is expected, and what you will get out of this workout if you put in the effort. We then go into some muscle activation and a dynamic mobility warm up. This helps to "wire" the athletes for power and prevent the nagging back pain. Then we use a resistance based treadmill (like pulling a sled or parachute) to do some sprint drills, power runs, form running, or drive block drills. We incorporate med balls, cables, pulleys, bags, etc into this section in a short power circuit. This is where you learn how to move.; We are working in all planes of movement, with all types of resistance, balls, cables and power based sprint machines, and we are moving with power, quickness and agility. Then we focus specifically on agility from a first step quickness, and cutting efficiency standpoint in the next section. This is our footwork section. We see roughly 1000 athletes a year and over the past 5 years we have noticed that there are certain things that fast people do that make them faster. The most obvious thing is something that can take tenth's off your shuttle times overnight, and that is staying off the outside leg when cutting. First, it is safer. Second, it is faster. And finally it is more efficient! After this we have, in the past, moved into the weight room and done some power technique and speed drills. I want to get away from the stuff in the weight room so many of you already do at school. If we do anything in the weight room, I want it to be more from a technical standpoint than a strength/hypertrophy standpoint. From this point in the past we have conditioned, although I am also thinking of cutting this part out and doing some on field conditioning on other days. What I would like to do is have a day in our facility (a learning day) used to work power production and technique. Then come back and have 1 or 2 other short sessions on the field (30 to 45 min) where I can get a football involved and actually make you better football players. I would like to get some 1 on 1 and 7 on 7 going, as well as diamond and triangle drills with O-line and D-line and QB's, DB's, and receivers. Scott Moody |
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