(Watch video below)

Football coaches and players say it all the time.

I know I have.

You can run and condition all day long but there’s nothing more like getting in “game shape” than actually PLAYING the game. Since we can’t play real football games year-round, us strength coaches are constantly looking for new ways to prepare our players the best we can for what they’ll face on the field – the more ‘game-like’ from a conditioning standpoint the better.

With the arrival of football season, I felt like it was a perfect time to post about some of the conditioning-specific work we did this summer with some our advanced football players to get them GAME READY.

Quick Energy System Overview

What does ‘energy system training’ even mean? Well, your body has different energy systems to help it perform certain tasks.  I’ll be broad, but let’s say a football play lasts on average between 3-8 seconds. That’s 3-8 seconds of repeated bouts of high intensity. 3-8 seconds of sprinting, quick bursts, powerful movements, and many displays of strength. This is 3-8 seconds of full on WORK.

This makes football an anaerobic sport. There are two types of anaerobic energy systems: the ATP-PC System (Alactic) which is used for quick, explosive bouts of activity for up to 10 seconds, and the Anaerobic Glycolysis System (Lactic) which is used for activities lasting 10-to-60 seconds and produces lactic acid.

The anaerobic-ALACTIC energy system is the anaerobic system used in football. You would want to train in this time frame to become more efficient at recovering in order to display the same maximal output you did on the play before- without the presence of lactic acid. When getting our football players game ready we stay away from lactic acid buildup the best we can as it zaps our ability to repeat explosive movements. No player or coach likes it when his team is already gassed in the third quarter!

*Yes the Aerobic system also needs to be developed for football players. It does play a role in recovery between explosive activities. Address it early on in the off-season if necessary. With our high-level athletes we’ve found that by not ever letting ourselves get too ‘out of shape’ and performing some tempo runs throughout the winter sets us up just fine in this area and we don’t have to re-visit it again. That could be another post entirely but wanted to address it in case any armchair coaches felt the need to be annoying about it.

 

The Background

You can make this style of training very intense and detailed when working with NFL football players in a private setting. When I attended the CPPS Football Certification led by one of the best coaches in the business, Joe DeFranco, we discussed the importance of energy system training for football players – especially high level players whose families count on their football prowess to live on. You can’t mess around with poor conditioning tactics at any level, especially at the top!

This article on conditioning (http://www.defrancostraining.com/ask-joe-test/42-speedplyometricsconditioning/199-football-conditioning-the-right-way.html) was put out a little while back by Joe and it was the first time I saw football training done this way. I truly feel many strength coaches will be adopting this style in one way or another within the next few years, if they haven’t done so already. Read it right now before you continue with the rest of this piece as he breaks the subject down to a ‘T’ much easier than I could. (You’ll see a linebacker performing this style of training in Joe’s article, we had offensive linemen – it’s good to keep positional demands in mind when creating these workouts)

At the cert we also discussed a template to implement these energy system workouts to prep our football players as training camp nears. How do you fit this type of energy system ‘game day’ workout into your weekly training template? What needs to stay in your program and what needs to be removed so your training is optimized? Obviously this type of workout is not solely my own training creation as I learned much of this from Joe’s article and at the cert but we had to create our own version of it. We’ll always prepare our athletes the best we can so we knew we had to implement this type of training immediately – plus it’s just straight fun to do!

Since Jared and the guys in this video are already very strong, our template could be altered to focus more on this energy system workout and creating more power in their other lower body day. Keep in mind this was done 5-weeks out from training camp. Our winter off-season program doesn’t look like this with these guys, as we don’t have to be game ready in March.

 

Getting Ready

Jared’s first week back this summer I told him he better be ready for 52 intense, game-like plays on Thursday. He gave me a puzzled look but said he’s ready to roll. I then explained to him what we would be doing and how not too many guys are training this way. Since we pride ourselves in going above and beyond, he was all in.

Piggy-backing off the DeFranco article and his instruction and discussions at the cert, here is how we mimicked an entire football game using 14-yards of turf, minimal equipment, and our parking lot here at PowerStrength. Keep in mind this was designed for offensive linemen, as 3 of the 4 guys performing this are linemen (we made some adjustments for the TE in the group).

We supplemented this ‘Game Day’ workout with another lower body day, two upper body days, and a recovery/skills workout. Other conditioning modalities we used on these other days were a mix of prowler sprints/pushes, hill sprints, tempo runs,  sled drags, and battling ropes mixed with some skill work.

 

The Details

Each “play” is one set. Our sets lasted 4-10 seconds (sometimes a little longer as we experimented with various exercises/drills) with usually 10-30 seconds rest depending on which exercises we were doing (you can mimic a Two-Minute drill or the tempo of your offense if you want). Multiple sets make up a “series”. Multiple “series” make up a “quarter”. This is the format for all four quarters, 2-5minutes rests were taken between quarters.

The number of plays per series and the number of series per quarter can be varied week to week. Obviously the number of snaps an offense takes per game can be anywhere from 50-80 plays per game usually. So, Week 1 had 52 plays. Week 2 had 58 plays. Week 3 had 62 plays. Week 4 had 75 plays and Week 5 contained 80 plays.

There wasn’t any particular reasoning behind these specific numbers, it’s just what it came out as we progressed it weekly and altered the exercises. 80 plays is a lot but keep in mind this is getting these guys ready for PRACTICE as well. They need to be able to repeat full efforts in practice without wearing down to keep/earn a job.

 

The Workouts

We also wanted to include more pass block sets this summer so their technique looked the same no matter what period of the “game” we were in. Fatigue makes cowards of us all! You’ll see our linemen performing movements that back up this emphasis, as well as taking extra practice pass sets as part of the workout.

Do you need to include sport-specific technical skills into these types of workouts? Absolutely not – but I’m not going to argue with a little extra footwork practice in a fatigued state. So we threw in a couple extra reps but also made sure they didn’t train themselves into bad habits by altering their technique when they were tired. I don’t consider myself an offensive line coach by any means but these professional’s tell me what to look for to make sure their technique isn’t breaking down.

In this video you’ll see plenty of exercises and how we went about getting our guys ‘game ready’. Some exercises/exercise pairings we did for all four-weeks while others we added and didn’t catch on film. These clips were taken over a couple different weeks but I wanted you to see the variety on which you can create this. You’re only limited by your imagination when doing this type of training, so get creative!

In the past you could never really tell if you were game ready until you actually played the game. This style of training will help give you a jumpstart on your game day conditioning. Jared, Cam, and the guys loved these workouts and say they felt great. Feedback like this is good enough for me to keep this type of training around and continue to improve and make it as effective as possible.

 

Note for the Football and Strength Coaches

For the football coaches reading this, I understand this may be challenging to implement in a team setting for a multitude of reasons – numbers, equipment, space, etc. Don’t get distracted by our choice of exercises. We did these because we could. Again, get creative! The amount of time spent performing the activity and the amount of rest given are the important parts of all this- train the anaerobic-alactic energy system and you’re on the right track!

I’ve actually done something similar like this with full teams. They would sprint for 3-8 seconds, stop on the whistle and walk, then sprint after the designed rest was over. I’d have them mix up their start by coming out of their football stance, out of a push-up start, had them change direction randomly at times, etc. On the field they have to accelerate, dip/dodge and fight through blocks or defenders, decelerate, change direction, and then re-accelerate. Pushing sleds and prowlers can also be easily mimicked to stay in this timeframe. Straight ahead running for 17-seconds over and over isn’t found on the field so I didn’t mimic it.  Find out what works for you and your program and get after it!

Now, enjoy this inside look into some intense training sessions with these monsters!

(Athletes in the video- Oakland Raider LT Jared Veldheer, Jacksonville Jaguar T Cam Bradfield and NFL-hopefuls Cam White (Hillsdale) and Jesse Peterson (Wheaton).)

Be sure to keep this in you feel the need to boost your conditioning next off-season!

 

-Mark Ehnis