Re: (American) Football conditioning question

[Guest guest]

Bryce,

The goal of my program is to get the athletes as

strong as possible. We only use the weight room as

one part of our overall program. We do not get sport

specific in the weight room. I look to the strongest

people in the world and try to learn how they get

strong and try to incorporate that into our program.

I incorporate what I think will help our athletes to

get strong and what is also appropriate for them as

they progress. Our freshman do not lift like our

seniors.

Also with the example I gave with the bench press is

only part of our program. We will only bench for a

few weeks and then we change the exercise on our max

effort days.

To the question of doing ten sets of that exercise.

We are using the 10 sets as a warmup, to perfect form,

increase overall volume, and increase our work

capacity.

As to olympic lifts: I believe we first need to get

our athletes strong and teach them how to lift the

basic lifts before we can teach olympic lifting. We

will do high pulls, push presses but that is about it.

I think their is a lot of teaching involved with

clean and jerks that I would rather spend our time

doing other things.

Again to summarize we lift weights to get stronger not

sports specific. We do other work outside the weight

room to create sport secific skills.

I hope that makes sense if not let me know I will try

to explain better.

Rick Lytle

Cleveland, Ohio

rlytle2000@...

--- bat1201@... wrote:

> Rick,

>

> What is your goal when training your football

> athletes? I think it is

> important to ask yourself from time to time the real

> purpose of some of the drills and lifts one

> incorporates in a program design?

>

> Can I ask you the purpose of doing 10 sets of bench

> press? Are you trying to make them powerlifters or

> better athletes? I am not saying the bench press

> should be eliminated from a football athletes

> program, but how specific is laying on your back

> while being supported by a bench and pressing? If

> you are in that position during a game as a fb

> athlete more than 10 times, then you need to find a

> new sport.

>

> I think more emphasis on ground base, multijoint

> lifts should be more of the focus in a fb athletes

> program (e.g., Jammer, Push Jerks...) I will say

> this, having a big bench press does help with an

> athletes confidence, so maybe that is a valid reason

> for the high volume work some coaches use for the

> bench press.

>

> Anybody else have any comments?

>

> Respectfully,

>

> Bryce Teager, CSCS

> FAST FORWARD

> Omaha, Ne