The Importance of Weight Training For the Football Player
Whether you are a serious player with dreams of a football career or just play pickup with your buddies, explosive strength and speed will be your biggest ally on the field. Football is a game that requires you to explode with extreme intensity for shorter intervals.
Football also requires that your different muscle groups work well together. Your legs, core, arms, and hands all play a critical role whether you are chasing down the victim of your next hit, straight arming away a defensive end on your next sweep, pulling from the line to block for your back or fighting for a fumble.
Learning to train for explosive strength and speed in a way that will teach your muscle groups to work well together will be a huge key to making that dream a reality or showing up your buddies and earning bragging rights for those post game debriefings at the local pub.
The key here will be to utilize whole body exercises such as dead lifts, squats, clean and presses, clean and jerks, chin ups etc. Any exercise that incorporates several muscles or muscle groups into one motion are the best exercises to help you build that explosive strength. It is actually the same kind of training that Olympic weight lifters use to train for their competitions. Whole body motions that require explosive strength, coordination of muscle groups and stability is where its at. For the best strength results keep your reps very low (1-2 reps).
Use close to your maximum weight limit which you should check often to maintain progress. If you hit a plateau it may be time to put on a bit more size. Increase your reps to 4-6 and your weight to about 80% of your maximum. Eat like a horse and give your body plenty of time to recover (3 days a week in the gym for a max of 35 minutes is all you need). Super sets are a good way to get your routine over and done with faster. Try to pair exercises together in your super sets that use different muscle groups (eg. squats and chin ups).
There are other great exercises that will help you with your football endeavors. Resistance sprints are a great way to build up explosive and powerful speed. Using a steep hill or resistance band works great for this. Sledge hammer routines are great for building explosive strength between your core, arms and hands.
Also, a quick note on the hands.
Your hands are one of the most important tools you have to get your job on the field done. Try to stay away from wrist straps for your lifts. Let your hands become strong with the rest of your body. Strong hands prevent fumbles, pull down an escaping victim of one of your tackles and help you linemen protect your quarter back. Absolutely every thing you do on and off the field is greatly benefited by a set of good strong hands.
One of the often over looked secrets to growing and developing explosively powerful muscle is adequate rest to allow your muscles to recover. Training actually slightly tears your muscle fibers. It is the healing and recovery process that develops and advances the size and ability of your body. You do your thing in the gym and let your body do it by giving it the time it needs to start again.
Go kick some butt in the gym and on the field.
Are You Training for Strength or Size?
It is always important to ask yourself questions to determine what benefit it is you are seeking from your training. Knowing what you want is the first step to finding it. We know of so many people that have spent countless hours in the gym doing training exercises and programs that are not giving them the results that they were looking for.
That just plain sucks.
This is the kind of disappointment that can lead to giving up on reaching your goals. The reason it wasn’t working for them is that they never bothered to ask the questions about whether or not this kind of program was going to give them the results they were looking for.
We must say, most of today’s advertising hasn’t helped this problem at all. We’ve got huge ripped guys acting in ads for programs or machines that definitely did not give them the results that they have. They might not even say that that is the case but our brains make that connection. This is no doubt intended by the advertisers companies who are more interested in making money that truly helping you.
Now, while the changes necessary to move from say increasing strength to increasing size or to increasing endurance are not always major changes they are necessary if you want to reach the desired results. So, be sure to ask yourself lots of question about what you want and then go and find the answers so you don’t just wind up wasting a lot of time, sweat and pain in the gym.
Okay so, strength or size?
The kind of exercises that we would recommend for either of these benefits are exactly the same. We are big advocates of the whole body kind of exercises used in Olympic lifts or in training for Olympic Weight Lifting competition. They are the dead lift, squat, bench press, military press, dip, row, chip up / pull up, clean and press, clean and jerk and snatch.
The reason that we recommend these is because of their whole body benefit. Using these kinds of exercises will make you better, faster and stronger. Better because these exercises teach your bodies muscle groups to work together providing you with a more functional strength. Obviously working multiple muscle groups at once will make your workouts go by much faster than focusing on doing reps for each individual muscle.
Finally, It has been proven that these whole body exercises leave you with a much higher explosive strength than what you will get from focusing on individual muscles.
The only real change that needs to happen in your exercises to switch from a strength benefit to a size benefit or visa versa is the number of reps you do. When looking to build strength your reps need to be very low (2 maximum). The weight should be set very high so that 2 reps is all you can do. The benefit of strength training of course is that when it comes time to build some more size you can do it faster because of the increased strength and therefore weight you are able to handle.
To switch to more of a size benefit you are going to increase the reps to 4-6. Obviously the weight will need to come down to compensate for the increase in reps. Size training should generally involve lifts that are about 80% of your maximum weight limit for each exercise. Most important is that you find a weight where 4 – 6 reps is all you can do. That is the number one difference you will need to make to switch from a strength benefit to a size benefit in your training.
Knowledge is one of the most important factors in your training. It will be the guide to lead you to the results that you desire. Use it now to kick some butt in the gym.
What’s the Best Weight Lifting Gear?
Our goal here isn’t to push brands or fads but rather to simply make some brief comments on a few items that we think will provide you with a tremendous benefit in the gym.
There are three basic categories that gym gear falls into:
1) Gear that will help you with your exercises.
2) Gear that will help you stay on task, record your progress, and track improvements or road blocks on your road to meeting your goals.
3) Gear that will make your time and the gym and your training more enjoyable.
First, gear that will help you with your exercises.
First and foremost, just like pretty much any sport, a good pair of shoes will be your best friend at the gym. You will want something that is stable and provides support. Our experience has been that the more cushion that is in the shoe the worse it feels during heavy lifts. These might be nice for landing from a high jump, or for protecting your feet and joints from the constant pounding of a run but the last thing you need when you have 350lbs or so on you shoulders doing squats is squishy shoes.
Actually, we have found that one of the best pieces of foot wear for doing squats, dead lifts or other Olympic lifts is a pair of higher cut work boots.
They are stable, supportive and because of their elevated heel help keep you in good form.
Second, is a pair of wrist straps. It is common for hands to get tired before your leg or other muscles do when you are lifting higher weights especially.
These will allow you to save your hands and push your legs, back etc. to the point they need to be pushed. There is a lot of controversy over back belts. We will deal with them in more depth in another article however.
Staying on task can be one of the most difficult parts of your training. Remember, you’ve armed yourself with knowledge, you used your mind to evaluate and plan the best way to reach your goals, don’t fall short because you aren’t sticking to you plan.
We’re not saying that your plan should be so rigid that you can’t modify it as your body needs it to be adapted. If you don’t start with a plan and stick to it and track your progress you will not know where changes will need to be made to maximize the benefits of your efforts.
You should always have your plan, journal and tracking sheets with you. Whether you record your data during or after your training is up to you. To neglect this important step however, is to leave you own mind out of your development process. Knowledge (known information), is the best way your mind will be able to make intelligent calculated decisions regarding your training efforts.
Finally, you are not always going to be jacked, pumped and excited about being at the gym putting the hurt on yourself. A few things will help to make it a little more enjoyable. An mp3 player with your favorite tunes on it can make your training time fly by before you know it.
We, just like you we’re sure, have found that sometimes the beat or emotion of a song can provide that little bit you needed to get that last rep etc. So, mp3 player. A water bottle will help you to stay hydrated and offers a cool refreshing break from some seriously hard work. Lastly, something to wipe sweat out of your eyes and off your face. That’s right, sweat. It always kills us when we see these guys in the gym for hours at a time and not a single drop of sweat coming off of them. Our mentality is: “Work your A$$ Off and get outta there”. We don’t wanna live our lives at the gym.
We know that this is not ground breaking information but getting the most out of your efforts in the gym doesn’t require yet to be discovered information. It requires consistency in keeping some very simple principals. Now got kick some butt in the gym.
How to Build Muscle
So, you’ve probably heard it all:
“Buy our supplements if you want to get huge”.
“You have to eat 600 grams of protein a day if you want to grow”.
“You have to hit the gym 6 days a week for 2hrs a time if you want to get huge”.
“If you want to put on more than 10lbs of muscle in a year you have to take steroids / growth hormone.”
What we say to all that…..”BULL CRAP”.
First of all, who has the money needed to begin and continue to take the supplements you “need to take to get huge”?
Second, 600 grams of protein a day? Your body cannot even digest, process and utilize that much protein in a day.
Third, who has 2hrs a day to spend in the gym? Also, doesn’t your muscle grow while you are resting and allowing the muscle time to heal and repair itself? Fact is, you need to be resting a lot more than this and training a lot less.
Finally, steroids and growth hormone. Brutally expensive, dangerous and unnecessary for achieving massive gains.
So, how do you build muscle? Well to put it in simple terms, train hard (but not too often) and eat like a horse.
We’re going to give you some point form tips on each of these two foundations to building muscle. We have articles that deal with the finer points in more detail than space permits here.
First, diet. Your diet is at least 50% of your ally in achieving your muscle gaining goals. Here are some quick and ball park principals to keep in mind when building your muscle building diet.
Eat like a horse.
Eat 16 times your body weight in calories per day.
Make sure you are eating 3 – 4 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day. This will allow your body to better utilize proteins for muscle repair and development.
Eat your body weight in grams of protein per day. This will be very close to the maximum amount of protein your body can utilize anyway.
25% of the food you eat should be high in unsaturated fats.
Always eat a huge breakfast and never leave more than three hours between meals all day right up until bed time. This will use your bodies maximum ability to absorb nutrients necessary to muscle growth and development.
Finally, take a carb and protein shake 20 minutes before you train and eat immediately afterward.
Foundation two, training. Here are some simple tips for training:
First, you should try using exercises that incorporate multiple muscles groups into one exercise. Some of the exercises we recommend are:
- dead lifts
- squats
- rows
- chin ups
- bench presses
- military presses
- clean and presses
- clean and jerks
- snatches
- dips
This will not only help you build muscle but it will cut down on the time you spend in the gym.
This is something that many isolation exercises fail at. Contrary to what you’ve probably heard the beginner does not need to work out more than three days a week. Also, you should limit your training time to about 35 – 45 minutes.
You should find your maximum weight limits for you selected exercises use about 80% of the total. You should be able to do the various lifts in 3 sets of 8 – 12 reps. Allowing plenty of time between training sessions gives your body the realistic time it needs heal and grow.
And there you go, these are some foundational principles to stacking on huge amounts of muscle. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Go at it hard and you’ll stack on more muscle than you will have thought possible…we promise.
How To Create Your “Gain Weight” Diet
The first thing that we tell anybody asking “how to” questions is that they have already begun correctly.
It doesn’t really matter what it is you are trying to do, asking important questions to provide your mind with facts to make intelligent decisions and planning is essential to achieving your goals.
Your mind will be your most important asset for achieving your physical goals. Just as a nutritious diet is key to optimal physical health, truth (correct knowledge) is key to a proper mindset.
You will live like what you think like and you will think like what you you’ve taught yourself to think like based on what you know.
When we are instructing people who are just beginners in the diet / exercise world we always start them off by arming them with correct knowledge so that they learn to make right decisions for themselves.
It will help them to be able to discern right and wrong or good and bad. There is lot’s of great stuff available on the internet to help you achieve your physical goals but for every good thing there are probably 100 bull craps ones.
We’ve talked to so many people who claim to be veterans in the area of health and fitness and yet when we’ve taken the time to ask them important questions we’ve learned that many and even most people have false information in their heads that is preventing them from reaching their goals.
So, you’ve chosen to arm yourself with knowledge and that’s the perfect place to start.
Contrary to what you’ve probably heard, gaining weight (muscle weight) is not nearly as slow and hard as many people claim.
It does not require the use of steroids or growth hormone (other than that which you body will naturally produce). It does not require you to eat 12 cans of tuna a day either.
Even for you naturally skinny, high metabolism guys this is true. We’ll give you a few simple principals to keep in mind to help you build your diet but the bottom line is this.
If you eat like a horse and train hard in the gym for 3 days a week for a maximum of 35 minutes each time you will put on muscle, we promise.
Determining your calories for the day is as simple as multiplying your body weight by 16. If you are gaining too much weight (more that 2 pounds per week) lower your calories by 250 because any more than that and you are gaining fat too. If you are not gaining enough weight (less than 1 pound) add 250 calories to your diet.
You need to eat like you’ve never eaten before. Eat when you are not hungry. Eat when you don’t have enough time to eat. If you want to grow you have got to pound down the food.
Contrary to the high protein low carbohydrate fad that has swept our nation and has been the core of bodybuilding diets for decades, you will need to eat an ample amount of carbohydrates and fats if you want to stack on serious amounts of muscle.
A good target is 3 – 4 grams of carbs for every pound of body weight daily. As far as protein goes unlike the 3 – 5 grams of protein per pound of body weight a day that your being told you need by supplement companies and the muscle heads that buy into their ads, one gram of protein per pound of body weight is all you need.
Always eat a huge breakfast. It really is the most important meal of the day. It will actually help you to be hungrier throughout the day as well. This will come in very handy when its time to pound a 500 calorie meal of healthy food.
You should never leave more than 3 hours between meals. This is the average rate at which our bodies can begin to digest and use the nutrients from our meals and you want to continually be providing your muscles with the nutrients they need to repair themselves from your training and grow.
Try to eat about 25% of your daily calories in foods high in unsaturated fats.
Finally, it is very beneficial to drink a carb/protein shake about 20 minutes before you train and then eat a meal right after your workout.
There are obviously many great tips that can be offered in this area but these are rules to die by if you want to stack on serious amounts of lean muscle mass. Make these principals the foundation of your muscle building diet and you will have no problem growing….we promise.
