An Overview of Physical Preparation for the
High School Football Player
Jason Eisenman CSCS
INTRODUCTION
W
ith considerably low re-sources and large pools of virtually untapped
potential, high school athletics lends itself to being benefitted most
greatly by the addition of a strong physical preparation program.
After
experiencing some of the most thought out, well organized “strength and
conditioning” programs and getting to coach some of the most gifted athletes
in the country at the Division I level, I have come to observe that we often
make physical preparation far more complicated than it ought to be. Having
the good fortune to return to the high school level, I have seen the positive
effects quality physical preparation can have on the performance of a high
school athlete.
This article briefly outlines the structure of a yearlong
training regimen for high school football players and points out some of the
areas in which most programs seem to miss the mark.
THE ROLE OF PHYSICAL PREPARATION
In America, strength and conditioning coaches tend to overvalue their own
importance.
Dana LaDuc, strength and conditioning coach for the Miami
Hurricanes during the legendary Erickson era of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s
must have been regarded as the best strength coach in the country. However,
it is not hard to look like you’re doing something right when the likes of
Michael Irvin, Warren Sapp, Vinny Testeverde, and Ray Lewis are coming
through your system.
That being said, athletes can be compared to muscle
cars in the following analogy.
Think of two football players as two stock Ford Mustangs. If able to make
the same modifications to both (representing different training methods),
such as new exhaust, high efficiency computer unit, etc., you would expect
the two cars to perform identically.
However, if one of Mustangs came with a turbo-charged V-10 engine as compared to the other’s V-8, the one with the smaller engine would always come
up short when all else is equal. These different size engines portray the
role that genetics plays in athletic success.
Nevertheless, Cal Dietz and Ben Peterson point out in their book Triphasic
Training that while all athletes certainly possess a genetic ceiling that
limits potential, every athlete can improve.
After all, hard work beats
talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
It is precisely at the high school
level where coaches can elicit the type of adaptations which will allow hardworking athletes to beat their more gifted counterparts and for the genetic
freaks to reach unthinkable heights.
While doing so isn’t exactly rocket
science, it does require a basic understanding of physical preparation and a
methodical approach.
APPROACH
Coaches in the US get side-tracked in the proper approach to training their
athletes. We commonly hear references to getting “bigger, stronger, faster,”
although these three characteristics don’t necessarily correlate with one
another.
Often times we make our athletes bigger without ac-companying
strength gains, or we make them stronger and yet see no increase in speed.
Former LSU track coach and co-founder of Schexnayder and Cook Training
Systems (sacspeed.com), Boo Schexnayder observes that this is commonly due to
strength and conditioning coaches’ misconceptions about speed development.
We are so prone to setting our aim on increasing 1RM figures for exercises
like the bench, parallel squat and power clean. Somehow though, even after a
middle linebacker squats 425 pounds, he cannot propel his 200 pound body to
greater than a 23” vertical jump.
The explanation for this strange
phenomenon lies in a concept known as Rate of Force Development (RFD). RFD
refers to an athlete’s ability to not only pro-duce high maximal force, but
the rate at which he or she can produce that force.
This is shown on the
classic force production curve (Figure 1) [6].
Power output is shown on the Y-axis, relative to time on the X-axis. While
many athletes are capable of producing great amounts of maximal force, it may
also take them great amounts of time to develop that force. This is depicted
by a long, gradual slope on the force production curve. This is great if you
are training powerlifters; however, the problem is that athletes in anaerobic
sports, such as football, do not have that much time to produce the force
used to execute sport specific movements.
Figure 2 lists several athletic
movements and the amount of time an athlete has to execute such a movement.
We can see then how athletes who can move a ton of weight on a barbell may
never improve in the parameters used to measure athleticism such as vertical
jump or 40-yard dash time. Figure 3 demonstrates how two athletes who share
a 1RM bench might end up performing vastly different in the shot put event
[2].
Ben’s force production curve, shown by the blue line, indicates a
higher RFD than Tommy, as seen by the steeper slope on the graph. While they
both reach the same max force value, Ben produces it in less time, which
allows him to utilize more force in the 0.18 seconds he has to act upon the
shot (Figure 2).
With catchphrases like “Speed Kills” and “Fast is The New Strong” becoming
more popular, many coaches have recently paid more homage to the necessity of
speed training in sport. Few, however, have actually been able to attain the
speed from which those phrases were born. Perhaps a remedy for many of the
frustrations shared by strength and conditioning coaches across the country
is gaining a better understanding of true speed training.
I have had the privilege of being part of a program that develops speed the
proper way, and the results are truly amazing. Although much of the credit
must be given to the athletes themselves as well as their position coaches,
we were able to see a group of football players go into games against teams
that were, on average, much larger and out-perform them by tremendous
lengths, through the duration of the season.
One key component to this
success is true speed training.
TRUE SPEED TRAINING
On
his
website,
Coach
Schexnayer offers several
guidelines for, what he
considers to be, the only
effective way to improve
speed.
Simply put, he
teaches that in order to
be fast, you need to be
fast.
This may seem
rather basic, but it is a
point that gets missed
time and time again. People get carried away with the assumption that more
is better; running more equals getting better. This is not the case. The
truth, though, is that a specific set of conditions needs to be present for
speed development to take place.
First, I must distinguish between running at a maximal rate and giving
maximum effort. Let’s say a high school cornerback can run the 40-yard dash
in 4.55 seconds.
If he were to run eight of these in a row with only 30
seconds rest, he might try as hard as he can while fatigue causes him to
cross the line in a slow 5.32 seconds. In fact, if his time gets up above
4.94 seconds (<93% of full sprint), he would actually cause his body to
become slower. This is why Coach Schexnayer prescribes lots of recovery
between reps. In the case of speed training, it is better to underdo it than
to overdo it.
Keep the volumes and distances short to allow for high
intensities.
He recommends using a distance of 10-30m for acceleration
training and 40-60m to train absolute speed.
While speed training should be incorporated during all phases of training,
athletes cannot undergo this type of stress every day. Approximately half of
all training days should be devoted to high intensity, sprint-type work. The
rest of the time and the remaining training days can then be spent building
the other qualities that make up the total football player.
THE TOTAL FOOTBALL PLAYER
Coach Brendan Gonring, Head Physical Preparation Coach at Brookfield East
High School defines Physical Preparation as “a long term process in which the
basic motor abilities, work capacity, special strength, and sport form are
developed over the four years of high school, and ideally beginning even
earlier.” In order to reach this goal, he says that three components must be
present throughout the entire training year.
These components are 1.) The
development of work capacity, 2.) Speed training, and 3.) Strength training.
These three components comprise what I consider to be a “total football
player”.
As much as we would like to simply hammer all three of these areas throughout
the course of the entire year, that is not the best approach.
As an old
Chinese saying states, “It is an unwise hunter who chases two rabbits!” In a
similar regard, we are foolish to attempt to develop all three of these
qualities simultaneously.
The reason for this lies in Selye’s General
Adaptation Syndrome.
Dr. Hans Selye discovered that stress was an all-encompassing stimulus. What
this means is that the human body does not interpret single stimuli but
rather interacts with stress as a whole in such a way as to produce
homeostasis. With that in mind, if an athlete were to perform several short
sprints with full recovery in between followed by a slow, four mile jog, his
body would be confused, as it would not know which stimulus to adapt to.
That is why we must structure our year, giving distinct priority to
particular goals throughout training cycle, while incorporating all three
components.
STRUCTURE
When structuring a yearlong training plan, the sequence of training
parameters to be used, starting with the offseason and moving toward the
competitive season, should be as follows: 1.) General Fitness, 2.) Maximum
Strength, 3.) Strength Endurance and Power, and 4.) Maximum Speed.
As we look at high school athletics these days, general fitness is often
lacking. Despite an average play only lasting three to six seconds, almost
an entirely alactic environment, developing the aerobic system will aid in
recovery between these alactic bouts as well as contribute to the overall
health of the athlete.
Work capacity can be developed through the
implementation of aerobic running, tempo runs, extensive speed/power drills
and circuit training.
This may also help athletes attain a more desirable
body composition.
Maximum strength is undoubtedly the parameter we have the least trouble
using, as it probably gets focused on a little too much. The reality is that
just about anything you do with high school football players with lead to
gains in muscle mass and strength over time.
If you were to consistently
dump a large pile of rocks in a field and tell the team to move them from one
location to another, most kids at that age will see adaptation from it.
Nevertheless, to be more systematic about things, here we apply the principle
of progressive over-load. Begin with simple exercises, using little external
loading early on.
As the athlete becomes more capable, you need to
“overload” him by increasing volume, intensity or frequency.
You can also
progress him to more challenging exercises as he demonstrates safe execution.
Next we must begin taking the strength we have gained in the last phase of
concentration and converting it to power.
Additionally we need to add
strength endurance to that strength.
The difference between power and max
strength is the time component. During this phase we place more emphasis on
speed of execution, decreasing intensity slightly and incorporating more
explosive type exercises, such as med ball exercises and plyometrics. While
still using near maximal loads, obtain strength endurance by slowly
decreasing rest intervals and increasing total volume of work performed.
Lastly, and the ultimate goal for sport performance is maximum speed methods.
At this stage, it is “useful for a physical preparation coach to develop a
great deal of understanding of the technical aspects of the sport, as they
are required by position, and as they relate to the energetic and mechanical
demands experienced through-out the game and practice” (Gonring). The coach
now can introduce special exercises that more closely mimic a movement or
part of a movement performed by a particular position group during gameplay.
It is crucial that the exercises utilize the same speed of execution as seen
in competition.
Also important is being sure that movements are being
performed using proper mechanics as required by each position.
When a basic layout like the one briefly described above is utilized in
planning a yearlong training routine, high school players can come to have
enormous advantages over their opponents.
The area that I wished to
highlight most was feel it is where we most commonly miss the mark and where
I had missed the mark for years as an athlete and as a coach. Remember that
Force = mass x acceleration. That being said, if given the choice, I will
take a team full of somewhat smaller, explosive athletes over one comprised
of meathead bodybuilders or guys that simply take up space any day!
FINAL THOUGHTS
I can only hope that this article can serve to enhance your approach to the
physical preparation of high school football players or at least get you
thinking about altering some strategies.
I assume virtually no credit for
the information presented here, as I feel I have been extremely fortunate to
be under the care of some incredibly knowledgeable coaches. That in mind, I
continually strive to learn more and rethink what I already know, as we all
should.
Lastly, do not undervalue the motivational aspects of coaching. At the end
of the day, an average program that is well coached will yield better results
than the “perfect plan” if not administered well.
Coach Gonring at
Brookfield East High School has done an extraordinary job to create a culture
of players who buy in and are motivated to get better. Not the least of the
qualities he instills in his athletes is discipline. No matter how good the
program is, the athlete will not succeed if preparation is not done
correctly. Coach Gonring seems to have all of the above going for him and
the Spartans, which has been a large factor in the team’s success in recent
seasons. I consider myself fortunate to be part of such a program and look
forward to leading a program much like this one and shepherding younger
physical preparation coaches.
If you have any questions or comments
regarding this article, please feel free to contact me by phone (262) 9230499 or email: jeisenma@umn.edu.
Jason T. Eisenman is Assistant Physical Preparation Coach at Brookfield East
High School
REFERENCES
1. Caterisano, T. & Gentry, M. (2005). A Chance to Win: A Complete Guide
to Physical Training for Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing
L.L.C.
2. Dietz, C. & Peterson, B. (2012). Triphasic Training: A Systematic
Approach to Elite Speed and Explosive Strength Performance
3. Gonring, Brendan (2010). Key Concepts in Preparation of the American
Football Sportsman. Retrieved from
http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/sports-training/keyconcepts-in-preparation-of-the-american-football-sportsman/
4. Gonring, Brendan. BEHS Physical Preparation. Retrieved from
http://spartans.elmbrookschools.org/page/show/641195-philosophy.
5. Schexnayder, Boo. Developing Speed in the High School Athlete.
Retrieved from
http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0036/8416/developingspeed_b
oo_schexnayder
6. Zatsiorsky, VM. Kraemer WJ (2006). Science and Practice of Strength
Training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.