Off- Season Football Training

Football season will be over soon for most kids except for the high school players who will be participating in the playoffs. A lot of my football clients will be itching to get back to training - some of them have already started.

For my youth - junior high players, we just continue to build on the foundation that was established in prior programs. We take a look at any nagging injuries and aches and pains and try to eliminate them with corrective exercises. Other than that, the goal is pretty simple - develop proper technique and progress from there. Since most of these kids play basketball, baseball, hockey, ect., I may only see them for a short period of time and then they are right back to a season.

It seems that most of my high school football players do not play another sport - if they play basketball or wrestle I don't see them till spring. Taken that into consideration, there is no hurry to get into intense speed training, plyometrics and conditioning. We have 7 months before summer training starts and 9 month until 2 a days. We are going to take the first month to re-establish proper techniques, correct weaknesses, improve flexibility and improve work capacity. In the strength and conditioning world, this phase is called General Preparation.

For the kids who I know will eventually have to work out with their team, we work on the lifts that will be performed at school. A lot of high school kids have trouble with back squats and power cleans, so my goal is to teach them these lifts to greatly reduce the risk of injury from doing them incorrectly. As I teach them, I look for the reason WHY they are not doing them correctly. Is it poor flexibility? Lack of core strength? Weak hips and glutes? I then assign exercises that will correct the weakness and allow them to perform the squat better. As the off- season moves into the new year, we will continue to check on technique even though they are still doing the lifts at school. It's simple - If you are not lifting correctly, you are not getting stronger!

Stay tuned to the blog and I will be posting video clips of the common exercises we use at SOAR for our football players.