Credit to www.sportspecific.com Football Conditioning Program This program is to be completed starting 8 weeks before the beginning of the season.

We gathered some of our EFS staff members and several others to discuss the top five lifts for football players. All of them have experience training football players, and all of them have some different ideas. We edited out some of the banter and the cussing to get to the meat of the discussion. If you’re a football coach or a strength coach for football, check this out. It may give you some ideas.

I’ve been asked how I go about training athletes for speed, agility, and quickness (SAQ). This is something very practical for strength and conditioning coaches because while you can make an athlete stronger and more powerful using a strength program, if the athletes don’t have SAQ training, they take the chance of being out-performed on the field. Because it is currently training season for our high school football players, I’ll discuss how we train them.

Strength and conditioning/sports performance coaches are often faced with concerns about “individualizing” programs for their athletes. More times than not, it’s extremely difficult to make exact individual programs for every different athlete in the program. Although there are several different reasons for this, lack of time in the day is a large one (especially for the collegiate strength coach). Here at Northwestern State University (NSU), we developed a method for classifying our athletes to make their programs/training more individualized.

Credit goes to www.SportsspeedEtc.com Football is a game of speed, power, cutting, and agility. If players are not an explosive athlete football may not be the right sport. However, because football is a long duration game with relatively short rest periods between plays, especially in today's game of no-huddle or quick huddle play calling, you better be in shape or you won't survive.

As a strength coach, I am always looking at new methods of training to improve the conditioning of my athletes. I have recently incorporated rubber bands. The great thing about the bands is that they can expand on the basic lifts. Republished from www.Bodybuilding.com  Jim Massaro

Credit goes to www.higher-faster-sports.com

Credit goes to www.higher-faster-sports.comAlthough having an impressive 40-yard dash is probably the easiest way to get noticed by coaches and scouts, football requires more then just straight ahead (linear) speed. In fact, the over-value of straight ahead linear speed such as in the 40-yard dash has probably done quite a bit to prevent many from reaching their full potential as players. Improving the 40-yard dash will be covered in future installments but this article is about increasing speed specific to football. In a game of football, rarely does a player get a chance to run straight ahead for any length of time. Even when doing so, this is almost always followed by a need to stop and change direction. The speed quality that is really important for football is agility. You need the ability to change direction quickly and start and stop on a dime. You need the ability to react instantaneously to the opposition. You need lateral acceleration and the ability to run both forwards, backwards and sideways and always be ready to change direction and explode. The better you can do this, the better you will perform on the gridiron.