Football training requires a variety of workouts to help you improve cardiovascular and muscular fitness. Training different types of fitness all at once, however, will cause you to interfere with one type of conditioning when you work on another. Creating a preseason football workout that starts with a focus on limit strength and aerobic conditioning and shifts to speed and stamina will help you effectively get ready for the season.
Phase One
As you begin your football workouts, months prior to the start of your season, you'll want to work on building muscle size and aerobic conditioning. Build muscle using heavy weights such as the maximum you can lift of close to it. Use exercises such as biceps curls, flyes, bench presses, squats, lunges, leg presses, lat pulldowns and triceps extensions. Barbells and weight machines will help you lift heavier weights than will dumbbells, body-weight exercises or resistance bands. Perform three to five reps of each exercise and three to five sets of each exercise during a workout. Skip a day between workouts to give your muscles the recovery time that repairs them and makes them grow larger. If you want to work out every day, do upper-body one day and lower-body the next. Leave at least 24 hours between workouts if you want to work the same muscles every day. Do aerobic exercise using cycling, swimming, jumping rope, jogging or using exercise machines such as treadmills, exercise bikes or ellipticals. You should sweat while you work out but should be able to talk during your 30-minute or longer sessions.
Phase Two
As you get close to your season, you'll want to start training your heart, lungs and muscles in ways they'll be used during a game. For weight training, switch to muscular endurance exercises, with less weight and more reps. You can use dumbbells and resistance bands to perform squats, lunges, triceps extensions, biceps curls, flyes, chest presses, deadlifts, calf raises and arm raises. Create a circuit of calisthenics using push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, pull-ups, dips, chin-ups and unweighted lunges and squats. Perform eight to 12 repetitions, taking only one-minute breaks between sets during the course of a 30-minute workout. You can maintain an aerobic conditioning base with sprint training, according to exercise physiology researcher Jeff Chandler of Jacksonville State University. Begin training your cardiovascular system using short, high-intensity bursts of exercise with longer recovery times that simulate the play-and-stop nature of football. Start with 30-second sprints with 90 seconds of recovery, then move to 60- and 90-second sprints.
Phase Three
During the month leading up to your first game, you'll want to train your muscles for speed and power. Do this with exercises such as deadlifts, box squats, box jumps, reactive squats, bench jumps, giant steps across a field or gym, high-knee skips, sprinting. Focus on weighted, explosive movements in one direction and nonweighted, quick, up-and-down leg movements. For running drills, use resistance cords around your waist or chest, as well as running down hills to help create overspeed. Your cardio workouts should now be exclusively sprint training. Football is an anaerobic sport that uses high-twitch muscle fibers. Moderate-speed jogging for many minutes at a time not only trains your aerobic system, but the slower muscle fibers in your legs, according to Dr. Jack Groppel of the Human Performance Institute. Keep your training specific to the movements of football just before and throughout your season.
References
- Sports Fitness Advisor: The 12-Month Football Training Program
- "Conditioning for Strength and Human Performance"; Chandler, Brown
- "Addvantage": Train your Muscles for the Long or Short Run
- Brian Mac Sports Coach: Circuit Training Exercises
- BodyBuilding.com: The Best Exercises for Developing Speed & Vertical Jump
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