A poorly planned football strength workout can lead to injuries, lack of playing time, and decreased speed.

Football strength workouts can be extremely difficult to plan.

After all, your strength workouts determine how fast, strong and explosive you are for football. Unfortunately, most go about planning their workouts the complete wrong way.

Many simply rip their workouts out of some bodybuilding magazine that has absolutely nothing to do with football, and, worse yet, was written by some personal trainer who never played football past the pee-wee level!

This will only lead to poor results and disappointment.

The best option is to have a coach design them or buy pre-made football strength workouts. But, if you are low on funds, here are 3 rules to follow to make sure you are getting in good, solid, results-producing strength training workouts for football.

1. Pick Big, Compound Movements as the Base of Your Strength Training Program

You will focus your main exercise of the day on exercises like:

Squats
Front Squats
Bench Press
Incline
Deadlifts
Cleans

These are the base of any good football strength training program. They need to be done for heavy sets of relatively low reps.

We can’t all be 6’6 but we can all be as strong as humanly possible. Maximum strength is the base for all other aspects of athleticism. It controls quickness, explosiveness, speed, power…and lineman, Linebackers and backs need it in buckets.

Especially in high school, you’ll play guys who outweigh you by 30+ lbs. If you plan on beating that guy, you better be stronger than him. I know there are plenty of “high school players shouldn’t lift heavy for low reps and should therefore waste their careers’ doing 3 x 10” types out there, but, truth is, you need to lift heavy and get super strong.

Despite what many think, adding 5-lbs on to your 8-rep weight isn’t getting you stronger.

First, that kind of progression will dry up quickly. Second, the only way to really build strengthis to improve your raw strength. How much can you do for a single or a double? That’s what counts. In a cruel twist of fate, improving your 8-rep max does a big fat zero when it comes to increasing your 1-rep max.

That’s why all those % of max prediction charts are for the proverbial birds.

2. Follow up Heavy Movements with Assistance Exercises Done for Medium Reps

Assistance exercises are ones that help develop specific muscles or help build the mail lifts. Examples would be Bent Rows, One Arm Rows, Shrugs, Romanian Deadlifts, Band Leg Curls, Dumbbell Incline, etc.

There are several advantages to using higher reps for some of your football exercises:

-Higher reps can induce substrate uptake so that nutrients are partitioned into the lean “compartments” of the body and away from the fat ones.

-Induce metabolite build-up and ion transport

Bring blood and nutrients to the muscles, which can aid in growth and recovery Add lean body mass. The higher reps are great for those who need to put on weight to play their position.

-Can you gain significant size by only using low reps in your football training program?

Yes, to a point.

Even if you concentrated on reps of 4 and below and ate a diet consisting of high-quality protein and calories, you would gain. But, if you wish to accelerate the process and get even bigger, then the Rep Method will work wonders for you.

3. Always Include Speed Movements That Will Also Help You Get Faster for Football

Getting bigger and stronger for football is great…but you need to get faster as well.

You need to include high exercises in addition to all the heavy and high rep stuff.

Add in:

Clean and Snatch Pulls
Plyometric Jumps
Speed Squats
Kettlebell Swings
Sprints

Make sure these movements are done in your strength workouts at least twice a week. For getting faster for football, doing plyos before the first big exercise works wonders.