Football is a physical sport. It demands strength, power, explosiveness, and speed. There is no denying the fact that in the sport of football, big bodies make big hits at breakneck speeds.

Because of the physicality of the sport, athletes need to have a strong, muscular frame to withstand the pounding the body takes from hits, blocks, tackles, and being brought to the ground.

The best way for athletes to train their body is for their coaches to have them perform resistance training exercises with lifting weights. And because the sport of football has other demands around speed and explosiveness, besides lifting weights, it is also a good idea for coaches to have athletes train using plyometric exercises and speed specific drills.

So what are the best lifts, exercises and drills coaches should be having their athletes perform?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Football Positions

Technical Coordination Lifts

Absolute Strength Lifts

Plyometric Exercises

Speed Drills

The Bottom Line

Football Positions

The sport of football has many positions, all with unique attributes and skill sets. A quarterback needs to have a strong and accurate throwing arm, as well as nimble feet to keep their poise within the pocket.

Wide receivers need to be agile and fast. They need to be able to run past defensive backs and run routes with precision.

Running backs need to be physically imposing to take on tacklers and body up to block that blitzing linebacker in pass protection. Running backs also need to be fast and agile enough to take it to the house.

Offensive linemen are big bodies. Husky folk who have nimble feet like dancers and imposing frames like giants. Offensive linemen need to be able to push heavy bodies, hold firm in pass protection, and have that explosive capability to pancake a defender when pulling.

Defensive positions are similar, except they all need to be able to react to what the offensive team is doing, which is a big brain task.

The defensive lineman need to be able to stuff the run, hold their gap responsibility, and pressure the quarterback, preferably leading to sacks.

Linebackers need to cover, scrape, and stand up to the physicality of the interior while having the gumption and speed to hold firm with route running running backs, tight ends, and receivers.

Then the defensive back core has to keep everything underneath, be speedy running backwards, and also be able to come up on the line of scrimmage in run support when necessary.

No matter the position, the physical demands in the sport of football are a plenty. That’s why lifting and resistance training with weights is so important.

Technical Coordination Lifts

Technical coordination lifts are the epitome of moving heavy weight fast. Technical coordination lifts are movements like the snatch, clean, and jerk, movements performed in the sport of weightlifting. Technical coordination lifts also include all the variations and derivatives of the snatch, clean, and jerk.

With football players, here are three technical coordination lifts that are perfect for developing speed, explosive power, and strength.

Power Clean: The power clean requires some big time strength and some big time explosiveness. It is a movement that is done with rapid extension from the hips, knees, and ankles and transfers incredibly well to coming off the line, acceleration on the field, and making big, powerful hits at the point of contact.

Two Block Snatch: Using two blocks for the snatch puts football athletes in that typical quarter squat starting position that so many athletes start the beginning of the play in. Learning how to generate power quickly and explosively from such a position helps football athletes a ton. The snatch also has the added benefit of having the barbell go over head to increase strength in the upper limbs; it is also a great movement for developing and maintaining mobility in the hips, ankles, and thoracic spine.

Linebacker Jerk: The jerk is the fastest movement of them all. The linebacker jerk eliminates the eccentric portion of the dip and is all concentric drive. The movement is fast, explosive, and incredible at developing hitting power on the field.

Absolute Strength Lifts

Absolute strength lifts are exercises that develop raw, unbridled strength. Heavy weight, maximal effort of type of movements.

For football, there are two exercises that rule the roost.

Back Squat: The back squat is awesome for developing maximal strength in the legs. It does a great job of developing the quads and glutes, and contributes to stronger, bigger hamstrings as well, especially when done with a full range of motion. Coaches also need to remember that added benefit of all the core strength developed when squatting under heavy loads.

Bench Press: The upper body needs to be trained to be as strong as possible. And when it comes to pressing strength, the bench press has nearly no equal. The bench press is a compound lift that allows athletes to move big weights, transferring to that ability to shed blockers and extend the arms into the pads.

Plyometric Exercises

Football is an open skill sport. In open skill sports there is a lot of unpredictability around what the body will need to do moment to moment. In closed skill sports, like a 100 meter sprint or shot put, the athletic skill that needs to occur is repeatable and has no outside force, like an opponent, changing what is done or how it needs to be done. Yes, the closed sport athlete is competing against the opponent but the opponent has no bearing on the athletic skill being performed. Which is not the case with the open skill sport of football. The opponent has a lot to say about what is being done in competitive play.

One big component of open skill sports is that because of the opponent, rarely does an athlete reach top end speed during play. Instead, the athletes are primarily in the realm of acceleration. Because of acceleration being so pivotal to football performance, it is valuable to train plyometrics, which are great for developing strength, explosiveness, twitchiness, elasticity, and the ability to accelerate.

Here are two phenomenal plyometric exercises a coach can have any football player perform:

Hurdle Hops: The hurdle hop is awesome because it has athletes jump over an object, which gives an intent, but it also has the athlete land in what is essentially a depth jump, only to have to jump over a hurdle again. The hurdle hop is simply a great movement.

Single Leg Bounds: Bounding in and of itself is great. Doing successive single leg bounds is awesome too! The single leg effort develops unilateral strength and explosiveness.

Speed Drills

Every football coach and athlete knows that speed is the name of the game. The faster an athlete is, the higher their likelihood of playing up at the next level.

Coaches and athletes need to think of speed development in three ways: acceleration, change of direction, and top end speed.

Having talked about acceleration with plyometrics, here lets focus on top end speed and change of direction.

Top end speed is straightforward. How fast is an athlete in the open field heading toward the end zone or cruising downfield to catch a fly?

Change of direction is more about agility. It is the ability to slow down the fastest and accelerate out of a cut. Putting on the brakes and maintaining a dynamic position is paramount with changing direction.

Here is a drill for both top end speed and change of direction:

Sprint: For top end speed, coaches need to simply have athletes sprint as fast as they can for various distances. 40 yard sprints, 100 meter sprints, or 200 meter sprints all work. Stress that a sprint is a max effort and is similar to working at 95%+ in a lift. The intensity needs to be present.

20 Yard Shuttle: Also known as the 5-10-5 drill, the 20 yard shuttle is awesome for change of direction development. Athletes performing the drill accelerate in and out of cuts multiple times, are asked to move laterally, and need to accelerate and put on the brakes to demonstrate their speed. It is simply a great drill.

The Bottom Line

Sports performance coaches need to be diligent in the exercises they pick for athletes to execute to develop athleticism, strength, speed, and explosiveness in the sport of football. Taking into account the needs of the sport and the open skill qualities necessary for athletes to succeed, it helps to understand that technical coordination lifts, absolute strength lifts, plyometrics, and speed drills are all necessary.

An effective football training session is one that is organized in a manner to ensure that the attributes of strength, explosiveness, speed, and endurance, too, are being developed in some capacity. Not all need to be developed on the same day, in the same way, or through the same manners, but all do need to be addressed and taken care of in relation to the sport of football by the strength and conditioning coach.

So if you’re an athlete or coach looking to have a solid football training program that takes into account strength, explosiveness, speed and endurance, head over to peakstrength.app and download Peak Strength to reap the benefits of an organized training session.

Later.