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B reaking down each seasonal phase of your strength and conditioning program throughout the calendar year is a must.

But before we outline the entire year, let’s devise a plan for summer workouts. Here’s a complete plan divided into two phases for your summer workouts. Careful observation should have been done after the winter workouts to identify a lack of development in certain areas. Any issues such as flexibility, reaction times, or proprioception must be identified and dealt with. What did you like from the winter program and what didn’t you like? Were drills/exercises too time con-suming? Is the workout too demanding or not hard enough for players? These issues need to be recognized and addressed in summer work-outs. Identifying strengths and weakness is im-portant before every seasonal phase. By now, your players should have a solid foundation so they can meet the rigorous de-mands of summer training. Weak areas should be eliminated and technique should be at its peak in all Olympic lifts and all exercises/drills for that matter. Leaders should be established and a com-petitive atmosphere should be seen daily. When creating an outline for this seasonal phase, know the total amount of weeks your athletes can workout. This will exclude vacation weeks and scheduled off weeks. For us, the first 2-4 weeks of training would be the duration of summer phase I, while the last 4-6 weeks com-plete summer phase II. A back down week is in-corporated at week 5, allowing optimal recovery and a smooth transition between phases. The time line of phases I and II can be adjusted according to the amount of time given off by your school. Whatever your schedule, summer workouts can give your team that extra edge to compete for a

By John Marano • Strength and Conditioning Coach • Fairmont State University

championship. These workouts are perhaps the most challenging to players and, if executed cor-rectly, they can prove to be the most beneficial. As summer phase I kicks off, we start in a 4-day training split. This split will remain the same for 2-4 weeks where we start the hyper-trophy phase while working toward the max strength cycle. For the most part, Monday in-corporates speed training, Olympic lifts, lower body lifts, and posterior work. When lifts are completed, we move to core training, which will change daily and progress week-to-week. Next, we work balance and functional training. This is more sport-specific to football as well as position-specific. One example would be a receiver performing a single leg stance on a bosu ball while work-ing a medicine ball chest pass. Another would be a defensive lineman working stability push-

ups with each hand placed on a separate stabil-ity ball. We follow this with injury-prevention exercises. Here, we work on neck development, rotator cuff for the shoulder, ankle strength, mo-bility of joints, etc. Within all of these areas are hundreds of exercises, which we work daily and progress each week. The final area we work on, and, perhaps, most important, is a total body stat-ic stretch. Flexibility should be worked on daily. On Tuesday, we work on jerks, upper body lifts, lower body plyometrics, and agility/con-ditioning. Wednesday, we have a team yoga session, and the day is also used for those who have special needs (rehab, prehab, flexibil-ity, mobility). On Thursday we again work on speed training, Olympic lifts, lower body lifts, posterior lifts, and some upper body plyomet-rics. On Friday, we begin with jerks, upper body lifts, and lower/upper body plyometrics. When

the workout is complete, we finish with conditioning. As you can see in the chart, we focus on core work every training day with ad-ditional work on balance, functional training, and in-jury prevention on those re-

Fairmont State’s Summer Strength Program

Phase 1 and Phase 2 charts are available at www.AmericanFootballMonthly.com.

If you are not a subscriber, you can become one by going to the web site.

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Strength Report continued on page 49

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THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE spective days. What you don’t see are the differ-ent routines associated with speed development, conditioning, etc. You must be creative when de-termining what drills your players are performing on a given day. The drills/exercises you choose and related progression of these drills should be in accordance to your training philosophy and team needs. Another determining factor is the rate at which your team is making progress. You cannot implement something new in a workout if your players aren’t achieving success with the current training. Also not shown in the chart are the sets, reps, and percentages associated with different lifts. What may work for one strength program may not work for another. Your team will have dif-ferent weaknesses you will want to address sep-arately and you may also want to progress with higher weight percentages at a later time in the workout or even in a different strength phase. Adjust your sets, reps and percentages accord-ing to your teams needs. Some lifts may require one set while others may need 3-5 sets. In phase II, the 4-day split now switches to a 3-day total body split. Phase II has many simi-larities when compared to phase I. On Monday, you perform Olympic lifts, lower body speed, upper body volume and lower body plyomet-rics. On Tuesday, you have speed development and light conditioning. Wednesday’s workout consists of a lower body volume, max effort up-per body, agility and conditioning. Thursday is your second speed day also with an emphasis on skill development. Friday incorporates Olympic lifts, lower body max effort, upper body max effort, upper/lower body plyometrics followed with agility and conditioning. When training for speed, workouts during summer phase I and II should be designed spe-cifically to increase stride length and stride fre-quency so athletes can develop that explosive stride for both linear and lateral movement. These workouts start out with basic speed me-chanics, which work on running form and tech-nique. As you progress from week-to-week, ad-vance your drills to focus more on acceleration, deceleration, and reaction timing, improving both short bursts and longer range distances. Also imperative during these speed workouts are the rest intervals for each drill. A good out-line to follow would be a 2:1 rest ratio on short sprint drills roughly 10-30 yards. Longer sprint drills, 40 -100 yards, would require a 3:1 or 4:1 rest ratio. These ratios differ according to the level of conditioning of your team. So if you need to, these measurements can be adjusted. A key emphasis when working to increase your players speed is to allow a full recovery from the previous sprint. Energy systems are restored and another all-out sprint may be per-formed. Remember, if an athlete is not running at 100% max speed from a rested state, then an increase in overall burst and acceleration cannot be achieved.

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When focusing on skill, agility, and conditioning keep in mind that drills need to be position-specific and progressively changed week-to-week. Agility should be coordinated with position coaches to ensure that the right body actions are being addressed. The same goes for position skill development. This is where your players work on related skills including techniques used on the field and developing the proper body movements/footwork according to each position. All your skills used in a game should be worked on and perfected throughout the course of training. Set the standards of your conditioning with a purpose. First, divide your players into three conditioning groups (small, medium, big). These groups can be run at separate times throughout the day or as a team. We use many different conditioning methods (20’s, 40’s, 60’s, 80’s 100’s, shuttles, gassers, stadium stairs, band resistance training, etc.). You should always progress into longer distances during workouts and, with each conditioning session, intensity should increase from week to week. You can spark more interest in players through agility course competitions and incorporating a reward system by achieving conditioning times. At the end of summer workouts, we hold a conditioning test for players who had trained at school the whole summer. The conditioning test will keep players motivated and hold them accountable. Those who pass the test boast a sense of accomplishment and get that mental edge leading into the season. Most of what you do in your program is also dependent on staffing and facilities. You must know the limitations of your facility and identify the number of coaches helping out. More importantly, you need to know your equipment, how much you have, what you have, and what you actually use? We have four half-rack platforms, so that gives us eight stations potentially to work with when training Olympic and power lifts. Identify the space you have in your facility so training groups can be created. That way, players train in an efficient manner and you can control the tempo and intensity. The last thing you would want is a traffic jam of players waiting to complete a set. We organize our players in separate training groups that are spaced throughout the course of a day. In these training group, we have teams of three players that are partnered according to size/strength/position. You can’t waste time when working out. So organize how many groups you need, the number of athletes in a team and coordinate each workout with precision. Hopefully, now you have a sense of what you want to achieve in summer workouts. u

About the Author: John Marano is the Outside Linebackers Coach and Director of Strength and Conditioning for Fairmont State University. He previously served as a graduate assistant at FSU and also worked as an intern at West Virginia. Marano was captain of the Fairmont State team in 2006. He received his undergraduate degree in 2007 and his Master’s in 2009.

Strength Report continued from page 9

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