College Football Recruiting Made Simple

I have had a total of 4 College Football Strength and Conditioning Coaches. Well I redshirted so I was there for a total of 5 years, 4 coaches in 5 years. Thats the business aspect for you, coaches get fired, or they get better job offers. Anyhow all of their training regimes varied greatly. Some were based on short rest intervals, others were based lifting intense for a short period of time, while others incorporated explosive and Olympic style lifting. Some had me and my teammates like what is this all about. Others had us getting stronger and gaining weight. Oh I can’t forget, some had us puking.

Lifting Schedule

Every football based workout that I have been apart of has always been a 2 day split workout, with the exception of during season. A 2 day split work out is when you go 2 days back to back then take a day off then go 2 days back to back then usually take the weekends off. So it would be:

Monday Tuesday Lift

Wednesday OFF

Thursday Friday Lift

Saturday Sunday OFF

The 2 day split is very common amongst football programs on every level. The reason there is an exception during the season is because of the time. Your body needs proper rest and recovery to grow. Add in practice and class and a 4 times a week workout and your body just would be physically drained.

Types of Lifting

The first lift I remember in College was the Snatch Squat. It is an Olympic based lift where you come out of a clean position and you clean the bar up instead of to the normal position you snatch it right over your head. That was the first thing we would do to start our leg work. Then we would go into cleans and squats, front squats. One thing I will say about my college workouts, they all had a kickass abdominal workout at the end. If I was eating right I would’ve had the 12 pack. I’ll touch on that in the next paragraph. My thing was I was really small I only weighed 228 when I reported to camp. I was an Olineman.

Nutrition

I think Coach S almost said it best when I told him I wanted abs and he said I couldn’t get them until I stopped playing football. Well I did finally get abs last summer. I started my quest weighing 285lbs. And I got down to about 270 and I lost so much body fat it was surreal. The book that helped me I owe a lot to that book. Anyhow I won’t go into grave detail but I will say that you have to be discipline. Strict dieting, Cardio, and will power. Coach was right I couldn’t really do it while playing football. As an Olineman I needed that extra weight. But if you do it right you won’t lose a lot of weight you will lose a lot of body fat. Some of these lineman in the Scouting Combine are in pretty good shape, I bet they get good nutrition.

Biggest Mistakes

In my honest opinion some of the biggest mistakes I see are the following:

Not believing in your program or workout regimen
Distractions in the weight room -Music being played or just flat out talking to much
Not going until failure
Not using a chart

The first one Not believe in your program or workout regimen;

Some people get discouraged because they don’t see results, or they don’t see the results they want to see. Like for example they see their shoulders or traps getting bigger but they don’t have abs so they feel it isn’t working. You have to stay encouraged and stay with it. My old trainer Mark said it best “You didn’t get fat overnight” Basically meaning that it takes time to lose weight just like it takes time to gain weight, so be patient and persistent.

The second Distractions in the weight room -Music being played or just flat out talking too much.

Some people are easily distracted. My teammates would always get into over music being played. Either hip hop or rock and roll. I like hip hop but I’ll listen to rock and roll. But my purpose in the weight room is to workout. I didn’t care what we listened to but it would sometimes get out of hand then our coach would give us an attitude about it, then it just created a negative environment to be working out in. As far as talking too much I’ll admit it everyone has been a victim of this. But after I graduated and started to train with Mark I learned the importance of rest intervals, or the amount of time you need to take between reps and sets. In my regimen this is crucial because the pace that I lift at is similar to an HIIT* workout. It is kind of like doing Cardio, when you look at the intensity and rest intervals.

The third mistake I see is not lifting to failure.

Jason finally got it right today. I’m benching 325 for my last set of 4 reps. I bang out 3 and I know he wanted to pull on my 4th, I wanted to get it but if I didn’t then of course he should pull. A few times in the past I was going to get my 4th rep and he would pull the bar too early…So bottom line is on my bench press today I lifted until failure. Often times people will be in a rythym and just stop for no reason, assuming that they couldn’t bang out their last rep.

The final mistake that I notice in the weight room now is a lot of people just come to the gym with no chart, pen and paper or nothing.

I have always lifted with a chart and if for some reason I didn’t have a chart I would write down everything that I did in the weight room. For weeks I see the same people in the gym not getting any stronger doing the same lifts, not charting their progress. Then they’ll ask me for advice. Its funny because the first thing I ask them is “where is your chart” they usually say “Oh I see you got one, Can you give me one” Now I’m not in the business of free workouts I mean I did pay for the book Best Regimen Ever.
Anyhow Chart Your Progress. Now what you are doing on a weekly basis you can’t set a goal for next week if you don’t know where you are at now and where you started at. Most High School and College Programs provide you with workout regimens that include a chart or clip board of some type.

In Closing

In closing if you are a football player you will encounter numerous regimens and routines by the end of your College Football career. And if you want abs its more nutrition than anything. And if you have a teammate who has never been fat, of course they are going to say just do a lot of crunches…Meanwhile their metabolism is so high that they could eat a whole pizza then some ice cream and not be bothered one bit. Oh and one other thing I just thought I’d mention I found the best regimen for myself once I left College. Best Regimen.
Until Next time…

I buy my supplements from: Bulk Nutrition

RMCFE

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.