Testing Week: Bench Press and Squat

In concluding our week of testing I must say that the athletes have put forth some amazing effort. It has been a great 6 weeks of early mornings and late nights working out and running that has really paid off.

Test 2 of 3- Bench Press
Why

1. Force Production- The bench press has an eccentric contraction followed by a concentric contraction. This is important because a concentric contraction is always more forceful when followed by an eccentric contraction. Utilizing the barbell bench press will also help you overload the movement in a controlled manner.

2. Psychological factor- This lift is pretty much universal on Mondays, the lift you compare yourself to others with, and what the random guy does when he has no plan. Also, coaches seem to mark a large majority of a programs success on this lift. Unfortunate...yes. However, if by raising up a group of these guy's bench will mentally make them feel "strong", it will surely help with confidence which goes a long ways in performance.

Things to keep in mind

Stabilize the scapula: "Back and Down!" This base provided by your upper back will stabilize the shoulder girdle to give you control over the bar.

Elbows Tucked: Flaring the elbows during the bench press will put your shoulders in a provocative position while applying more stress on them. Instead, tuck your elbows (approx 45 degrees) and let your triceps you work so hard on take over.

Stay tight: Often times with an athlete who is never taught proper technique, you will see butt off the bench and feet being kicked all over. This immediately takes away any advantage of force to transfer from your lower body/core as you are destabilizing your body. Feet digging into ground, glutes tight, stomach contracted...lift off!

Test 3 of 3- Back Squat
Why

1. Starting Strength- developing force at the beginning of a muscular contraction and the capacity to overcome resistance and initiate movement is something of extreme importance in sport especially in football.

2. Ground Based Compound Movement: There is simply not a better way to load the entire body while standing on two feet. The hip extension, knee/core stabilization, and glute strength needed to complete a proper back squat, can develop these muscle regimes to great capacities.

Why not

There are some athletes on the team that either have underlying injury issue, insufficient hip mobility, or other means serve to better suite there body type. For these athletes a heavy dose of RFESS and/or they are put on the single leg squat progression until they are able to complete a back squat efficiently.

The athletes have performed much better than expected. in our core lifts. Average bench increases were around 20 pounds with our biggest at 45# increase going to 350 from 305. Squat were similar with increases ~30# and some incredible leaps around 75-100 pounds with some athletes (can somebody say honeymoon stage?)

The team couldn't have gotten off to a better start leading into Spring practices. From here we plan on still making some great gains in strength and speed leading into our pre-season phase. Until then I will be sure to keep all updated with our programming, progressions, and results.