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.

Missing Reps=Missing Out

Everyone who has ever been a part of the iron game for an extended period of time knows what missing reps can do for your progress. Often, inexperienced lifters will set themselves up for failure when they see a prescribed amount of reps with out any inclination as to what weight they will be using. Usually the athlete will load the bar with some absurd weight and fall short by a couple reps or call on the great spotting assistance of their partner to finish them out. This is why it is hard for me to simply prescribe lets say 4x5 and expect all the athletes to take progressive fatigue, subjective readiness, and RPE into account and complete every rep. Because when you miss reps the thing you are missing out on is progress.

The solution that I utilize is relative intensities. As stated before I use a form of the 531 method to prescribe the reps for the athletes. In the first cycle we used 90% of their one rep max to calculate the intensity of the lifts which is called their workout max. They then find the percentage for the lift based off this number. Here is an example of a running backs current set up:

Max Bench 310
Workout max:280

The significance of working under your max is that it makes it nearly impossible to miss the recommended reps prescribed. But you may ask how then do they attain progressive overload? The beauty of this system is that on the last set you perform until technical failure. This takes care of subjective readiness by giving them an easily attainable weight that they should get at least the prescribed reps. So if they are not feeling great that day they should still be able to complete the reps. But when feeling great this also allows them to push up the RPE by working the last set up to a rep max close to or passing the previous PR. In the end we don't get missed reps, guys are setting PR's because they are able to get in the needed volume to progress, and the psychological aspect of knowing you have to get as many reps as possible makes the athletes focus hard on surpassing previous PR's. Here is that same running backs results from today's workout:

2 weeks later
Prescribed reps-3
Prescribed percentage-98
Last set-275x6=320 PR!

This has been a regular occurrence with many athletes on many of the lifts many whom had plateaued coming into the season. This has been largely due to the fact that they are no longer missing reps. Not only does missing these reps on a prescribed set render it nearly useless, the mental tole from the shear disappointment has a negative effect on the rest of the workout too. Remember, competitors hate to fail at anything. Missing reps is failure. With the next cycle coming on quick and therefore the increase in relative intensity, I am excited to see the numbers continue to climb.

My workout numbers: Block 4

I am rapidly approaching the end of the 4th block and will already be in my Strength Endurance mini-cycle tomorrow (dreading every minute). So far, My strength numbers have been continually increasing and am very confident in my next block that they will continue to get much higher although that is not the focus.

Bench:360x1 :just missed 375 for major PR :(

Squat:455x2: probably could have squeezed out three but this lift has been climbing very steadily and is the first time in several months since I have heavily loaded up a full back squat.

High Incline sprints: 37: Feel like the first 15 are a breeze but after about 20-25 it hits hard.

In just over a week or so i will move on to my next block focusing on POWER. I love max strength work but being explosive and fast is something I love training for. This will be an exciting block to log. Ankle is feeling great and the ROM is getting better by the week. I have really been focusing on some long duration stretches for my quads and lateral rotaters and hitting the foam roller (PVC) hard as always. Will be sure to post results in the near future and am guaranteeing some increases...hopefully.

Block 2 Started TODAY!!

After a week of transition/unloading I now begin my next block which is the same basic mean and methods but the intensity is high. I am sure it will take more will power than strength or endurance to get me through this one, but nevertheless, it's what I need.
Day 1
Jump Rope, 1 leg line jumps, Dot drillx2
1A: CG Bench w/ 4 heavy chains-3x3 @ 205, 215, 225
2A: 1 Arm Row-3x8 @75
2B: Cable Lit-2x8
3A: ITY On incline-2x10
3B: Cable ISO hold-2x25sec
3C: Ext Rotation on knee-2x12
ESD: FT capacity-Incline treadmill 7-8 sec by 15 sprints in 20 min

Not bad for 6 AM!! Due to work in the afternoon I had to do my ESD right after lifting session. I might try and do these on Sunday because it is much harder to get HR down!!

Week 3 Day 1 Upper Body and FT Capacity

AM:ESD-Fast Twitch Capactiy
KB Jumps @ 35# 3 series of 10x10 seconds on 45,30,30 off.

PM: Strength
Dot Drill and various ladder drills
1A: Bench 3x3,2,1 @ 330,350,350
2A: Chest Supp. Row 3x5 @145
3A: Cable Lift 2x12
3B: Face pull 2 ext rotation 2x12
3C: GHR Trunk Pulse

Peak HR for ESD was 140 which makes me feel like I have improved my capacity a lot in this short time.

Day 1 Upper Body Strength and FT capacity

Warm Up and Foam Roll
1A:Bench press-2x3@315,350

2A:Chest Supp Row-3x4@125 all

3A:Face pull w/ ext rotation
3B:Cable Lift
3C:GHR Abdominal pulsing

ESD:KB Jumps: 3 series of 10sets X 10sec/60 off all under AT
Workout preparedness:8
PWO fatiue:7
Quick and easy for my first workout of introductory week.