Footbal Training Program

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11-14 Year Old 15-16 Year Old 17-18 Year Old College and pro

Planning the Training Program

To speed up the process of developing absolute peak levels of strength, power, speed, agility and reaction, this program proposes a unique and unrivaled approach: periodization.

What is Periodization? How does it apply to Football Training?

To some people Periodization seems to be a foreign term. In reality, the term derives from “period”, as in a period of time.  In sports training, period refers to the different training phases organized during an annual plan. To achieve maximum performance training, a method must be planned and periodized in such a manner that ensures performance improvements through each phase, culminating or peaking during the football season and or playoffs. Periodization uses scientific principles to plan a program that will allow you to maximize your player’s potential, especially power and quickness, critical qualities in football.

Equally important to you and your players; applying the periodization phase-specific training methods, you’ll also maximize gains in power and quickness. Planning a highly needed, but short, recovery phases will assist you to minimize injuries and plateaus caused by over/uneducated training. Periodization allows you to design a program which encompasses all aspects of training appropriate for every player and at every point in their career. For example, after Adaptation, Hypertrophy (the training phase when you’ll build the foundations for the future training phases and is so important in your quest to increase muscle size and body weight, maximum strength, power and agility), is followed after the playoffs, by a Transition, or the off-season, phase. Each training phase is designed to lead into the next and is completed at the Conversion to Power section.  The Conversion to Power phase allows your player to transfer the power, speed and strength acquired in the gym into practical gains on the football field.

The Phases

Phase One: Adaptation Training

The Adaptation, or build-up, is the first phase of in what is known as the Periodization of Strength. This mode of training alternates better accommodates your player’s personal needs in terms of strengths, weaknesses, and the ability to peak for specific games and playoffs.

The main objectives of this phase are to involve and train all muscle groups, ligaments, tendons, and joints to endure the subsequent lengthy and strenuous training phases. Since this phase focuses on building-up the foundation of players’ strength potential, it should be initiated by strengthening the core areas, including the muscles supporting the spinal column and the trunk region of the body. This is especially important in younger players’, high school, and even collegiate players’. In order to become a powerful football player, the core area of the body must be stable enough to represent a support, to withstand the tremendous levels of force the players have to display, without conceding in either technical or tactical abilities. In other words, ones strength may be tremendous but without a strong core area the ability to apply that strength is minimized.

The purpose of this phase, in short, is not to focus on areas which the player is already strong, rather to adapt and strengthen other, lesser developed areas to improve the application of strength during the game.

Phase Two: Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy, or increased muscle mass, is on every players mind when training in the off-season.  The second phase will teach, for the first time, how to achieve gains in muscle without putting on useless fat and extra weight.  The Hypertrophy phase will be far more efficient than any other conventional bodybuilding program currently available, as it is designed not for a bodybuilder but a football player.  There is no benefit to gaining excess mass that you can’t apply, or gaining weight if it makes you slow.   Through Hypertrophy training, players will see gains in muscle mass while gaining strength as well. The purpose of this phase is not to gain size in terms of weight, rather to develop large, active, fat-free body mass.  Force depends directly on muscle density and diameter, therefore increased active body mass is an asset to strength application.

During this phase an increased number of repetitions cause a relatively light weight into a sub maximum and then maximum load by the last repetition.  Increases in recruitment of muscle fibers directly relate to increases in the training benefit of strength and power.  Training in this phase is based on a 6/12 training grade where a load which is maximal for 6 repetitions is trained until the athlete adapts to it for as many as 12 repetitions.  To be completely effective in this training method, players’ are trained to exhaustion. 

Exercises are performed at low to moderate speed. Only select power positions, such as offensive and defensive linemen, are advised to complete this phase.  Also differing from bodybuilding, focus is placed on prime movers or major muscles used in football.  Since hypertrophy training can be quite demanding you should avoid overdoing it by selecting just football-specific exercises, as suggested in this book. This is why Hypertrophy training is only utilized two to three workouts per week with 1-3 minutes with recovery in between.

Phase three:  maximum strength phase

The scope, or the main objective of this phase of training, is to increase the highest level of strength which will have the highest benefits for the improvement of football-specific abilities such as power, speed and agility. The role of maximum strength is showcased by every player when he wants to hit or block an opponent.  In short maximum strength allows you to generate as much force as your body is capable of, each and every time you call on it during a game.

In this phase, therefore, you should strive to develop the highest level of force possible, to efficiently recruit every muscle fibers of the body into the actions you have to perform during the game. For maximum strength benefit you have to use heavy loads, at time up to maximum (please refer to our suggested program).  When, as a result of employing heavy loads, one creates high tension in the muscle, maximum strength increases enabling you to apply it during the game.

Phase Four: Conversion to Power

The conversion phase is determinant to transform gains of maximum strength into power, speed and agility. Power is the ability of the neuromuscular system to produce the greatest possible force in the shortest amount of time.  This is possible mostly by increasing the speed of contraction of most muscle fibers In short dynamic explosive movements are performed to simulate game conditions.  This dynamic action is combined with Maximum strength exercises to achieve a module to transmit each player’s strength to practical situations out on the field.

The first part of the program will showcase improvements in speed, strength, power and agility.  However improvements in specific football abilities will be extensively represented during the second part of the plan.

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Select the training level:

11-14 Year Old 15-16 Year Old 17-18 Year Old College and pro