When it comes to football, there are many ways to get ahead of the game. Whether it's increasing your bench weight or your oxygen absorption during practice, you can employ several different strategies to gain an edge during the game. Use these tips and conditioning exercises to enhance your play on the field, and increase your chances of moving on to the next level.
1. Nutrition Is Extremely Important
Nutrition is just as important as training when it comes to sports. Exercise alone will not counteract all the ill effects of an unhealthy diet. According to Elitefts, "what you eat directly relates to how you perform." Eating a healthy and balanced diet is equally as important to your game as weight and endurance training. Make sure to eat lots of proteins, vegetables, and fruits. Limit junk food to once or twice a week while focusing on healthy fats and carbs.
2. Stick To The Basics
With all the information out there on the internet, it can be easy to get sidetracked by new, oddball exercises. Variety is great when it comes to an exercise routine, but adapting new exercises that aren't effective won't do you any favors.
When you first get started, focus on the basic exercises such as bench presses, deadlifts, cleans, and squats. Once you've mastered the basics, add in their variations to avoid getting bored. This can include box squats, clean pulls, snatch grip deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, inclines. The goal here is to use exercises that are proven to get results instead of one-off suggestions that may not help your performance.
3. Stay Consistent
No exercise routine will enhance your game if you don't stick to it. Although this is simple advice, it may be one of the hardest to adhere to. No matter how many curls or squats you do in one sitting, it won't help overall if you can't stay consistent.
Aside from just exercising regularly, changing up your routine every other week can do more harm than good as well. Tons of players have a habit of changing their workout routine every other week due to the latest article that comes out, contradicting the last one. While switching up exercises is a good idea, completely changing your whole workout philosophy too often will keep you from seeing results.
4. Train All Year
Just because it's not football season doesn't mean that you shouldn't train. In fact, if you want to be an all-star player, you'll need to train all year round. One way to make this easier is to join a football camp with year-round facilities in the offseason. This will keep your skills sharp. Since this is something that other players might be less likely to do, it's a great way to gain an edge on the competition.
5. Add Reps To Get Bigger
If you are looking to increase muscle mass, you'll need to eat right and add more reps to your workout. One of the best ways to do this is to mix low, heavy rep sets with your main exercises like squats, box front squats, or incline. Follow these with assistance exercises that are higher in rep count to increase your bulk. Some great assistance exercises include:
Rows
Chin-ups
One-arm row
Dumbbell bench
Curls
Dumbbell overhead press
Straight leg deadlifts
6. Time Your Sets
Another great way to increase muscle mass is to time your sets instead of counting just the reps. Set a timer for somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes. Once that timer starts going get in as many reps as you can while resting appropriately. Try to increase the number of reps you can complete during your timed set week over week. This will definitely put muscle on even the scrawniest of players.
7. Increase Speed by Increasing Strength
By strengthening the right muscles, you will end up increasing your speed. Use exercises that focus on your glutes, hamstrings, and quads. Along with this strategy, make sure to learn the proper running form. Speed-specific track programs can be great, but they won't help you unless you are also working out the right muscles. When it comes to football, the best thing you can do to increase your speed is to get stronger in the right areas.
Following these tips can help skyrocket your performance on the field. Make sure to give your body the proper nutrition and rest that it needs. Build an outline of an exercise program and stick to it to see results. Be consistent with your exercise and make sure to train even in the offseason. Add reps to your sets and considering timing them to increase muscle mass. Also, remember not to get caught up in trends. Stick with basic, proven exercises to see results. Adapt techniques that will improve your game and remember, it's just as important to improve your overall athleticism as it is your strength.