How to Get Stronger for Football

"How do I get stronger for football?"

Its a question I get asked almost daily...and the solution is not complex...getting stronger for football is actually pretty uncomplicated once you know the 4 key steps.

We all need to get stronger for football. Why? Well, strength determines all of the other factors of athleticism...want to get faster for football? Get stronger. Want to hit harder? Get stronger. Want to really, truly increase football speed? Get stronger.

You get the point.

Maximum strength (and relative strength) controls all these factors...not to mention your ability to block and just plain knock people into the stands.

1. Do Max Effort Work to Get Stronger for Football

Make no mistake about it, unless you are strong, you will not be a great football player. Strength dictates all other aspects of athleticism (speed, agility, explosiveness, etc). The stronger football player will almost always win.

This confuses most people. They assume that you don't need to be super strong to be a great football player. They also fail to see the correlation between strength and speed (we'll cover that in #2).

Now, a lot of players do accept this but go about it in the wrong way. I get countless emails from people asking me to evaluate their programs. Usually, they're working hard but not getting the results they want. And, usually it's because they are confused about how to actually get stronger.

We've been conditioned to think that doing sets of 4 - 6 and simply adding 5lbs to the bar every week is getting stronger. It's not.

First, you're not building maximum strength.

Second, you will plateau rather quickly. If we all added 5-lbs a week forever, guys would be benching 5,000lbs.

You must work with low reps, yes, even as low as singles, to build raw, max strength.

I know, "low reps are dangerous!" Bull. High reps are more dangerous. Ever watch someone do a set of 10 in the Squat? Reps 7 - 10 are ragged, they twist, their knees pinch in, and they use way too much back. The more reps you do, the more fatigued you will become and the worse your form will get.

If you're a beginner or you train beginners, and you still fear the single, do multiple sets of 2 or work up to a max set of 2 - 3. This will build top end strength. And, for those of you who feel you need to do higher reps, think of it this way; you're max bench is 200lbs and you can do sets of 8 with 150. You smarten up, decide to get stronger, push your max up to 250 and suddenly find that you can now do sets of 8 with 200. Which is better? 150 x 8 or 200 x 8?

And, before you get excited, it doesn't work the opposite way. As many a disappointed "projected-max" following football player will tell you, focusing on increasing your weight on high reps sets has nothing to do with your max strength.

So, you need to do Max Effort work. You need to "work up to" a heavy set of 1 - 3 reps, constantly trying to beat your previous records.

Working up is simple, so stop over thinking it.

It should take 5 - 8 sets; depending on your strength (obviously a 600-lb bencher will need more sets than a guy pushin' 150).

Do this:

Bar x 5
95 x 3
125 x 3
135 x 3
155 x 3
175 x 3

Next time, beat 155. I know, there's barely any volume, how are can this make you stronger? Rest assured, most top power lifters, the strongest guys on Earth, use a similar approach.

Lead off one Upper Body day and one Lower Body day with a Max Effort exercise.

2. To Get Stronger for Football, Apply Maximum Force to the Bar

If there is one area of football training, and, strength training in general that confuses people and fuels the fringe, anti-strength idiots it's the subject of bar speed. The HIT Jedis, the personal training crowd, the CrossFit Cults and the Wobble Board Wrecking Crews all have done a great job teaching young football players and lifters that lifting heavy will make you slow. "Just look at that big, fat Powerlifter Squatting 800-lbs! He's moving slow, and if you get strong, you'll be slow too!"

What they miss is the intent to move the bar fast that counts. This might be the simplest concept in strength training yet so many miss it. Just try to lift the bar as fast as possible, every set, every rep, every exercise.

You need to train your Central Nervous System to act fast. When it gets the message that we need to move several hundred pounds quickly, it can easily figure out to move just your bodyweight pretty damn fast. Try lifting a heavy weight slowly and see what happens.

Every set, every rep, every exercise...lift the bar like you're trying to throw it off of you because it's about to crush you and end your existence. That's good motivation to get the bar moving.

3. Train the Posterior Chain

If you want to get faster for football, be able to drive a defender into the stands, or run people over, you need to work your posterior chain like your life depends on it. Your hamstrings, glutes, calves, and all the muscles of the back must be hammered, often.

You need to center your program around:

Box Squats
Box Front Squats
Deadlifts
Cleans

Deadlifting of odd objects (sandbags, stones, etc)

Snatch Grip Deadlifts
Romanian Deadlifts
Squats and Front Squats (regular, no box)
Lateral Lunges

If you focus your efforts on those exercises, you will be miles ahead of the competition. Do them heavy, lift them fast, and do them often.

4. To Truly Get Stronger for Footbal, You Must Fix Strength Gaps

Even with all the Max Effort, Dynamic Effort, chains and plyos, you can still fail to reach maximum potential. Don't get me wrong, those things are the foundation of training and doing them will take you far. But, I know the guys who read this site and the guys I train are not interested in just being good...we want to be elite!

No matter how hard you train in the weight room, you can still develop strength gaps.

Strength gaps are just what they sound like. Little gaps in your strength that can take a 600-lb Squatter and render him unable to throw a block.

See, when we lift barbells we go up and down and, as we discussed, can lose out unless we use bands and chains.

But, even with bands and chains, the weight remains in one plane of motion and relatively fixed in resistance (bands and chains add resistance as the bar goes up).
Dumbbells and K-bells help by training some of the stabilizers and Prowlers and sleds allow us to move laterally. But, there's still something missing.

That missing something is Sandbags and other Odd-Object/Strongman style training. We tend to go mostly with Sandbags because of the safety factor, but, we also do Farmers Walk, Sled Pulling, Truck Pushing, and some Stone Trainer work.

Sandbags work because they are "alive." They move, the weight shifts, the bag changes shape...it literally fights back, like an opponent.

I've seen some strong dudes get embarrassed by a 150lb Sandbag because they don't have the stabilizer strength to tackle the beast.

Working with Sandbags is an excellent way to fix these gaps and ensure that you're as strong and functional as possible.