Three Football Speed Training Myths Busted
By
Steven Morris
Where the hell did we go so wrong when it comes to football speed training?
When did it become acceptable to pass off the hard work that entails training
for football speed and replace it with fairly easy cone drills and gadgets?
Football speed is about strength. How strong you are and how explosive you
become because of that strength is what leads to getting faster for football.
Football speed is not track speed. Reread that…football speed is not
track speed.
I’ve heard so many track coaches lament, “We work with them all off-season
and their sprinting form goes to hell two weeks into the football season.” Yea,
thank God. The reason is we run in a perfect straight line in perfect form in
perfect conditions how many times per game? Seriously, think about that. Maybe
when a running back breaks a long one or when a wide receiver gets a step on a
back, but other than that, the game is played in stop and go spurts, hard cuts,
plants and jumps, and with, of course, tons of hitting.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. There is an entire industry set up to
separate players and coaches from their money by promising quick fixes and
gimmicks and by perpetuating old myths about football speed training so that you
remain weak, slow, and broke.
Time to get down and dirty and kill some football speed training myths:
1. Agility drills improve football agility.
Note how I phrased that. Agility drills do improve your agility…in agility
drills. Running through cones looks cool. It looks like a hell of a lot of work
is being done, and it’s usually set up to be complicated, thus improving its
effectiveness. Plus, it’s usually marketed by big companies who pay models to
run through cones wearing their overpriced spandex so that it looks super high
tech and gets people to fork over the loot. But just because someone looks good
doing something doesn’t mean it’s really worthwhile.
They look good playing, but I wouldn’t want them on my team.
Do yourself a favor. Take all the cones and bury them. After the very
beginning stages, they’re only good for parallel parking practice. Sure, you can
take a 14-year old player who’s never done anything athletic and see improvement
by having him zigzag through cones. But, after a few months, the return on
investment in the way of getting faster for football will be nil.
If you want to improve foot speed so you’re actually faster on the football
field, try some clean and jerks or even the basic jump rope. It’s not sexy, but
it’s effective.
2. Lifting heavy slows you down
This is the granddaddy of all football speed training myths. I think it was
started long ago in some HIT-Jedi cave on Dagobah.
Yoda: Strong enough to pick up an X-Wing, fast enough to fight
guys four feet taller than him.
The HIT-ers, CrossFitters, and various other “strength is bad” fanatics
contend that because the bar moves slowly when lifting max weights, the central
nervous system will learn this and turn you into a big, slow, Gilbert Brown
wanna be.
We all know that if you apply max force to the bar, even if that sucker is
moving slow, the intent to move it quickly will improve both your strength and
speed. You should always be applying maximum force to the bar. Your training
should be centered around this concept.
Now, if you bench 200 lbs and try for 205 lbs, it isn’t going to fly up. It
might even go slow. But the intent to move it quickly is what counts. It trains
your nervous system (brain) to be fast even with heavy weights. It’s the same
for any kind of lifting, whether it’s football related or you’re just trying to
get bigger and stronger. It also has to do with muscle fiber types, but that’s a
long and boring explanation.
So you always want to push/pull/squat the bar as hard as you can. Or as Mel
Siff said in Supertraining:
“To increase speed, it is necessary to increase the magnitude or duration of
the force applied (or both) or decrease the mass of the body. However, for
practical purposes, not all of these possibilities can be achieved in human
movement. The athlete is unable to decrease the mass of his body or an item of
standard athletic apparatus or increase the duration of t (time) of a
given movement. However, it is possible to increase the time of a movement of
limited amplitude only by decreasing its speed, which is nonsense. Consequently,
only one recourse remains, namely to increase strength. Maximum strength is the
main factor determining speed of movement!”
3. You need gimmick devices to get faster for football.
I’ll keep this one short because otherwise I’ll go into a rage. You don’t
need a parachute unless you’re jumping from a plane. If you want to wear
“strength shoes” with the huge heel in the front, alter them. Put the heel in
the back and pretend to be a stripper because that’s about the only use for a
shoe with a nine-inch block on the underside of it.
All these gimmick products are good for selling but bad for speed. They have
little to no value, especially when compared to good, old-fashioned, hard
lifting. But tell a 15-year-old sophomore that to improve football speed he
needs to do gut busting box squats, not go traipsing around with a parachute on,
and you’ll see one disappointed football player!
Steven Morris is a personal trainer and strength coach in the Philadelphia
and South Jersey areas and owner of Explosive Football Training. He has been
lifting weights for over 15 years and has been helping people achieve their
fitness and strength goals for over a decade.
You can learn more about his methods and download free training reports at
www.ExplosiveFootballTraining.com and
www.ExplosiveFootballTrainingProgram.com. EliteFTS readers can use the promo
code ELITE for special deals.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the
industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
us at www.EliteFTS.com.
