In-Season Football - Round 4

Very interesting stuff this week. Trap Bar v. Squat There's no doubt that the Squat is king. However, the Trap Bar seems to be the better choice in-season. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I shall repeat. I had been toying around with Trap Bar in-season in place of Squat because for me, I always feel worse after I Squat. The Trap Bar just doesn't beat me up that much. We experimented with the Men's Basketball team this year. We can't truly pinpoint anything that gives us a clear, definitive answer. However, the idea that the guys consistently mentioned to my assistant that they felt really good is telling, to me. Basketball is not a fan of the weight room. This season, they lifted twice a week. 11-12 of the 14 man roster "lifted" at least 2 other days per week. Add in the fact that the injury report was short and I think we've figured out our plan. Obviously, injuries happen regardless of the lifting program. Obviously, a big piece of guys feeling better is because they handled their business - sleeping, eating staying away from too many parties. The lift certainly helped all of that. I'm getting similar results with Softball. Short injury report. Not dealing with low back issues. Not dealing with biceps tendonitis as much... All good things. Football is the biggest surprise for me. I've had multiple guys tell me they feel great and have attributed it to not Squatting. The other awesome thing is that I've actually moved up Bench Training Maxes for 23 of 94 guys. Mostly younger kids, but a few Juniors and Seniors. Two weeks ago we worked up after hitting 80% for 3. I had to watch the 80% set and then we decided what they would take for 1-2 more singles. We did the same thing this week with 85%. We had multiple guys take singles above their Training Max today. The progression is going like this:

• Week 1: 75% - 5's Pro
• Week 2: 80%: - 3's Pro, 85%x1, 90%x1
• Week 3: 75% - 5's Pro
• Week 4: 85% - 3/2/1, 90%x1, 95%x1

If you're not familiar with 5/3/1 - 5's Pro is simply doing 2x5 warm-ups and 3x5 work sets. 3's Pro is 2x5 warm-up and 3x3 work sets. 3/2/1... You can figure it out. Somehow, we've managed to push some weights up in-season. Again, I'd love to be so arrogant as to think it's my program. On some level, it definitely helped. A lot of credit has to go to the athletes, though. We finish our season next week. I'll post what we did the last 4 weeks. It's slightly different than what I posted originally. I can't end with some deep wisdom.... I have to warm-up the football team. On my end (programming), as your team's competitive season comes around, consider dropping the Squat and focusing on the Trap Bar and Bench.