Combining American Football with Strength Training

Hey Coach, hey @TrainForPain

I got a few questions, that you may be able to answer and help me out if you’d like.

  1. I believe my shoulder pads didn’t fit well so a sharper part of them pushed into my shoulder when falling to the ground. This led to what I believed to be shoulder impingement over the season, but although there was no training the last 8 weeks it only got slightly better. I can overhead press with rather light weight and the bench press does not cause any pain. The pain is located at the medial deltoid and I only feel it when raising my arm. There was not a singular event where it suddenly started hurting. Just every time I fell it hurt a little more. It was both shoulders at first but now only the right still hurts. Do you have an idea how I could manually test fir it being only impingement and if so, how I can get rid of it?

  2. I’ve also developed patellar tendinopathy in both knees. Took 2 months now to go away in the right knee. Left knee still not fully healed. I’m doing rehab exercises for it like wall sits. I believe this stemmed from me only doing low bar back squats and no deadlifts the last 2 years, since I don’t like deadlifts. Do you know if an imbalance of strength in the quads vs the hammies makes one prone to this and if deadlifting more (which I’ve started after the season) could prevent this next season?

  3. The football season left me with 5 kg less that when I’ve started. I’m a running back. Would you guys lean bulk or just pig out and gain as much strength as quickly as possible?

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Congrats on the season!

I’ll do my best, but I don’t have a ton to offer specifically on the injuries. I’ll tag @Dr_Grove_Higgins and see if he can offer anything.

I have heard the patellar tendinopathy can be from relatively weak hamstrings, but I’m talking about the imbalance you see in like marathon runners that never strength train. I think it’s far more likely a repetitive use injury for you, especially as you added in a bunch of north/ south running back drills you weren’t used to and a competitive season. I’d be incline to think a training plan that included a lot of slow eccentric work in the offseason, at least for a phase, would make the most sense.

In my personal opinion, the worst thing most of us do for football is to try to eat up to a weight. We have a size we think we should be (or some coach tells us) and we go all out to get there. Then we’re slow, we don’t know how to play with the new weight, and we didn’t spend the time on skillwork we should have because we were eating and lifting. I would eat as much high-quality food as doesn’t interfere with your workouts, and make sure you keep doing your drills in the offseason - in fact, this is the time to really get better at them. You’ll be better able to recover without the competitive season, so use this opportunity to push the training volume and the weight should come. I’m not saying don’t gain weight, just don’t chase it at all costs.

Good luck!

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I’ll echo what @TrainForPain said: as an athlete, “bulking” up should not be in your language.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t build muscle. But muscle lost during the season (happens to most athletes in most sports) is quickly regained when you resume a normal lifting regimen.

In fact, guys like Poliquin used to use that rebound phenomenon to claim massive body comp gains in minimal time with athletes…

For example, a hockey player might lose 5kg of muscle and gain 3kg of fat in the season. (NHL players are always on the road and eat at restaurants a lot, not always clean food. Most get fatter during the season).

When they begin their off-season training they put back the lost muscle in less than 4 weeks and by starting to eat properly they lose the fat.

Then the coach can claim that his methods had the athlete gain 5kg of muscle and lost 4% body fat in 4 weeks :slight_smile:

I’ll tell you three stories to illustrate the good and bad ways to do this.

1st STORY

The first one is about myself.

My first year of college football I was 85kg as a linebacker. Most linebackers on the team where 95-105kg as a result I did not see any playing time that season.

So I decided to bulk up the next off-season to come in much heavier. I ate like maniac, mostly crappy food just to get in the calories. I used a formulation called “The Get Big Drink” from an article by John McCallum which was essentially a 3000 calories drink that you drink during the day on top of you meals.

Come training camp I was massive (well for me at the time). 102kg (on 175cm). I was also much stronger, with a 230kg/500lbs squat (to parallel back then, not ATG).

My coaches were super happy and I got the starting job as a middle linebacker…

Job that I lost a week later because I was just too damn slow on the field and didn’t see playing time after that!

2nd STORY

This one is about a pro football player I trained.

He was a 95kg linebacker (185cm), who mostly played special teams. He contacted me after seeing a bobsleigh guy I coached, train.

The program I gave him was strictly performance-based. Using my Omni-contraction system. He actually complained about the lack of hypertrophy work as he needed to add mass.

After the off-season he ended up at 105kg but he was actually faster because he did not gain any fat.

3rd STORY

I was training this college football player. Middle linebacker (there seems to be a trend) he was a dominant player because he had great instinct.

But he wasn’t really fast. His reaction time just made his game speed much faster than his real speed.

He was also very strong.

The problem was that he wasn’t big. He was 91kg on 180cm. Now, he played CANADIAN college football which has different rules than US college football (larger field, 12 players instead of 11, 3 downs instead of 4). The Canadian game is a lot more pass-dominant so typically linebackers aren’t as big in the US as they are essentially big safeties.

Anyway, his school hired a new coaching staff… who were coming from US college football.

And they had the US mentality that a linebacker is mostly a run stopper and need to be at least 100-105kg.

My athlete got told that if he didn’t weight at least 100kg, he would lose his starting job.

Now, the problem is that he could not afford to weigh 100kg, he was already slow. If he got any slower his reaction time and game understanding would not be enough to mask his lack of speed.

So he asked me what to do…

I told him: “We will train like we always do. You’ll come to camp and dominate the physical tests and when they do the weight-in, wear baggy shorts an put weights in your pockets”

That last part was a joke… or so I thought.

Anyway, a few months later he is in camp and calls me up.

“It worked!” he told me.

“What worked?”

“The weights in my pockets!”

Anyway, he indeed got the highest squat and bench tests, got his starting job, and made the all-stars team.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Is that don’t worry about the number on the scale. It doesn’t matter.

Train to become stronger, more powerful and mostly, FASTER.

The body you end up with after that is the body that you need to be the best version of “football playing you” as you can.

As for the injuries, I’m honestly sorry, it’s no my lane.

MY OLD COACH USED TO SAY…

“You are much more likely to come up one yard short than one kilo short”

In other words, speed and agility is what matters. Not weight.

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Awesome post, Coach!

How did he end up gaining so much without it being a focus? I guess maybe he was primed for it depending on his training history and how his season had gone?

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Honestly I’m not sure. I started training him when the season ended. Be he likely had lost 10-12lbs during the season. In the CFL the regular season is 18 weeks. So a season is very long.

Although I did misquote his progression. he reached 232 on our second year of working together. He reached 224 the first year.

I have a crazy video of him doing yoke carries with snow up to his knees but it’s only on my instagram, I don’t have it on my computer

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