I’m going to be playing DII football this year, and I’d like to massively up my conditioning before I head up in August. I’m a TE and I know camp is going to put me through the grinder so I want to be in the best shape possible before reporting.
I’m currently on a 4 day upper/ lower split with sprints afterwards (all prescribed by the team). My question is, I really would like to add a morning conditioning workout, what kind of program would you guys recommend to kick me into overdrive? I have the time and recovery ability to workout hard for 2-3 hours a day to get ready for this, any advice?
Thank you in advance, I really do appreciate it.
(former D3 offensive lineman here)
I think some more specifics of the upper/lower split and sprints would be helpful. Would you mind describing them?
The obvious answer is some sort of sled drags, sled pushes, prowler, etc but I would want to see what else you’re doing first.
Also, depending on the type of offense, you may want to devote some time to running routes. I’ll note that some guys came into camp in great “shape” but not in great “football shape” because they’d spent too much time in the weight room and not enough time doing some football-specific drills, leading to lots of rolled ankles and pulled hammies in camp.
Thanks for the reply. Right now I’m working out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The lifting is based off of percentage based lifts (bench for upper body, power clean and back squat for lower) followed by assistance exercises (lat pulldowns, db shoulder press, lunges, calf raises, etc). The reps for the main lifts typically have two variations, high volume (lots of reps on bench, lots of sets on squats) and low volume (2-5 reps on bench and squat, cleans are always low rep and fairly heavy). The sprinting consists of 60 yard shuttles, 1/2 gassers, 20 yard sprints, and 110 yard striders. All of that is prescribed by the team, so I’m not going to change any of that.
The reason I want to add another workout to kill it with conditioning is because I talked to the coach and he pretty much said, “You’re a freshman, you’re going to get a lot bigger and stronger over the next four years. Your main goal now should be to report in shape and able to keep up, because that’s gonna be the killer.”