Eagles tight end Brent Celek has applied great strength training to his skills and become a great player.

1. Build Insane Strength

Strength is the root of all success in football. We all know (or should know) that max strength is foundational to all other elements of athleticism (strength, speed, agility, etc.). So, why would some programs completely ignore the very building block of athletic success?

Two reasons:

1. They come from the “too much strength is bad” HIT JedI Crowd
2. They don’t understand how to build actual, top-end, strength

The former group believes that because Elite Super Heavyweight Olympic lifters and Powerlifters are generally big, strong, and appear to move slow, that building that kind of max strength will make an athlete slower. They see a guy pull and 800-lb Deadlift and think that because the bar is moving (relatively) slow, that the football player will be slow if he lifts heavy as well.

First, it is the intent to move the bar as fast as possible that counts. Second, Football speed (and any other sport’s speed) is based on force production. How much force can your legs produce into the ground? How much force can you legs put into the ground, through your hips and into your opponents chest?

The answer is determined by how strong you are. Why on earth would anyone think that a guy who Squats 140 would hit harder than a 600-lb Squatter? Issac Newton would smash an apple on your head for such blasphemy.

Now, onto the second point. Moving your weight up 5-lbs a week while doing endless workouts of 3 sets of 8 will only get you so far…and that’s not very far at all.

The same is true for the descending rep schemes. Simply dropping reps from 12 to 6 over the course of several weeks is not real strength gain. All you’re doing is reducing volume but the weight never changes much.

Its sad how many players talk about their dissapointment when they go to max-outs and discover the supposed weight they should be able to hit based on the percentage of their 6-reps sets is a work of science fiction. What you can do for one rep (ie how much force can you produce for a short burst) is in a completely different universe from what you can do for sets of 8.

And, to add to their frustration, the writers of bad football workotus don’t explain that if their one rep max improves, so does their 8-rep. But, improving their 8-rep max does absolutely nothing for their max out strength.

And, as we talked about earlier, your max strength is what determines how fast you are, how hard you hit, how high you jump, and, ultimately, how good of a football player you can become.

In sum, work on max strength with multiple sets of low reps or by doing Max Effort work. Do not be afraid to have beginners do low reps, especially multiple sets of triples.

2. Have a Template, Not a Tablet

If there’s anything worse than the “strength is bad crowd” it’s the “Set in Stone” guys. These are the athletes and coaches who picked out a style of training (usually without much thought) and blindly apply the principals. They will not change, even when failing, and refuse to accept that someone else’s teachings might help them. You’d sometimes think they were handed stone tablets with strength training rules on some mountian in the middle east.

There’s a company out in Utah that is notorious for such things…and, they do it with only a basic knowledge of how to get stronger, bigger, or faster for football. But, I’m not naming them, so figure it out on your own.

Anyway, this  company and those like it are a perfect example of putting together a program, incorrectly applying sound principles (use of chains, Box Squatting incorrectly) and use percentages so rigidly that the actual physical, mental, and psychological state of the athlete is ignored.

This was also a huge problem when word of how the Bulgarians and Soviets trained their Olympic Lifters. Suddenly every high school football strenth program had guys training at X-percentage today and Y tomorrow…why? The Chart said so. This is no way to train an athlete!

Rather than be dogmatic, successful football and athletic strength programs typically follow a template based on their core beliefs. There’s a reason Westside and those who come from the Westside “Coaching Tree” are so successful…they have their beliefs and principals but are willing to try and experiment with just about anything they think can help them get stronger. Football programs need to follow suit.

Don’t be afraid to listen to someone who does things differently from you. There might just be something there that can help your program go to the next level. Keep your beliefs and vision but be adaptable if you want to be successful.

3. Know the Needs of the Sport

I’ll admit that as a football player and someone who is responsible for the strength and conditioning of football players, this point makes me insane. I’m not a sports specific maniac, but, your program must address the needs of your sport!

This is usually a huge problem with conditioning but it infects the strength portion of the program as well.

There’s a “football workout” posted online that ranks on the 1st page of Google. It was written by a personal trainer from a very large fitness orientated gym chain. The program is, in a word, awful. Insane volume. No heavy leg work. And, for the love of God, tempos.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. I get emails from coaches and players who structure their program that way because they read it on a website or in one of the bodybuilding mags. They mean well…but, they are completely missing the point. They usually believe that if your 10-rep squat moves up 5-lbs, they’re getting stronger for football.

As we talked about in point 1, we know this isn’t true.

Football players need to be insanely strong. Strength = speed. If two guys have similar technique, the stronger guy will win. Your training should reflect this. If you coach wrestlers or MMA guys, guess what, they need to be strong too. It’s true of pretty much all athletes.

Now, the bigger culprit is on the conditioning end. No matter how many times it’s written, put on video or screamed about, guys are still jogging in an attempt to get in game shape.

Why is this so hard to understand? We don’t jog in a game. We never run distance. The aerobic base myth is pure poppycock. So stop doing it!

Football is a game made up of short, intense bursts. Tudor Bompa once remarked, “A football linebacker performs like a bulldozer, in short bursts, mowing down everything in his path. To have this athlete perform distance running is blasphemy.”

Sprinting or running with a sled or the Prowler is somehow not as effective as the things the guys on the Cross Country team do?

4. Constantly Improve

5. Build GAME Speed

6. Address Skills and Mobility Along with Speed and Strength

7. Have Long Term Vision and Values Built In.

• Steven Morris is a Strength Coach specializing in training football players to become stronger, faster, more explosive and dominant. He’s also a veteran Minor League Football player in the Philadelphia area.

To learn about his one-on-one online strength and  speed coaching program, email Smorri88@gmail.com or,

Visit http://FootballStrengthWorkouts.com and http://GetFasterForFootball.com get the free book, 7 Steps to Insane Game Speed.