Steve Morris has come up with the a great guide for lineman to perfect their skills.

It still blows me away how lineman, both offensive and defensive, were disrespected for decades. Even the great Vince Lombardi considered the big men to be like pawns; be the sacrificial lambs, be interchangeable and pay them nothing. Ok, but that was the 50’s and 60’s, right? Well, if you read “The Blind Side” you know that until Lawrence Taylor came into the league, no one gave a damn about the Left Tackle position or the rest of the line. Lineman were paid the equivalent of minimum wage until they had to develop specialists to deal with this maniac known as L.T. who was damn-near murdering Quarterbacks.

Times have changed. Lineman are now high-price commodities and even dopey announcers concede that they are the backbone of the football team. If your line loses the battle up front, you lose, every time. This is true from pee-wee to the pros.

A few months back, I was asked a question that got me fired up both as a coach and a player:

“Coach, I wanna be the perfect lineman…what do I need to do?”

Ah, the perfect lineman. As a long time lineman, I have devoted plenty of thought to this query. While different systems favor different traits in their lineman, at the base, the perfect lineman should be. 

• Super Strong
• Explosive
• Quick
• Fast for 5-yards
• A great technician
• Be able to use their strength on the field
• The most well conditioned player on the field
• An animal that borders on sociopathy when on the field

Sure, genetics plays a role in this. A guy who’s naturally 6’6 and 300lbs will have an advantage over a guy who’s 5’8, 185. But, I’ve seen too many small lineman dominate high school football games over the biggins’. So, while genetics play a part, there is a way to turn even the smallest high school players into lineman that destroy the competition. Here are the 7 Steps to Build the Perfect High School Lineman.

 1.      Build Max Strength

 We can’t all be 6’6 but we can all be as strong as humanly possible. Maximum strength is the base for all other aspects of athleticism. It controls quickness, explosiveness, speed, power…and lineman need it in buckets.

Especially in high school, you’ll play guys who outweigh you by 30+ lbs. If you plan on kicking that guys ass, you better be stronger than him. I know there are plenty of “high school players shouldn’t lift heavy for low reps and should therefore waste their careers’ doing 3 x 10” types out there, but, truth is, you need to lift heavy and get super strong.

Despite what many think, adding 5-lbs on to your 8-rep weight isn’t getting you stronger. First, that kind of progression will dry up quickly. Second, the only way to really build strength is to improve your raw strength. How much can you do for a single or a double? That’s what counts. In a cruel twist of fate, improving your 8-rep max does a big fat zero when it comes to increasing your 1-rep max. That’s why all those % of max prediction charts are for the proverbial birds.

Lineman need raw, brute strength. In it’s most basic form, line play is a 3-hour fight. Being stronger and more physical than your opponent is the easiest way to beat him. You will face guys with similar technique and comparable speed. When this happens, guess who wins the battle?

You need to focus your main exercises on heavy, low rep sets. “But beginners shouldn’t use low reps! It’ll crush their bones and steal their souls!”

Bull. If a beginner is taught good form and has a coach who has half a brain to keep the newbie’s ego in check, low reps are not only more effective…they’re also safer. The more fatigued you become, the more likely you are to break form and get hurt. On rep 11 of a 12 rep set, form becomes atrocious.

If you’re that afraid of singles, have your new guys do max sets of 3’s or 4’s. And, stop with the “they need a certain amount of reps to perfect movement patterns.” One, what you do for 10 reps is a different exercise than what you do for a single. Form will change at 85%+ of yoru max.

Two, you get plenty of reps on assistance movements.

So, if you want dominatingly strong lineman, do heavy work on: 

• Box Squats
• Box Front Squats
• Bench
• Incline
• Push Presses
• Deadlifts
• Snatch Grip Deadlifts

Master those moves, get super strong on them and your lineman will literally transform into unstoppable machines on the field.

On upper body day, start off with Bench, Incline, Presses, etc. Go heavy and keep adding weight until you reach your 3 or 4 rep max. Next session, try to beat this.

If you’re really afraid that doing this will stunt your growth, crush your bones, make you muscle bound or whatever other old wives tale you choose to believe, then simply do either 6 sets of 4 or 8 sets of 3. This allows for a fairly heavy weight and is a decent introduction to working up to a max.

 2.      Build Upper Body Explosiveness & Hand Quickness

Lineman on both sides of the ball need explosive upper bodies and fast hands. One of the biggest mistakes High School defensive lineman make is engaging with the O-lineman and then not getting off the block. Usually, this is because they have slow hands and are unable to escape the clutches of those big ogres on the O-line.

On both sides of the ball, the ability to deliver a breath-taking, rib-cracking blow is crucial. Being able to throw a shot to your opponents ribs that literally knocks his air out is a pretty big advantage. Knock the wind out of someone and they’ll be a little hesitant to raise their hands to block you.

Having quick hands and an explosive upper body also allows you to control your opponent.

Again, these traits are controlled by max strength, so plenty of hard, heavy work on the Bench and Incline are a must. But, we must also train to specifically get your arms blasting through the motion used on the field. Concentrate your efforts on 3 exercises:

Plyo Push Ups

Plyometric Push Ups are Push Ups where you attempt to push yourself off the ground with so much force that your body actually comes up far enough where you can clap your hands between reps. I see High School lineman struggle with Push Ups and complain that they can’t do them because they’re big. Again, bull. You should be able to not only do regular Push Ups but be able to do them explosively.

You need to train your upper body to be fast and these are one of the best ways to accomplish this.

Once you get good at these, you can make them harder by placing yoru each hand on a 45-lb plate and doing the Plyo Push Ups this way. This gives you an extra inch or two of depth.

These can be done before your heavy upper body work, for 3 – 5 sets of 5. Or, you can superset them with your higher rep upper body movements as a basic form of complex training.

• Concentrate on speed…if you start to slow down, terminate the set.
• Keep your elbows close to the body and tucked in, just as you would when blocking

Rapid Standing Band Press

Here is an exercise that you can do anywhere…before heavy Benching, before practice, before a game…that will wake up your Central Nervous System and train it to enable your hands to deliver rib-breaking blows.

Stump a band, get into an athletic position and literally do a two-armed punch. These reps are rapid, no slow down phase…punch-recoil-punch-recoil-punch. These shots should be delivered with the kind of violence that makes old lineman everywhere smile.

Do these for 3 – 4 sets of 3 – 6 reps pre workout/practice/game.

Sandbag Clean and Push

If you’re serious about being able to cooridinate the hips and hands so that you can make opponents crumble, you need the Sandbag Clean and Push.

Very similar to the traditional Clean and Jerk, but, with several advantages: 

• Because the bag changes shape and moves around, it build the type of upper and lower body strength that easily carries over to the football field
• You can literally push the sandbag up and out, using the same arm motion you would when blocking…not advisable with a barbell
• Because you start in a low position, triple extend and end with releasing the Sandbag, you teach the body to transfer power from the ground all the way through your arms and into your opposition

Use this as a finisher at the end of your regular training session. You can go with a medium bag for high reps as a conditioning exercise or you can go with a heavier bag for a more traditional 3 – 4 x 3 – 5. Just make sure to concentrate on speed of movement and coordinating the hips and hands.

3.      Build Short-Range Speed

When I hear lineman or coaches discussing 40-times, I want to scream. The 40 is borderline useless for football but it is absolute garbage for lineman. The wasted hours that go into training for this stupid test is mind-bottling, but to see my fellow lineman doing it is vomit-inducing.

Lineman need to be fast in very short distances. How fast you are for 1 – 5 yards is crucial. If a D-lineman is to penetrate to a yard deep, he essentially has about 3-yards to cover while staying low and beating an offensive lineman. I know, what about when he has to chase down a play backside? Again, nothing to do with 40-speed. He comes up field for those fast 3-yards, usually scrapes laterally a big, then takes off toward the ball carrier. We all see D-lineman tackling backs on the far sidelines in every NFL game. It must be because of their 40’s, right?

No, it’s because they beat their opponent, read the play and took a great angle. A football player who knows how to take a good angle suddenly becomes much faster. God knows I’ve chased down backs who’d blow me away in a race, yet there I was, making the tackle. Burst, read, angle, tackle.

And, O-lineman have even less ground to cover. Even on a long pull, it’s the initial burst then reading the play.

This kind of short burst speed is built with…any guesses? Yes, max strength. Working on the hamstrings and glutes hard and heavy will make you faster. But, recently the football training world has lost their minds yet again. With the emphasis on the Prosterior Chain, Quad training has been thrown out the window  in many programs.

To be fast for those first few yards and to be able to drive block someone into the cheap seats, you need strong quadriceps. The Quads are largely responsible for quick burst speed and change of direction speed.

You can accomplish this with plenty of heavy

• Front Squats
• Box Front Squats
• Bulgarian Squats
• Prowler Pushing
• Backward Sled/Prowler Pulls

4.      Build Lateral Strength

About 90% of the average football speed training programs concentrate on straight-ahead, linear speed. They train you like a Track star. But, as anyone who’s watched a converted Track star try to become a great football player can tell you, track speed is not football speed.

In football, especially on the line, we have to move laterally quite a bit. Reach blocks, fighting reach blocks, scraping down the line, pass setting, kick-sliding, ripping, etc all have you moving sideways in a violently fast motion. Yet the vast majority of football training programs completely ignore this range of motion. How often do you see lateral movements in a football strength workout in a magazine or on the web?

If there is any, it’s usually limited to the 20-yard Shuttle, usually with an emphasis on improving form in the drill rather than building the strength needed to actually become faster.

If you can’t move sideways, you’re cooked. So, you’d be wise to include these assistance exercises to your football strength program: 

• Side Lunges
• Lateral Sled/Prowler Pulls
• Scissor Walks with Sled
• Asterisks Lunge
• Lateral Box Jumps

Place 1 – 2 of these movements into your training sessions at least once per week. Movements like Side Lunges and Asterisks Lunges can cause big time soreness if you’re not used to doing them, so start slow and don’t add them before a big practice or game.

Movements like Lateral Sled Pulls can be done anytime as they do not cause much next-day soreness. Plus, you can get into a low position and shuffle or even Kick-Slide.

All of these movements also have the added benefit of strengthening the knees laterally…especially useful when some big dummy gets thrown down and into the side of your leg.

5.      Fix Strength Gaps with Sandbags

We all know the lineman who can Deadlift half the weight room yet can’t block the sun. I was once this guy. Before my freshman year of high school, I started lifting weights like a mad man. I got pretty damn strong for a 12-year old…but, I couldn’t use one damn bit of that strength on the field. Then, between freshman and sophomore year, I learned about Sandbags, and what we called at the time Dinosaur Training – lifting heavy, odd-shaped objects. My skill level when through the roof.

This story plays itself out thousands of times every year. Take a strong guy or guy is who getting  crazy strong, give him some specific Sandbag exercises and some modified Strongman Exericses and watch him go from strong, stiff player into All-Conference Lineman.

Sandbags are excellent for lineman because often Lineman suffer from extreme strength leaks. . Simply, his hips, legs or shoulders either aren’t strong enough in all the necessary angles or they aren’t strong enough in relation to the bigger, stronger muscles of the hamstrings, glutes, quads, pecs, etc.

Sandbags, because the force you into awkward angles, low positions and have you lifting a “weight” that continually moves and shifts, are an excellent remedy for fixing these leaks. They can build the necessary strength in the smaller but all important stabilizer muscles so the big muscles can do their job.

Grab yourself one of Josh Henkins Ultimate Sandbags and start lifting. Yes, you can fill a duffle bag with dirt, but, if you train football players, you already know that the way they treat equipment is not conducive to home-made pieces.  All Sandbag exercises are good for Lineman, but, concentrate on these five to start: 

• Sandbag Shoulder and Squat
• Sandbag Swing
• Sandbag Clean and Push
• Sandbag Bearhug and Duckwalk
• Sandbag Shoulder and Lateral Lunge

You can use any of the Sandbag exercises as assistance exercises on leg training days, as conditioning exercises or as finishers. Do them for high reps or for multiple sets of low reps. Start off with one Sandbag movement per week then progress to 2 – 3.

6.      Build Extreme 2-Way Conditioning

All Lineman should be able to play both sides of the ball, even if they don’t have to. In High School, you never know when you’ll be called on to play on the other side with no rest. Smaller schools deal with this all the time. Small schools don’t have the luxury of having enough talented lineman to have separate starting offensive and defensive players.

To combat this you need to get into extreme physical condition. And, you should be not far from this high-level of conditioning at any time during the year. The offseason offers no excuse to get out of shape and turn into a fat-ass.

Now, let’s just establish one thing right up front :

• You have no business jogging
• Jogging is what lazy coaches use for conditioning
• You do not jog on the football field so do not do it off the field
• You weigh more than half the X-Country team combined, so stop it already

There are several ways to condition so that you are able to go both ways, all year long:

• Short Sprints

Keep them short (5 – 20 yards)

• Prowler Sprints

The Prowler owns all when it comes to conditioning for football; especially for lineman. You can use it a few different ways…load it with a moderate weight and sprint for 20+ yards, go light and push for time, or go heavy and drive block the monster for multiple bursts of 5 – 10yards. Push it forward, pull it backwards and sideways, add the new Drive Pad and work your ass off.

Keep rest to a minimum and keep pushing hard with short, choppy steps. 

• Position Sprints

Based on the old Nebraska-inspired “Metabolic Conditioning,” Position Sprints simply involve getting into your stance, taking the steps you would in a game and then sprinting in the direction a play would go.

For example, a Defensive End would fire out of his stance, come up field then, turn and sprint as if chasing a play down back side.

Or, an O-linmean would take a reach step, stay low and sprint 10-yards as if cutting off a Linebacker.

There are endless variations so get creative. Group these short bursts into groups of 10. Sprint, get down and sprint again. When you do all 10, rest for 60 – 90 seconds and go again. When you can do 6 sets with minimal hard breathing, you’ll be able to play both ways in your sleep.

7.      Build Real Toughness

This is a difficult point to express. Toughness is an absolute necessity for Lineman. The game is simply a 3+ hour fight between you and your opponents. In almost every game, one team asserts itself and continues to pound away until the other side simply quits. When toughness wanes, so does strength, speed, power and skill.

But, how do you build toughness? Do you withhold water like the idiotic coaches of the 30’s – 70’s did? Do you simply scream at the guys until they become so bored they tune you out?

Of course not, both of those methods have nothing to do with toughness.

Toughness is built in the weight room and on the field. It’s built every time you do that last set even when you feel like quitting. It’s built every time you finish your sprints all the way through the line even when no one is looking. It’s built when you go after a P.R., fail, but come back next time and smoke it.

Simply put, it’s a long, slow evolution.

Many coaches feel that if a player isn’t naturally tough, he won’t be a good lineman. But, this is simply untrue. Some people are born with that never-quit attitude but most need to be taught. And, let’s not confuse toughness with having a mean streak. Developing the attitude of a sociopath when on the field is a subject worthy of a whole spate article. But, lets just say that without toughness you can’t be a killer.

Always finish what you start. Your reps, your sets, your sprints, your homework…learn to fail and come back with a vengeance. We all mess up, we all miss tackles and blocks…even NFL Hall of Famers do it, but, they also know how to come back and make the next play. They don’t sit on the sidelines and pout, throw their helmet and curse. They figure out what they did wrong and come back and do it right.

That’s the kind of tough lineman I want on my side.

Steven Morris is a Strength Coach in the Philadelphia and South Jersey areas and owner of Explosive Football Training.  He still plays football and will only retire at gun-point. He has been lifting weights for over 16 years and has been helping people achieve their fitness and strength goals for over a decade.

You can get the Free Book “7-Steps to Building Insane Game Speed” at www.ExplosiveFootballTrainingProgram and www.ExplosiveFootballTraining.com