Next year I will be a Freshman at my local High School. I would like to go for the football team. I played my 7th grade year and this year I am dong Wrestling maybe ( 8th grade year ). I am fat. I am 13, 5'5", and 200 lbs (with clothes and shoes ) and want to be a lineman or linebacker. I am a picky eater ( hate pretty much all vegetables due to the taste ). I can eat corn and Green Beans from time to time with juice to wash it down. I can eat bananas, canned mandrin oranges, and canned peaches and pares. I am decently muscular ( not the strongest kid but enough to hold my own ) and can run fast ( 10 MPH tops ) when I need to, but only for a few hundred feet. My gym is Called South Beach Fitness ( just in case any of you go to one ) they have ellipticals and treadmills from Pedcore, weight machines from Cybrek, and free weights. I mostly do weight training since it is more fun to me since I am building muscle. I do about 1 mi a day at the gym total. .5 on treadmill going 3-6 MPH .2 on the stride elliptical ( you can change the stride lengths ) and .3 on the regular elliptical. I usually do weight training until my arms ( or legs ) start hurting a lot and get achy and weak ( hard to do more reps ). I can lift about 45 lbs when I don't work out a little, after a little workout I can lift about 80 lbs ( not bench pressing ). I was wondering what is a routine I should do to train for football next summer ? I would like to lose about 50 lbs and put it back on as muscle only. I would like to work on stamina and speed from the cardio training and strengthen my legs and stomach for weight lifting. The Cybrek machines we have work on your legs by pushing pads out with weights, one where you have a bar you push over your head for triceps, and another that you push straight up from you to work your arms, and one that you push but the bar is level with you. So please help. I have about 6-7 months before football tryouts will start. Please help me put together a routine.
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Good Training Routine for Freshman High School Football ?
- Thread starter candleman
- Start date
I'm assuming that you're speaking of American Football seeing as your gym is called "South Beach Fitness". The users on this site are from all over, so when you say "Football", you may get a different response because a European will think of a completely different sport. If you want to train to play (American) football, you need to train in strength and explosiveness. A routine consisting of Squats, cleans, bench and overhead press would be good for you. If you want to push people around playing football, you need to knock off the isolation work and push around some weight on a barbell. You're not going for a body builders physique playing football, you're looking to push around as much weight as you can with your entire body. A good starting point for you would probably go like this..
Monday - Heavy Weight - 5x5
Squat
Bench
Clean
Overhead press
Wednesday - Light Weight - 5x5
Bench
Clean
Squat
High Pull(3x8 this set)
Friday - Medium Weight - 5x5
Dead Lift
Clean
Bench
Squat
I'm giving you this routine assuming that you are going to play on the line and just push other guys around. If you are going for something like a receiver or running back, then you need to be running sprints too to help with explosiveness and to keep your endurance up. It's very important that you stick to the routine of Heavy/Light/Medium. That is the key part of this routine. You also need to try to add 5lbs to the bar every week, and eat. If you want strength, you need food. I'm sorry if this routine doesn't agree with the equipment that's in your gym, but it's what you need to be doing.
Monday - Heavy Weight - 5x5
Squat
Bench
Clean
Overhead press
Wednesday - Light Weight - 5x5
Bench
Clean
Squat
High Pull(3x8 this set)
Friday - Medium Weight - 5x5
Dead Lift
Clean
Bench
Squat
I'm giving you this routine assuming that you are going to play on the line and just push other guys around. If you are going for something like a receiver or running back, then you need to be running sprints too to help with explosiveness and to keep your endurance up. It's very important that you stick to the routine of Heavy/Light/Medium. That is the key part of this routine. You also need to try to add 5lbs to the bar every week, and eat. If you want strength, you need food. I'm sorry if this routine doesn't agree with the equipment that's in your gym, but it's what you need to be doing.
No, the 5x5 program is meant to be just that. It's about adding weight and strength, not reps. For example, say that your max bench is 225 lbs. When you go "heavy" on Monday, you aren't lifting the whole 225, but more like 205 5x5, on Wednesday, you would go "light" with maybe 145 5x5 and Friday would be a "Medium" 185 5x5. The next week, you would add 5 lbs to all of those(210/150/190). In this program, you worry more about putting on weight than adding reps. You also have to take into account that you're doing a full body workout three days a week, so you need to consider recovery. You can do that during a deload week or later on when you've built a foundation. The 5x5 program worked great for me and is still the foundation of all my lifts.
A lot of the beginner football programs I have seen don't really include deads, for some reason. Perhaps because squats are more important for pushing people around. I'm a complete supporter of dead lifts and if you have time to add them into the other days, then by all means. I was just sprinkling them in there for added benefit. If you are new to dead lifting, though, I wouldn't recommend jumping right into heavy deads. Do them light first to get your form down. You don't need any back problems.
A lot of the beginner football programs I have seen don't really include deads, for some reason. Perhaps because squats are more important for pushing people around. I'm a complete supporter of dead lifts and if you have time to add them into the other days, then by all means. I was just sprinkling them in there for added benefit. If you are new to dead lifting, though, I wouldn't recommend jumping right into heavy deads. Do them light first to get your form down. You don't need any back problems.
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Yeah, it's a pretty intense program. If you can keep up with the steady amount of progress, you'll see great results. Just remember to get quality food in you and plenty of rest. I used to row 45 minutes in the morning before going to work every day and I would lift on mon/wed/friday, and that was the best I've ever felt.
No matter what you do you should seek guidance from someone at the high school football program. Seek out the head or an assistant coach and tell them what you want to do and ask for suggestions from them for a start... your 14 years old?... and obviously never done any serious weight lifting. You need a grounding in safe and serious lifting... going straight into a 5x5 or something similar is NOT for you until you understand what and why your doing it, and been taught safe lifting techniques. Otherwise your doomed to be one of the thousands of people on these sights that complains about old lifting injuries from high school weight rooms. Seen it hundreds of times over and talk to people almost everyday that hark back to poor form and lifting programs from high school.
If your serious about this get some proper advice from someone that can look at you and assess your current condition and lifting experience/ ability. You can get a personal trainer to work with you 1 or 2 x a week for a start just teaching you the basic compound movements necessary to produce the power house you want to be. 6 lifting sessions should be enough to give you a good grounding in these lifts and have them reassessed every 12 weeks or so to make sure that your still lifting correctly and making appropriate progress in the weight room.
If your serious about this get some proper advice from someone that can look at you and assess your current condition and lifting experience/ ability. You can get a personal trainer to work with you 1 or 2 x a week for a start just teaching you the basic compound movements necessary to produce the power house you want to be. 6 lifting sessions should be enough to give you a good grounding in these lifts and have them reassessed every 12 weeks or so to make sure that your still lifting correctly and making appropriate progress in the weight room.
Unfortunately, most high school football coaches wouldn't know good form if it pulled a gun on them. My former high school had one of the best football programs in the state and all of the coaches looked like they never even so much as looked at a weight room. Most of the bigger guys on the team went to the gym with their dads and were taught properly. I would hope that it would go without saying that you would seek good form and instruction before jumping into a big 5x5. Even if you have to practice form with just the bar to get it right. More people do that than you know.