Off Season Football Workout

Working hard for a football scholarship includes an honest commitment to your off season football workout schedule.  In fact, you can actually increase your chances of being recruited by using the time after your current football season has ended to the best advantage.

When others on your team,  and your state, regional and national competition simply aren’t willing to spend the time improving their strength and endurance, you can be systematically putting in the time and effort working on conditioning, strength, and speed.

Off Season Workout Tips?

You need to workout anywhere from 4-6 times a week in the off season.  However, the content of your training sessions actually depend on what you want and need to accomplish.

For example, if you are want to gain size your program will be considerably different than if you want to improve in endurance.

• If you want to increase your overall endurance you will need to do more reps (10-15 reps).

• If bulk and size is what you are after, you will need to focus on doing the maximum weight but lower reps depending on which body parts are the most or least sore.

• Do each exercise correctly, making sure that the the right range of motion is accomplished during each phase of the exercise.  This usually means maintaining control of the exercise throughout.  For Example, during the lateral pull-down, maintain control when your are letting the bar up just as you do when pulling the bar down.  There should be not banging of the weights as they return to their resting place.

Specific Exercises For The Off Season

Bench Press

There is a school of thought that says to do bench press every day in the off season.

Arnold Press

Strong shoulders are crucial for a successful football player.  This exercise should probably consist of 8-12 repetitions just because nobody can have shoulders that are too strong.

Lateral Pull-downs

These are probably the most fun of all the weight room exercises.  Everybody likes to look at themselves in the mirror and see your upper body and upper back flex and see what you have accomplished.   Don’t go too heavy with the lat pull-downs, do about 12 reps at a moderate weight.   This is great for shaping your back.

Triceps Pull-downs

Did you know that your triceps comprise about 70% of your arms? If big guns is what you want, then work your triceps.  The triceps pull-downs is another exercise that can be somewhat enjoyable.  Try to get 20-25 reps with using moderate weight.

Biceps Curls

Getting and keeping your biceps strong is very important, regardless of the position you play.  They aren’t too much fun for most people, but you have to include bicep curls.  Try and get 8-12 reps.
After you have completed this basic set, you will want to work on your core.
After you are done with the above basic routine,  go through about 4 different core exercises, and honestly, this is THE WORST part of any workout, because working your core requires you to use energy throughout your entire body which obviously tires your body more quickly

Aside from getting your core stronger, try to get in some conditioning training.  A good conditioning program could consist of a series of sprints if you were a lineman.  But, your conditioning should be specific to your position on the team.

Specific Conditioning Exercises For Football

• Start off with twenty 10 yard sprints with a ten second break in between each rep. This simulates what you would to have to do in a normal game setting as a lineman.

• Finish your workout with five 40 yard sprints with a 20-25 second break in between each sprint.

• The 40 yard sprints would probably be more beneficial to wide receivers considering all the route running they do each play.

Agility Exercises

Agilities are not done every single day, but you should try to work them in as often as possible.  Typical agility workouts consist of ladder exercises, cone and bag drills

Discipline yourself to a schedule off season football workout training, and you will know that you have done everything possible to improve you value to your team when spring practice begins.