Nine Best Exercises For Football Players

(Posted on Sep 04, 2012)

Here I’ve compiled my favorite exercises for Football specific athletes to gain maximum strength,speed agility, endurance and explosiveness. I added a brief explanation after each one label to increase your awareness of its importance.

Box Squats

This exercise is needed to build overall strength, power and explosion. This exercise is great for building raw and dynamic strength in you lower body which is needed in the game of football. This type of squat adds the effect of stop and go. Coming to a complete stop and then exploding through the movement will help build your fast twitch muscle fibers which is needed for short bursts. As we all know, football is a game of short explosive bursts not marathons.

Bench Press

Traditional lower body exercises is great for football, but as all football players know, you need upper body strength especially in the pushing aspect. Adding this exercise into your workouts will lead to good upper body strength development which will enable you to shed blockers or drive opponents off the line.

Deadlift

This exercise may be the greatest overall strength and speed builder of all time. It is great for overall core strength as well as lower body. The glutes and hamstrings really take the blunt of the load but it is important to use good form for this exercise is considered dangerous. Stick to low reps and heavy weight to build your power, and really explode off the floor!

Good Mornings

This exercise is widely overlooked. This should be a cornerstone in the development of your hamstrings.  When done correctly you build up your hammy strength which will enable you to use more weight in other exercises like squats and deadlifts.

Weighted Box Jumps

This exercise should be used with a light weight and your focus should be on the exploding up onto the box portion. Jump as high as you can off the floor and land cleanly on the box. There are many different forms of box jumps that can be done (single leg, side jumps, quick feet, etc.) which will help keep your leg workouts tough but also entertaining.

Asterisk Lunge

This is great for developing lateral speed. This lunge is taken to the next level by adding a 45 degree angle to the mix. Running a straight line in football is half the battle,  where the other half lies in lateral movements.

Power Cleans

This exercise is great for building mass, explosion, and power. It’s a full body workout that incorporates a dead lift in the beginning to get the weight moving, a shrug and shoulder and hip thrust in the mid portion to really elevate the weight, and a full squat to catch the weight and finish the rep.

Jump Squats

This exercise builds explosion with a lot of emphasis in the negative portion of a squat. As you squat and explode up, your feet should come off the ground as you jump and reach the top portion of the movement. On the way back down, you should fall right into another squat controlling the weight on your way down to avoid injury. This is a high intensity plyometric that works your Gluteus, Quads, Tensor facia latae, Gastrocnemius and Soleus.

Alternate Lunge Jumps

This exercise is great for developing lower body explosion as well as balance. You only use your body weight but you have the responsibility to maintain proper posture and balance. Do them slow and easy maintaining vertical movement.

This article by Vinny Russo was originally posted on beastsports.com