For all you football players.....

[LC83]

fail college football playes dont dl i play jc and seen a d1 workout program

All schools don't do the same workouts, come on now.

When you go to an NFL combine whats the #1 most talked about lift for a player.. Oh ya thats right. THE BENCH PRESS.

Thats cool. But what other lift do they do at the combine? Everything else is running or jumping, it's not like they have a choice of which lift to talk about. It's the only one!

dam i guess my program is no good then

monday
bench 5 x5
tuesday
bench 3 x 10
wednsday
bench 5x5
thursday
bench x max reps
friday
bench 5 x5
saturday
bench 3 x5

NICE!!

[ibuildme]

lol im sure youre a good kid, but there wasnt really a point to this thread other than to stroke your ego.

IM not trying to ''stroke'' my ego. the only thing that would make u think im ''stroking my ego'' is that i said i have a high bench press for my age. And saying i dont really care about the bench press kinda says something. but me saying im an outside backer, and saying ''thats what im telling them but they dont listen'' isnt stroking my ego.

[dolphinsfan270]

IM not trying to ''stroke'' my ego. the only thing that would make u think im ''stroking my ego'' is that i said i have a high bench press for my age. And saying i dont really care about the bench press kinda says something. but me saying im an outside backer, and saying ''thats what im telling them but they dont listen'' isnt stroking my ego.

okkkk, surrreee ego stroker....

[Chest-Rockwell]

Whats your powerclean at.

I have a pretty high powerclean for my age and highest for the freshmen (255) but I have only 3rd place bench at 220 (going for 225 mon)

It's a fun lift and teaches explosiveness.

[dixieland1204]

SSSSSSQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTSSSSSSS!!! !! most lifts are very important for different reasons including bench. i personally hate how everyone benches but its a great lift there no denying. cleans are great, pullups are great, dips are great but the best lift that nobody does is squats. There is no substitute for it. People are afraid to get under a heavy ass bar and get stuck at the bottom. if you dont squat in your lift program dont talk to me cuz i have zero respect for you when it comes to lifting weights

[calebsmitty]

As a coach myself, bench is very important to develop upper body strength. It is the best exercise to judge upper body strength of an athlete.

Football is all about your base. The stronger your legs and hips are the more effective you can be. But show me a guy with strong legs and weak upper body and I'll show you are WR or C. Anyone playing inside has to have both.

[ibuildme]

Whats your powerclean at.

I have a pretty high powerclean for my age and highest for the freshmen (255) but I have only 3rd place bench at 220 (going for 225 mon)

It's a fun lift and teaches explosiveness.

255 ounds is insane period. mine is 220 maybe 225. IM still working on it though. but ur clean is insane keep it up

[jdiritto]

The bottom line is that the bench press is a great, multi-joint, free-weight exercise for developing strength in the chest, triceps and shoulders. What’s wrong with that?

The injuries that result from incorporating it in a poorly designed program.

As a coach myself, bench is very important to develop upper body strength. It is the best exercise to judge upper body strength of an athlete.

Football is all about your base. The stronger your legs and hips are the more effective you can be. But show me a guy with strong legs and weak upper body and I'll show you are WR or C. Anyone playing inside has to have both.

just remember that pushing a 300pound linemen around while standing on both feet is extrmely different than pushing a preloaded barbell with a fixed center of mass/gravity while laying on your back....

the majority of the force in blocking is going to come from the triple extension up out of the stance, not from the chest or arms, though the better you can link all chains of the body together to produce in a specific movement pattern the better an athlete you will develop (the main benefit of olympic lifting in my eyes -- developing full body coordination)

I would encourage you to incorporate front squat sandbag chest throws and tire battles for linemen in your training if you dont ... makes for a great break from traditional weight room work which can get old at times, especially for your athletes that don't like lifting.

[gofastsc]

the majority of the force in blocking is going to come from the triple extension up out of the stance, not from the chest or arms, though the better you can link all chains of the body together to produce in a specific movement pattern the better an athlete you will develop (the main benefit of olympic lifting in my eyes -- developing full body coordination).

For the sake of discussion think of pass blocking where you have to kick back and "punch" chest and arms are used a great deal.

I would encourage you to incorporate front squat sandbag chest throws and tire battles for linemen in your training if you dont ... makes for a great break from traditional weight room work which can get old at times, especially for your athletes that don't like lifting.

+1... There are better methods for developing "football strength." But Bench Press has its place in football when grading and developing upper body strength.

[bigguy64]

HAHAHA, this is amusing. Dolphinfan had it right no lift is sport specific. Yeah Benching is gay lets all not do them I mean they only work your triceps, chest, medial lateral and rear delts, lats, core. The whole combine is messed up not just the becnh. When in football do you get into a spritner stance in compression shorts, underarmour, and run In a perfectly straight line? No lift, test, plyometric sport specific except practices and games. The bench is asked about a lot but who cares? It's not worth starting a thread about. Cleans are great until your getting double wrist surgery, back surgery and a knee replacement. I would probably stop benchung though and take a 12 lb. med ball go to a field get on my knees and throw it as far as I can a couple times, that will put on strength and size.

[DSimp]

I think I understand OP's intentions for this thread...

he is talking about HS. In HS you gotta bunch of lazy lifter wanna be's who will do nothing but bench every lift, then maybe an occasional quarter squat. I used to be that guy, the small freshman who was scared to death to do cleans because no one really taught me how to do them. Once I met this guy, who later became my trainer, and he showed me how to do a real clean, everything clicked. If you do REAL cleans (or even snatches), whether it be full, power, hang, you are building extreme amounts of explosiveness in your hips. One of the main steps in performing a tackle in football is squeezing or firing the hips through the person.

Now i'm not at all saying clean is the only lift, because i agree bench is good to do because it builds mass and strength. BUT cleans are often underrated and almost ALWAYS taught poorly, when they are in fact very beneficial to any football player.

SSSSSSQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTSSSSSSS!!! !! most lifts are very important for different reasons including bench. i personally hate how everyone benches but its a great lift there no denying. cleans are great, pullups are great, dips are great but the best lift that nobody does is squats. There is no substitute for it. People are afraid to get under a heavy ass bar and get stuck at the bottom. if you dont squat in your lift program dont talk to me cuz i have zero respect for you when it comes to lifting weights

i really do hope your talking about real squats...but i guess this is a different discussion for a different thread.


P.S.
Anyone every thought of incorporating strongman lifts into their program for football? I've done so, and have seen incredible results. Flipping tires is be really good for football, because your driving into the tire to flip it.

[bigguy64]

yep strongman training is great. On the football field your often times moving but have resistance from other players. Strongman training is probably the closest thing to it except for practice and the games themselves. Tire flips, sledwork, prowler, pushing dragging cars, farmer walks, any kind of medley, atlas stones, throwing things over head (like keg toss).

[KevinBoss]

Even though I know where your coming from. It is important to have a strong upper body for offense and defensive linemen. Without that you wont be able to do anything with strong legs. They measure your strength in the combine by the bench press, that is probably why it is so focused on.

[TheHitStick]

Bench press isn't everything. Today, the bench press is the only thing the typical football player wants to get up. If someone comes up to you and says something negative and refers to bench. Please, tell them to go F off. I personally have a high bench for my age. But really I can careless about it. I would rather have a high power clean. I would respect the player who has the highest clean and the lowest bench. Rather then the player with the highest bench and the lowest clean. Don't get me wrong, benching is good for you and I suggest you to do it but too many friend of mine (and i'm sure others) think of it as the ultimate lift.

It's still necessary to do as a lift and nothing can hurt getting it up as long as every other lift is proportional. If your bench is higher than your squat, then you have a problem. Don't neglect it, but don't worship it.

Also, that's a stereotype. You don't play football so you don't know what the workouts are like. Our workouts consisted more of cleans than they did of bench press or any other lift. So don't assume that every football player thinks that bench press is the most important lift out there.

[jdiritto]

most people perform olympic lifting with their lower back as the primary mover, not the hips. in addition to this when you look at the foot placement it is often horrendous and places an unwanted amount of stress on the knee joint (rather than the musculatre of the thigh). And finally, olympic lifting does not recruit the limbs through a full range of movement. Add in the learning curve and I say they are almost worthless unless you are training olympic weightlifters. I believe the main benefit from them for athletics is the full body musculature co-cordination required to perform them. All of the ROFD and eccentric loading parameters can be achieved by utilizing basic lifts - accomodating resistence in your deep knee bends (aka squats), deadlifts, and plyometrics/other training modalities for eccentric loading.

Alot of the above posts are accurate, but in my opinion the bench is far overrated, It is important, yes, but so is everything else to a far greater extent.

While the upper body is more important in pass blocking than run blocking, if you don't have lower body strength and postural strength through the core to connect the LB with the UB, the opposing player will break through your push far more often than your chest and arms will ever prevent.

I am not saing you shouldn't bench press, I am merely stating it is often over rated in the training of athletes especially by those with little to no formal education on performance training


most important training focus for football players - the neck. Your not getting anywhere with your career if you get a concussion every other sunday.. and if you dotn want serious brain trauma that could potentially ruin your life, you better build that cylinder. It just may prevent the buildup of Tau protein from the repetitive trauma to the head.

This all comes from my background as a strength & conditioning coach, where the #1 priority is to protect the athlete, and #2 is to make them better.. it isn't fancy like all the crap you'll find plastered in magazines and message boards like this from the uneducated and people trying to make a buck.

[xxtwistedxx]

most people perform olympic lifting with their lower back as the primary mover, not the hips. in addition to this when you look at the foot placement it is often horrendous and places an unwanted amount of stress on the knee joint (rather than the musculatre of the thigh). And finally, olympic lifting does not recruit the limbs through a full range of movement. Add in the learning curve and I say they are almost worthless unless you are training olympic weightlifters. I believe the main benefit from them for athletics is the full body musculature co-cordination required to perform them. All of the ROFD and eccentric loading parameters can be achieved by utilizing basic lifts - accomodating resistence in your deep knee bends (aka squats), deadlifts, and plyometrics/other training modalities for eccentric loading.

Alot of the above posts are accurate, but in my opinion the bench is far overrated, It is important, yes, but so is everything else to a far greater extent.

While the upper body is more important in pass blocking than run blocking, if you don't have lower body strength and postural strength through the core to connect the LB with the UB, the opposing player will break through your push far more often than your chest and arms will ever prevent.

I am not saing you shouldn't bench press, I am merely stating it is often over rated in the training of athletes especially by those with little to no formal education on performance training


most important training focus for football players - the neck. Your not getting anywhere with your career if you get a concussion every other sunday.. and if you dotn want serious brain trauma that could potentially ruin your life, you better build that cylinder. It just may prevent the buildup of Tau protein from the repetitive trauma to the head.

This all comes from my background as a strength & conditioning coach, where the #1 priority is to protect the athlete, and #2 is to make them better.. it isn't fancy like all the crap you'll find plastered in magazines and message boards like this from the uneducated and people trying to make a buck.

will agree 98% up to your take on the cleans. although im not going to turn this into a strength lifts vs olympic lifts since were talking bench.

in short the bench is just another tool to build an athlete but unfortunately when ANYONE asks "hey what you putting up?" they almost always are referring to bench.
which leads me to my favorite statement "bench sure can strengthen your upper body but when do you lay down and press a bar off of you in a game?"

to me its a big hammer in my tool box. gonna need it but cant build a house without the rest of the tools.

[ibuildme]

who the hell brought this pos back. its like 2 months old. haha

[dunnie]

SSSSSSQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTSSSSSSS!!! !! most lifts are very important for different reasons including bench. i personally hate how everyone benches but its a great lift there no denying. cleans are great, pullups are great, dips are great but the best lift that nobody does is squats. There is no substitute for it. People are afraid to get under a heavy ass bar and get stuck at the bottom. if you dont squat in your lift program dont talk to me cuz i have zero respect for you when it comes to lifting weights

its all about pistol squats and dead lifts

squats will never fully develop your legs to its full potential as you core will never be strong enough for it

ill always remember being able to squat 500 lbs ass to calves

but being unable to perform 1/4 of a pistol squat

as you progress you can start doing pistol squats with the barbell in front or back