Velocity Training for Offensive/Defensive Lineman

quote:

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so for a football athlete this is actually what I would do instead of greyskull


1) warmup- include bear crawls that are nice and slow, reverse bear crawls, side bear crawls etc. like 10 yards. include broomstick dislocates to open the chest and shoulders and some hangs and include some easy pogo jumps to work elasticity and improve ground contact times. like 2 sets of 20, nice and easy

2) dumbbell jumps- 3 week wave starting like this- roughly 5 reps total, 45s-60s between reps
10s-->15s-->20s then repeat
100% full intent

they should look like this



3) broad jumps- measure these- roughly 5 or so, full intent, full rest


4) Paused bench press- Breif max tension wave- will be a 6 week wave

5 reps-->3 reps(+5% from week 1)--> 4 reps with same weight as week 2

--> 2 reps(+5% from week 3)--> 3 reps with same weight--> 1 rep(+5% from week 4)

so you are removing 2 reps but adding 5% every 2 weeks

this explains it very well. you are doing 6 week waves though because of only 1 day per week
Twitter Link

set 1- start with bar, pause for a 3 count then explode fast as you can
set 2- middle weight between bar and working weight. do same number of reps as working weight
set 3- working weight
set 4- working weight plus 2.5lbs

5) 12" box squat with a soft foam pad- ( I use this one) on top of a 12" plyo box

use same rep scheme
slow eccentric, pause on the box, explode
Twitter Link
Twitter Link



6) belted marches- just use a loading pin, let weight hang between legs and march barefoot back and fourth for about 2 min
Twitter Link


7) if he feels up to it- 5 or so vertical jumps. no weight, full intent and trying to set a PR

this pretty much covers it. simple, to the point for an athlete. hits the most important dynamic method lift in db jumps. hits max strength in the paused bench and the box squats with out causing crazy fatigue/soreness and both those lifts feature static overcoming dynamic so you are working both ends of strength curve at the same time.

make sure he is doing every concentric portion of the lift as fast as possible. think Compensatory Acceleration Training (CAT training)


if you can afford it, I can not recommend the OVR jump, vbt and sprint enough. the app is awesome too, tracks everything.

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I thought I’d share some results from my 16-year-old’s training using OVR velocity training. We followed the approach that LSU777 described in the Greyskull thread quoted above.

My son has now completed two full cycles, and I’ve become a big believer in this style of training.

A few thoughts:

Box squat: We used .5 m/s as our floor for a working weight. I would allow him to dip slightly below that on the final overload set, but nothing ever dropped below .4 m/s.

Pause bench: His reps were almost always in the .3–.4 m/s range. From a bystander’s perspective, I would consider those pretty fast reps. I’m not sure whether peak velocity might be more useful for bench than average velocity. It doesn’t seem to be strictly a weight issue, either, because even a weight that was around his 10-rep max would fall into that same range.

Maybe he is subconsciously slowing down toward the end of the rep, which brings the average velocity down. I do know that on his 5-rep pause sets, he was hitting peak velocities of 1.0–1.3 m/s, which is moving pretty fast.

One thing he really benefited from was the instant feedback from the app during the lift. We’ve always talked about moving every weight as fast as possible, but with OVR, the feedback is right there in your face.

Early on, we would often see the third rep being the fastest. Now, the reps have started to become much more consistent in speed.

The app also gives you an estimated max. I wouldn’t assume the number itself is perfectly accurate, but as long as that number is trending upward, it’s a pretty useful indication that you’re making progress.

Results so far:

Box Squat: 375 × 1 @ .51 m/s ? 405 × 1 @ .54 m/s

Pause Bench: 285 × 1 @ .35 m/s ? 320 × 1 @ .33 m/s

Going forward, we’re going to repeat the last cycle using the exact same weights and try to get everything moving faster.

Once football season ends, we’ll probably transition to using velocity loss to determine when to end a set. That will depend somewhat on what the team has planned for the offseason.