Strength Training for Speed and Power Athletes

Today I'm going to talk to you about the importance of strength training.

For some reason, the majority of programs simply do not consider this important enough to make it a regular part of their preseason and in season training.

The only sport that I see using weight training with any regularity is American football and most of the time they're not doing it right.

It's true.

For some reason, in the United States, we have adopted a 'bodybuilder' mentality when it comes to strength training for sport.

Let me give you another example:

I used to coach at a high school. Whenever I'd be in the weight room with my athletes, I would obviously watch all the athletes lift.

OK, the only other athletes in the weight room besides mine were the football team. Literally no other team in the school used the weight room.

Shameful, but not surprising.

Anyway, it became a running joke with my athletes because whenever we'd be in the weight room, the football players would be doing some crazy stuff!

What do I mean?

I can count the number of times on one hand that I saw a workout that consisted primarily of leg exercises and contained rep schemes that were less than 8-10 reps.

On top of that, coaches didn't instruct anyone on how to do the lifts correctly (the football team started coming to me for that - and their coaches would just give me dirty looks).

Plus, many of the lifts they did were, well, useless for sports.

Next time I will go into some weight room rules.