Whether you play American NFL or Australian Rules Football you need to weight train to be competitive. This article will look at what type of weight training exercises you should use to improve your football game.

How should football players lift weights

Football is an explosive sport. You get knocked around, tackled to the ground and have to do the same to other players. You need to be able to run fast, jump high and outdo your opponent in whatever scenario the game cooks up for you. Without weight training you will be next to useless.

Having said that, it is important to know how to lift weights. You need to know the right exercises and you need to know how to do them. Football players train hard all day; you don’t want to waste energy in the gym doing the wrong thing.

There are two things you need to focus on when weight training:

• Increasing the strength of the muscle
• Increasing the endurance of the muscle

Everything that happens on a football field is summed up into these two parts. If you need to wrestle another player to the ground you need to know two things: the first is that your muscles are stronger than his and the second is that your muscles are going to last longer than his. If you lose either of these you lose the tackle.

I can hear you now saying “Dude, there is more to a tackle than that! What about technique?” And my answer would be: “Well, sport, this article is about weight training, not football technique”. Of course, if your technique is shit it won’t matter how strong you are. Make sure you know this fact.

So, back to the question: how should football players lift weights?

The answer is simple. Footballers should lift weights just like they play football. Sometimes they need explosive strength, somtimes they need a slower pushing power. We therefore need to make sure that our weight training addresses all of these things.

NOTE - We all know football players need to pack on muscle size. This article is not concerned with that. Instead, we are looking at explosive ways to develop better strength and power for on field performance. If you want to know how to pack on muscle size then check out our bodybuilding archives.

Explosive training for much stronger football

The Australian Rules Football players are some of the strongest men in the world, bar none. These guys are not as big as NFL players but they are harder, fitter and much more athletic. They wear NO pads when they play and the sport is full contact. An NFL player wouldn’t know what had hit them.

When the staff of the Philadelphia Eagles flew to Australia to watch a game of Aussie Rules in order to scout some talent (Saverio Rocca) they could not believe how hard the game was. And because the game is so hard these guys have to prepare their body with the right kind of weight training; explosive training.

Here are some ideas for explosive weight training:

1. Weighted Jumping Squats
If your knees and legs are in good shape then it is time to start introducing some weighted jumping squats. This exercise contracts and expands your muscles super fast whilst putting the muscles under a lot of pressure. This is exactly how your muscles need to behave on the field so pumping them hard in training will prepare you well. Make sure you go all the way down, touch your fingers on the ground and then spring in the air as high as you can. Repeat until you can’t walk straight!

2. Medicine Ball Throwing
Medicine balls are a great way to get an explosive weights workout. Again, the aim is to expand and contract your muscles quickly while they are under pressure.

A good exercise is to get a medicine ball that is 20kg or above and throw it as high as you can in the air. You then need to catch it without letting your arms fall down too far. Repeat this again and again. This is an excellent exercise to help you improve the strength needed to catch the ball when under pressure from an angry defender.

You can also do more classic exercises like partner sit ups where you toss the ball back and forth at the top of every sit up.

3. Sandbag Carrying
Picking up and carrying a bag filled with sand that weighs 50 to 100 kilograms is an amazing way to condition your body and strengthen your muscles.

We often used to get a great workout by getting a sandbag or a heavy punching bag and marking out a 50 yard track. You would pick up the bag however you could, run the 50 yards and then pass it to your partner who would do the same thing. Half an hour of this a few times per week will put your conditioning way ahead of the opposition. It is really hard work.

It is a great endurance exercise because it forces you to carry heavy loads for long periods of time whilst running and using your lungs.

4. Explosive Weighted Pullups with a Partner
This is a great exercise to do with a partner. Pack on some heavy weight discs to your waist using a weight belt and jump up onto the chin up bar. Pump out a set of chin ups / pull ups as fast as you can until you fail and then instead of dropping off get your partner to help you back up to the top.

Once you are back up the top hold that position as long as you can. The weight will be trying to drop down to the ground and it will be messing with your muscles. You will be screaming in pain but you have to hold on. Just imagine you are holding on to a player who is about to score some important points. You can’t let go.

Finally, when you cannot hold on anymore you should perform a one minute decline where you take a full 60 seconds to drop down. Swap the weight with your partner and then help him out. Repeat. This type of training builds much better strength than traditional 8-12 rep weight lifting.

Conclusion on Weight Lifting for Football

Of course footballers need to be big. But they also need to be powerful, strong and very tough. These types of exercise are more about developing on field power than they are about muscle size. However, this does not mean that they won’t help you pack on size - they will. The point of this article is to get you to think about new methods of developing strength and power other than the regular weights in the gym. While the gym is effective, you can go above and beyond.

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