Off-Season High School Football

Off-Season High School Football
(Phase 1)

 

    The winter time is where our athletes are training the hardest. Unlike most, our athletes don’t take long periods off after their seasons. They are right back in the gym here at Varsity House and are getting ready for the upcoming season. This approach is what has bread multiple D1 athletes, multiple State Championships, and multiple conference title appearances in all sports over the last 10 years. It is imperative that your athletes are training at this time to truly see their hard work come to fruition in the upcoming seasons. Our off-season programs are the most crucial to our athlete’s success. It is during this time that we build the foundation and get them ready for the hard training to follow!  

    Phase 1 is all about building our athletes back up. This phase consists of hypertrophy and GPP (General Physical Preparedness). You have to remember; most athletes do not consistently perform resistance training during the season. Most athletes will come back de-trained and out of shape. Phase 1 of the off-season is the most important phase throughout the off-season process because you are laying the foundation and setting your athletes up for success in the months to come. All of our compound barbell movements are being done with light weights for higher reps to ensure technical mastery, build work capacity, and increase hypertrophy. There are two types of athletes that you are going to be dealing with in your gym;

1. The athlete who needs to get bigger and put weight on to help deal with the physicality of the game.

2. The athlete who needs to lose body fat, increase muscle, and alter body composition. 

This is what makes this phase so crucial, both of these issues are resolved by increasing their work capacity and increasing hypertrophy. At Varsity House, each phase during our off-season program is relegated to a 10-week training block. There are 5 main objectives that should be covered during this block. Increased blood flow, increased work capacity, mobility work, weak point training (grip/neck), and mechanical speed work. The 10th week of the training block is designed for testing our athletes.  This is where we see the last 9 weeks of hard training come to fruition. Over the course of the 10 weeks, we use simple linear periodization. For example, weeks 1-2 are sets of 8-10 with 95lbs, weeks 3-4 are sets of 6-8 with 105lbs. It’s as a simple as that.

Week 10, we are trying to find a relative 1RM. When we test, we always want to test and train in an optimal way. This is making sure that the athlete has more in the tank after they hit a new 1RM. You do not want to work your athlete to failure by over exceeding what they can handle. Remember, when they get close to 100% or more on their max effort lifts the risk of injury is much higher due to technical breakdown. The goal for week 10 is to have your athletes handle heavier weights that they have never experienced before, and in turn, this gives the athlete confidence and motivation heading into the next block of training.   
 
In Conclusion,
Phase 1 is the most important phase in the off-season process, because this is where the coach and athlete relationship begins. Make sure to help your athletes not only build up physically but mentally as well! Here you will see 4 graphs; there will be 2 graphs that show the increase in both the bench and squat by every 10lb increments. The other 2 graphs will be a total poundage difference from Week 3 to Week 10; here you will see how much poundage was gained in the bench and squat. It is important for me to mention that there were 2 outliers.

1.    There was an athlete where strength was not the issue but mobility was. His upper body mobility was so poor that getting under a bar was not only difficult but uncomfortable, so the numbers that he hit in Week 3 were not a true example of his real strength. Following the testing of Week 3 we spent a lot of time trying to improve his upper body mobility, by Week 10 his mobility improved so much that he was able to get under the bar much easier which ultimately led to his successful Week 10 testing.

The other athlete entered our program 2 weeks late and came in during our testing week, so because he was new and we never saw him lift before we kept his numbers on the lighter side just to make sure his technique was locked in. I believe it is truly irresponsible for a coach to take an athlete he never saw lift before and train him or her to their ultimate max. When it was time to test for Week 10 we knew he had a lot in him. (View graphs on page 3)

Coach Mike Capriglione
mcapriglione@varsityhousegym.com