3 Ways to Improve Your Football Speed

I’m pretty much sick of seeing football training videos on YouTube or on websites having football players train for speed by running endlessly through cones.











It may have value, though it’s questionable. I unfortunately get to see football players subject to this pretty often. Add agility ladders to that list as well as “strength shoes” These gimmicks have nothing to do with building actual foot speed. And, even worse, they do nothing to improve your football speed!




What’s Wrong with Cone Drills?




Cone drills are really limited because of one main factor: the football players running through the cones are not strong enough to produce the proper amount of force to actually be agile.

• Football Agility requires relative body strength.
  

• Relative body strength (as all other elements of strength) is dependant on your Maximum Strength.
  

If you aren’t strong enough, you won’t be agile …or quick, or fast, or explosive. I can’t stand seeing skinny, weak young players, or, fat, weak players doing cone drills because they can’t even muster up the force to get out of their own way.



A strong football player will almost always be a fast football player. Speed training should be built into your football training program.



So, if cone drills don’t improve foot speed and agility, what does?




Get Stronger



You must work on your strength. Heavy weights and low reps. Max Effort work for both upper and lower body. Explosive Football exercises like Squats, Deadlifts, Incline Bench, Snatch Grip Deadlifts, Good Mornings and Cleans should all be done regularly.


Clean & Jerks


Not many exercises test your ability to move your feet like a Jerk. While you can do Jerks out of the rack, I still like to mix in C&J’s because of the fatigue factor. Basically, you want to be a little tired, then have to move your feet quickly while putting a big weight overhead. You’ll be tired in your games, so don’t you think it would make sense to train agility-building movements while tired?



Clean and Jerks, should, in some way, be part of everyone’s football training program. They are an ideal football exercise – they require foot speed, power, strength, and agility. Those are the qualities that football speed are made of!




Jump Rope



This is as basic as it gets. But, adding a jump rope to your training after you have enough strength can be a great “bridge” between weightroom strength and on-field performance. You can use a jump rope as a warm up, a cool down, or as a workout all to itself. Lineman especially should be jumping rope. If you don’t have good foot-work on the line, forget it, you’re done.



When people talk about how to train explosively for football, they usually start talking about exotic, odd exercises and all kinds of weird training tools like Jump Soles and parachutes and similar crapola.

• But, the Jump Rope is as old as the hills and continues to out-perform just about everything when it comes to improving your football foot speed.

Also, be position specific. Lineman should work on their steps…LB’s on theirs, and so on.

There’s not much sense putting every player through the same cookie-cutter agility and foot-speed training program. Remember, the only football exercises you should add to your training program are those with a high return on your efforts. Jump Rope and Clean & Jerks are two of the best in this regard.

Football Speed Training: Kettlebells

I once wrote an article about how agility training sucks…I got more than a few pieces of hate mail; and for that I’m thankful. If we were all afraid to change the old-school thinking on football training, we’d all be doing calisthenics and wouldn’t lift weights because it makes you “muscle-bound.”

Well, here’s another reason for some to hate me: most football speed training sucks too. More on that in a future article…for now, we’ll talk about ways to increase football speed in the one place that matters most: the weight room!




Big, compound movements like Squats, Box Squats and Deadlifts should always be the base of your football training program. However, there are several smaller movements and special tools that can help you increase your quickness when performing speed training for football.


Enter the Dragon

Most people never heard of Kettlebells before Dragon Door and Pavel re-introduced them to the world.

They’ve been used by fighters and athletes for about a century, but they lost popularity somewhere along the line. This is a shame because they are excellent tools for becoming faster and stronger, especially for football.


Before anyone bitches out and complains that I’m a member of a Kettlebell Kult (people who train only with Kettlebells), get over it. Kettlebells are to be used in addition to your normal football training, not in place of it!


Kettlebells are excellent for football speed because:


They can target the hamstrings and glutes in a way that a barbell can’t

• They compliment the big movements nicely by allowing you to train in athletic positions
  


• They are excellent for dynamic speed work
  

Remember, football speed isn’t just about running some damn 40-yd dash. You’ve got to be explosive (hence the name – Explosive Football Training).

Here are 3 excellent Kettlebell exercises that will increase your football speed:

1. Kettlebell Swings

This is the king of the football speed makers! It’s a really common KB exercise yet I see people doing them wrong all the time. If all you did was add Kettlebell Swings to your football speed training, you’d be miles ahead of most of your competitors.

• This is NOT a squat movement. While you can do a squat/swing for general conditioning and fat loss, this is not what I am talking about for speed development.
  

You need to allow the bell to travel all the way back and then SNAP it forward. That snap is the key to the exercise…you are building reactive strength, the same you would need for sprinting, jumping, and coming out of your stance into a sprint. This is explosive football training, not training for fat loss!


This can be done after your heavy leg exercise or at the end of your training as a hamstring/glute finisher. It is not necessary to do high reps in the swing as some believe.

Use a heavier KB and shoot for 3-4 sets of 4 – 6 reps.

Here is a video of the right way to do a swing:




2. Kettlebell Overhead Lunge

This is an excellent single-leg football exercise that will hit the glutes, hams and hips hard. It also has the added bonus of working the abs/obliques very hard since they have to stabilize the bell overhead.

Grab a kettlebell, press it overhead, then do a lunge. Get a nice, long stride and explode back up.

When you lunge, don’t be afraid to go deep. This is an excellent movement for football speed training because not only will it strengthen the muscles, but it will also dynamicall stretch the hip flexors…tight hip flexors are often called “breaks,” because they literally will push the brake pedal on your speed!

3. Kettlebell Overhead Throw

This is a great way to learn to transfer power. If your football training program doesn’t address how to transfer power; it’s worthless. Building up strength only to leave it in the weight room will only lead to frustration.

• This is pretty simple – perform a Kettlebell Swing but release the bell at the top. You are trying to throw it as far as possible.
  

This is an excellent way to track explosiveness. Super coach Charles Poliquin once called the overhead toss the best indicator of athletic ability in young athletes.


Track this exercise by keeping measurements – measure every 3 – 4 weeks.
Keep it fairly light – a K-bell between 10 – 20lbs is plenty.

Add these movements to your training one at a time so that you can track progress and see which works best for you.



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Football Training Myths: Agility Drills Improve Football Speed

Oh the Myths that surround Football Training. From the old-school “muscle bound” theory to the “aerobic base” phenomenon, there is a seemingly endless parade of B.S. that surrounds how to get bigger, stronger, and more explosive for football.

One of my favorite Football Training myths is that the use of agility drills, cones, ladders and those stupid parachutes will improve football speed and agility.




The theory seems sound: set up cones in increasingly difficult patterns, run through them as fast as possible. After several week of this, your football agility will be through the roof and you’ll be jukin’ people outta’ their shoes in no time.

In the old days, you just ran back and forth through some cones, now a days, you are forced to run through a maze of cones that would stump even the most experienced lab rat.

First off, let’s define agility.


• Agility is the ability to rapidly change direction without loss of speed. To be agile, you must be able to generate great amounts of force and apply them to the ground; this is what propels you in the opposite direction.
However, they miss several key issues.

1. If you are weak, all the agility training in the world will not make your more agile!

• Maximum Strength is the foundation of all elements of football training. If you are stronger, you will become more agile. Think of it this way – if you are 160lbs and you currently Deadlift 200 and your agility is average.

What do you think will allow you to produce more force? Running through cones or upping your Deadlift to 225lbs? Remember science class? Force = mass x acceleration



2. Often, improvements in testing times are a result of improved form and all the little “tricks” that one can apply to the agility tests.

o Let’s take a look at the ever-popular 20-yd Pro Agility Shuttle. On the surface, it’s not a bad test. You have to change directions and turn and sprint…that’s very football-like. However, watch a new player run that test. They run high, then bend way over to touch the ground, and they sometimes even turn completely around when they hit the cones.

Now, watch someone who’s been coached on this drill. They sprint low, stop short of the cone, touch, and drive forward in an extremely low position. Those few form changes can make huge improvements in the testing time. There are so many problems with this.

First, there was no real improvement in speed. The player simply ran the drill better

• Second, we are training for football, not a reverse limbo contest. When the hell do you ever run so bent over in a football game? I hope you don’t, unless you fancy a broken neck!


3. Running over and through cones can cause the athlete to run with exaggerated high-knees.

o For all this talk about sports specificity, coaches completely disregard the fact that running round like a Rockette will alter running form and hinder speed. Not only that, but think about times you’ve had to do any kind of cutting in a game…can you ever remember lifting your knees up to waist height? Exactly

Bottom line: Lift weights and get stronger so you can produce more force and be faster and more agile. Agility drills have no place in football training! Leave the cones for soccer players or some other sport where making the wrong move won’t get you knocked out.


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