Guest Blog from Jason Ferruggia
Renegade Training for Football
To become a better athlete you need to not only get stronger in the weight room but you also need to include some plyos, speed and agility work on a regular basis.Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page here, plyos consist of jumping, bounding and hopping exercises. These can be done off of one or two legs. Some of the simplest and most effective plyos are vertical jumps for height, box jumps, hurdle jumps, and broad jumps.
Speed work consists of short sprints from 10-50 yards. When we discuss speed we usually mean straight ahead speed, whereas agility represents change of direction. So agility work would consist of running straight, sideways and backwards; changing direction often throughout the drill. No set of plyo, speed or agility work should ever last more than ten seconds.
People often try to make all of this more complicated than it has to be. You don’t need the fanciest equipment or most complicated drills in the world. To improve your vertical jump you jump. To run faster you sprint. To improve your agility you work on some basic change of direction drills. And you try to always out do what you did last time; just like you do in the weight room.
Pretty simple stuff. Of course you have to improve your relative strength but I will assume that everyone is already doing that. So as long as you are doing squats, glute hams, pistols, chins, etc., and consistently getting stronger you’re on the right track. The jumps, speed and agility work should be done two to three times per week either immediately before your strength training workout or as a separate workout 4-8 hours earlier or later as a double session.
So how many sets should you do? The easiest way to control the volume is through performance. When you are doing plyos, sprints or change of direction drills you should always use complete rest intervals. When your performance starts to decline, you are done for the day. It couldn’t be any easier than that.
Let’s say you are doing simple box jumps. You start with low boxes to warm up and continually increase the height of the box as you go. You can take short rest periods on the low boxes but once the height becomes challenging you need to increase the time between sets. You hit a 45 inch box, rest then make a 46 easily. You’re feeling good so you add another mat and make it 48 inches. You make the 48 but know it was probably your max for the day. You could stop there or take another attempt at 49 if you so desired. If you get 49 you could keep going. If you miss it you have two options. Call it a day or try 49 one more time. Make it and go to 50, miss it and you’re done. Easy, right?
Now, if you are coaching a group of athletes or training with partners, using performance to dictate volume isn’t always practical. In that case I would recommend 3-10 sets of 1-6 reps for plyo work. When jumping, you will notice that better athletes jump higher or further the more attempts they take (up to a certain point). Average to mediocre athletes seem to top out earlier.
For sprints it really depends on the distance. If you are doing 10 yard sprints you can do more sets than if you are doing 40’s. So take Charlie Francis’s approach and measure the volume of the workout by total distance covered. 300 total yards for the day makes up a good speed or agility workout. Simple enough. Always think quality over quantity.
Rocket science it aint. Get stronger in the gym, relative to your bodyweight, while keeping your bodyfat levels low, and keep pushing your numbers in basic jumping, sprinting and change of direction drills and you will improve your athletic ability and be a beast on the field this year.
Good luck.
Jason Ferruggia
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Alwyn
