Speed Kills

Starting Off

Size is something that i happen to believe is over rated in football, however the one area that makes up for any lack in size is SPEED. If you are able to move faster then your opponent then are sure to win every time

TOPICS

- How to increase speed.
-New Era Sports Performance

How To Increase Speed

Many people want to get faster however the one formula that is true to this is Stride length x Stride freaquency= SPEED. So with that being said we must get faster, but how do we do this? streching every day and lifts such as dead lifts wll strech the hamstring that will in return cause yur stride lenght to increase. Stride freaquency on the other hand comes from explosion and power, and thats were your cleans and squts come into play. I am not a track coach so for more information on this subject you can contact an athletic trainer that i have been in touch with and he trains professional football players such as Nyan Boatang and Desean Jackson.

follow this link: http://www.newerasportsperformance.com/1.html

Weight Training

Starting Off

Now obviously by the title of this post I will be discussing weight training and some of the things i felt worked for me and were beneficial to others that I recieved positive feedback from. As I talked about in the last post a lot of the concepts I discuss and that you as the reader will hopefully eventually try for yourself involve listening to your body and the feedback it gives you. So lets begin.

TOPICS

The topics i will be discussing to day are as follows:


-CORE workouts
-Auxiliary lifts
-Rest

CORE Workouts

Now with CORE workouts being the title of this topic many people may automatically assume that it is involving your core as in abdominals obliques ect. That is not the case, I am refering to olympic lifts. For Example Bench Press, Squat, Hang Clean, and Dead Lifts.

Now please keep in mind that since I play football the lifts I will be discussing in this post will have a more football based philosophy and some exercises that I mention may not be necessary for training in all sports. Also keep in mind that this is not the only post I will put up in refrence to weight lifting this is just the program that I am currently following, again I will be posting more concepts that involve weight lifting!

The CORE lifts I mentioned are essential to success in the sport of football in all areas. In reguards to the Bench Press, it is crucial to do this lift at least once a week. With the regiment given at my football program you are required to bench 2x per week, Mondays heavy benching then Friday a light bench just to keep your muscles active. It is also broken up into phases. Now when training for this sport you must realize that once your season is over you cant just take a month off and jump right back into where you left off prior to the begining of your season where you were/should be at your strongest. Phase one begins with 2 warm up sets and then 3 sets of 10 reps and then one comedown set of a lighter weight where you can just burn out and get your muscles nice and tired. Then Following that Phase is a lighter repetition yet at the same time heavier weight. The Second Phase starts off the same with 2 warm up sets then 3 sets of 8 repetitions followed by a comedown set. Then the third and final Phase of the program would be the same trend, lighter reps more weight. The Third Phase is same as the previous 2, 2 warm ups then 3 sets of 5 reps followed by the burn out set. The Phases I just discussed do not just apply to the Bench Press but all the Core lifts I mentioned. the only difference is that The Bench Press is done 2x per week and the rest of the CORE lifts are not. The phases should be a duration of anywhere from 1 month to 1 1/2 months long (4 to 6 sessions). I have seen tremendous gains through 3 years following this program and hope that you eventually try it for yourself. If you choose to try this program out then listening to your body comes into play. If the regiment that you followed prior to trying this program was more successful for you, then you should no longer follow this program. Remember DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!

Auxiliary Lifts

Much different then the CORE lifts that I just spoke of, Auxiliary lifts focus on smaller groups of muscles whereas CORE lifts focus on larger muscles. Now many of you may say well what difference does that make? With an Auxiliary lift such as bicep curls there are more ways to take the stress off of your arm by the smallest and slightest movements and improper techniques, whereas on a Bench Press the muscle targeted requires a more drastic incorrect form in order to completely mis-execute the lift. Now theoretically all lifts should be done with the proper form but as I just said if your doing it right but your just not feeling the burn or seeing the results that u feel you should be, or that you have felt in previous lifts that focus on the same muscle, you should stop wasting your time and do what you feel is best for you. There are hundreds upon hundreds of Auxiliary lifts that someone can do. What I suggest is that you should focus on certain muscles per day and choose Auxiliary workouts that complement them. for example if the main focus of your workout is back. Then follow up with lifts like pull ups or bent over rows ect. 

REST

Rest is just as important as the lifts that you do. An example of the regiment that I follow that happens to work for me is a 3 day regiment. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Monday the core lift is the Bench Press followed by Auxiliary lifts that complement chest and shoulders. Wednesday the core lift is the Hang Clean with Auxiliary workouts that complement your back. Friday the core lift is Squats and the Auxiliary lifts that complement that are leg exercises. The rest which is one day in between is essential so that your muscles have time to heal and recuperate so that your ready for your next day of training.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion of this post, would like to say i hope you try some of these ideas and i hope they work for you.... Dare To Dream and Just Do It

My first post: The Beginning

THE BEGINNING

Well considering this is my first blog post and I am sort of new to this website I am going to start off with a little bit about myself. My name is Frank and I am a football player for alfred university. I am in my third year of college and majoring in criminal justice. I have been competing in athletics since I was 6 years old where I began playing pee wee football and have been playing ever since. For those of you out there who play a sport this blog post is right up your alley. I originally wanted to create my own website to help make various workout regiments and other ideas available to athletes so that they can see for them self what works best for them, however I thought bloging may be more appropriate and convenient because if I did not have the right amount of time to devote to an entire website I feel I would be doing some people an injustice and it would be just another dumbe website where you dont get the information that you were searching for, so I started this blog instead.

TOPICS- The topics that i will be discussing in this post are as follows:

- My inspiration
- Nutrition
- Sleep
- Streching
- listening to your body
- balance

MY INSPIRATION

This whole website/blog came about through my communications class I take here at Alfred but then I took a step back and said to myself, I remember when I was a young high school athlete and having the desire to play college football I was always searching the internet on ways to train differently or new methods that are out there, and Rather than  athletes waste their time searching forever for what they are looking for the way I did, I would like to give back and make all sorts of information available on one blog . For example I intend on posting  various blogs on aspects such as weight lifting, speed training, 40 yd dash training, stretching, field drills, drills for specific positions, game concepts so that players can learn more about the game and be mentally ahead of their opponent, reviews on newest equipment available, nutrition, supplements ect.

GETTING A HEAD START

Before I can even jump into any type of advice that I can share with anyone, or any methods that I found to be beneficial I must say that there is one constant in the whole equation of making your self  better and that is taking care of the body. You could take 1000 athletes give them the same workout and for a month and almost every one of their bodies will react differently, however if you take 1000 different athletes and make them eat right and treat thier bodies with the right nutrition you will see more of the same result. So with that being said it is so important to treat you body good and your body will be good to you. Many people my think they treat thier body pretty well, heck I know I did before a good friend of mine who was much older and wiser at the time started to pay more attention to what he put into his body and how he treated it he then aked me a few questions, and im going to aske you the same questions. How well are your eating habbits? How much sleep are you getting a night? Are you DRINKING alot? Are you streching? All these things you should ask yourself and most people will say wow im really not taking good care of my body, or I could be doing much better at it.

Starting with nutrition, It is so important to eat a well balanced diet. Eating a good breakfast in the morning eating right through out the day and not always reaching for that cheese burger whenever you see one. I know when I was in hoghschool I rarely used to get up early enough to eat breakfast which is horrible and to top it off I would walk right down to checkers 6th period and stuff my face and I realized I wasnt treating my body right, I was lucky enough to get away with it because I had a pretty fast metabolism but I knew I had to change my ways of eating. Now let me just say I personally dont believe in limiting your self to 3 square meals a day, or 6 small meals a day. I believe in listening to your body which I will go more in depth in later on. every persons body is different in its own way if you find that your hungry dont deprive yourself of food because you have already had 6 small meals already in the day. If you are hungry eat! you should also enjoy what it is your eating, dont tourture yourself eating something that you cant stand the taste of, when you eat it should be something that you can enjoy and like to eat yet healthy at the same time. When I refer to eating right dont start going crazy and countin carbs and stuff like that, but instead f eating that delicious bowl of cookie crisp, make your self some scrambled eggs with some taost and a glass of orange juice, for lunch have some tuna fish or chicken for dinner have some steak with vegetables (this is just an example). If your hungry in between have a salad or some carrots and celery or some fruit. It is also important to eat the right things at the right time of the day, and what i mean by that is eat most of your carbs in the morning so you have that enerygy for the rest of the day and the sparingly through out the day. Eat your protiens sparingly in the morning and more heavily through out the day especially after your workouts so your body has the right fuel to help recover, and drink lots of water.

When talking about getting the right ammount of sleep, I mean trying to get about 8 hours per night. The rest you get is just as important as the workout you do rest is imperitave to being ready for the next day of your training.

Drinking! Where to begin? I realize that at a young age such as highschool and even at my age in college everyone likes to go out and get "fucked up". Now let me start off by saying I am no stranger to the occasional drink HOWEVER, I have learned that all it is is poison, you drink at night and throw away all your hard work from your workout that day the feel like crap the next morning. I just like many of you drank in highschool and college but i learned BALANCE which is another term I will be refering to alot in my posts. I think at a young age if you go out with your friends once in a while its ok to have a few beers here and there if you are of age of course ;) but it should not by any means be a weekly habbit where your black out drunk every friday and saturday night. You can most certainly have fun without drinking so please do your body a favor and limit it.

Stretching is another aspect of improving your game that many people overlook. I cant begin to tell you how many people on my team alon I see walk right into the weight room and start to squat with out doing a sngle strech. Streching is just as important as your workout and whenever you do a strech I personally beleive you should have a good sweat going by the time your done, so take  your steching seriously.

I'd like to add that all these things i discuss are simply my opinion and at no point am i saying i am 100 percent right. this is here for you to try new things to see how your body responds to it and listneing to your bodies response.

LISTENING TO YOUR BODY

Every thing that you you do to your body your body will react to, and learning to listen to that response will in return make you a better athlete because you will then know what works for you and what exercises are most beneficial for you. For example: if you hear about a sick workout from your buddy and it worked for him and you try it and you just dont feel like its doing anything or you dont feel that burn in areas you think you should then stop wasting your time!!! Just because it worked for joe schmo does not mean it will work for you. Your body is different down to ever muscle fiber, hence the saying you live and you learn. Try it out if it works thats great if not try something else. The same goes for anything you do to your body always listen to your bodies feeback because its always speaking to you we just arent listening well enough.

BALANCE

I refered to BALANCE earlier in my post and I believe that balance is a huge key to being successful no matter what you do in life. When I say balance I mean simply making sure your taking the right steps to accomplish your goals yet at the same time being able to live your life. We are still young and we should experience going out with friends and having fun because life is too short and you never know when it may be over, but you must stay focused and know what you want and take the right steps on how to get there. That is up to you to find your balance in your life.

CONCLUSION

I am going to conclude my firt post with this. I hope you enjoyed what I had to say and I hope you try out some methods I will be posting shortly in the future again im not a professional I only speak from my own expiriences and the expiriences of others that i know well..... Dare To Dream and Just Do It