A typical upper-body day looks like this
Clean
DB Bench
Incline DB Bench
Over Head Shoulder Press
High Pulls
Plate Raises
Dips
Curls
A typical lower-body day goes something like this
Squat (or deadlift)
DB Snatch
Good Mornings
Pull Ups
Bent Over Rows
Shoulder Shrugs
Personally, I would like to focus on 3 or 4 main lifts, and add 2 on each day of the weekends to go up to 6 workouts a week. Heres what I would do instead of taking off on Saturday and Sunday…
Saturday: Bench Press, Lat Pulldown
Sunday: Squat, Deadlift
If you add that in the total split would loook like this…
Monday: Mostly Upper
Tuesday: Mostly Lower
Wednesday:Off
Thursday: Mostly Upper
Friday:Mostly Lower
Saturday:Bench and Lat Pulldown (Upper)
Sunday:Squat and Deadlift (Lower)
Would this be too much work and end up being detrimental to my training or not?
Note: I dont plan on doing this immediately, but I want to add it in about 2 or 3 weeks as I become more accustomed to my football training.
The first 4 day setup looks fine. 6 days high intensity the way you want to do it is too much. It will be too much to let your system recover. If you want to add bench you should take out the DB bench and add regular bar flat bench in place of it. And if you want to add lat pulldowns either take out the bent over rows and add it or just simply add it in addition to the bent over rows.
It depends on the intensity of the lifting. If you stay below 80% and don’t go to failure, I think you’ll be alright. Right now I’m doing weights 6 days/week, never hit 80%, only go to failure on bodyweight exes, and I’m making great progress. I don’t know what the volume and intensity of your football lifting sessions are, but I’d guess that if you think it’s too much for you, then it probably is.
In my opinion, it depends on what phase of your training you’re in. Do you have spring football? Are you going to be focusing on that, or is your next football practice in Aug.?
In the training phase we’re in right now, I believe our athletes would break down training six times a week. We go to a “max effort” 2 times a week, and they need the rest to recover from these intense days.
The only spring football we have is basically putting in the passing game for our offense. Its not really that intense, so I guess our first practice with real pads and intensity and everything will be way ahead in august.
As far as the intensity goes, I was planning on using the bench day on Saturday as a moderate intensity day (about 60%) with the same thing for the legs on Sunday. Do you think that would still be too much accumulated fatigue?
If you do legs on Sunday and sprint in football on Monday your asking for a hamstring pull!
If monday is a very easy day then the split could be fine for a 4 week period but thats it! If you do your proposed routine all season long you won’t have enough CNS energy!
P.S. Your current program before modifications looks exactly like the Nebraska Cornhusker program!
Yeah, our S & C coach said hes worked with some big D1 schools and with the Minnesota Vikings before coming out here to be back with his family, so it wouldnt suprise me.
I guess I’ll just leave it alone then and stick to 4 a week and see how I do on that. If I’m not seeing the results I want then I’ll consider modifying it later.
Seriously though…supercompensation is the product of training and recovery…so it’s hard for us to tell whether this program will be too much because only you know your personal rate of recovery. There are some clear-cut rules such as 48hrs in between speed work and never go above 90% lifting max twice per week (Westside) but the rest is arbitrary. I remember Charlie saying something like if you are continuing to improve, then you’re not overtraining. Let that be your guide.