HOW WOULD YOU MODIFY THIS WORKOUT YOU PROVIDED IN THIS POST
(http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=4362)
FOR A DEFENSIVE LINEMAN OFF SEASON WORK OUT THANX
As I mentionned in an earlier thread, I’m moving away from the ascending-descending program, which wasn’t mine to begin with. My athletes have had good results with it, but recent experiences lead me to believe that it’s best not to use too many different neural influences in a single session.
I currently train 3 linemen and they use a program similar to this:
MONDAY - Concentric limit strength work - whole body
- Overload pressing movement (board presses)
- Heavy pressing movement (flat, incline or decline bench)
- Whole body movement, heavy (power clean from blocks for power snatch from blocks)
- Heavy leg movement (Romanian deadlift or squat depending on the athlete’s quad/hamstring dominance)
WEDNESDAY - Accentuated eccentric work - whole body
- Contrast method bench press - 5 seconds down (using weight releasers, 110 to 120% on the way down, 80-90% on the way up)
- Superslow eccentric pressing movement - 10 seconds down (flat, decline or incline press)
- Isometric rack press (pressing against pins set at the athlete’s weakest point)
- Contrast method squat - 5 seconds down (using weight releasers 110 to 120% on the way down, 80-90% on the way up)
- 2/1 leg curl (up explosively with 2 legs, down slowly 1 leg at a time)
FRIDAY - Ballistic session - whole body
- Speed bench press (sets of 3 reps using 50-55% with max speed)
- Med ball throw from chest
- Jump squats (with 20-30% of your max squat)
- Depth jumps
We also have a “beach” sessions which basically work the upper back to avoid developing an imbalance from all the pressing we do. My athletes normally do 2 vertical pulling exercises (chins or lat pulldown ; shrugs) and 2 horizontal pulling exercises (barbell rowing and seated rowing). These are done with lighter weights to rest the CNS, and greater volume.
ABS are done after each workout.
*** Every 3 weeks we drop the Wednesday session**** VERY important for maximum CNS recovery and performance.
The load and volume vary greatly during a cycle. But the workouts are already completed within 60 minutes, so the volume per exercise is fairly low.
Obviously this is just a broad explanation of the training cycle I use, a complete, detailed program is beside the scope of this forum (I do, after all, get paid to design training program!).
But the upgraded version of my new book will include a complete 12 weeks cycle.
CT,
Will you go through this info in your seminar?
I like how that’s organized.
-For basketball players would you pretty much keep it the same, but replace most of the horizontal presses with overhead or incline. For example, on Friday do jerks instead, Wednesday do various inclines and remove rack presses, and Monday do Overhead lockouts and then push presses?
-Why leg curls over GHR on Wed.?
Looking forward to the updated book.
what options do you have if no weight releases available??
have your partner push down on the bar??
in a more impractical idea…I guess you could set up to benches…and lower the bar heavy…have two or 3 partners help raise it and move to a bottom position bench on the power rack…
or maybe just do the eccentrics first have them raise it…or something like that 
where do you get weight releasers?? are they expensive…
do you think youll do like in your first book that you had 12 week programs for difrent sports…basketball pretty please…or at least one focused on vertical enhancement or better yet both 
You say you do abs after every session. What type of ab training do you do?
also
what do you think of doing abs before workouts…kind of like what coolj does?
[QUOTE=sagomed2]what options do you have if no weight releases available??
have your partner push down on the bar??
where do you get weight releasers?? are they expensive…
QUOTE]
Yes, with my athletes who don’t train “live” wth me I have them use a partner pushing down on the bar to overload the eccentric portion. Harder to establish precisely what the actual resistance is, but have the partner pushes down as hard as possible as long as you can lower the bar in 5 seconds.
Weight releasers are really not that expensive and can be bought from www.elitefts.com
We do abs at the end on the workouts. Since we are training both lower and upper body in each session, intense or high volume abs work could lead to lesser performances in the strength exercises (because the trunk is tired), especially the olympic lifts and squats.
We mix things up.
MONDAY
High rep - no resistance work (basic crunches/sit ups, v-sit-ups)
Light russian twist
WEDNESDAY
Weighted moderate reps work (8-12 reps) (side bends, cable crunches)
FRIDAY
Ballistic work (med ball throws with various types of trunk twists)
With any type of athletes I try to minimize the amount of overhead work to a few exercises per week (if that). Overhead pressing can be very hard on the shoulder girdle and cause some structural damage in the long run. Furthermore, you don’t have to be 100% specific in your strength training sessions. Push jerks and push presses would be a nice addition, but keep the volume on the low side.
Christian is doing a supra-maximal eccentric… something the GHR isn’t very conducive to.
Thanks for all the replies CT.
I tried the 2/1 leg curls for a few weeks and didn’t care much for them. You can easily do accentuated eccentric GHR’s. Just accentuate the eccentric motion and/or have a partner hand you a 25 at the top.
-What kind of volume is used for the ab work? Maybe you use those guidelines Clemson wrote on elitefts?
-There’s 2, 3, and 1 pressing exercises respectively. So would overhead work be about 1:3 or 2:5 if removing the rack presses?
-I don’t care much for decline or flat, so would varying grips and angles w/ bar or dumbbells(only #2 on M&W) on incline be sufficient?
-What’s the reasoning behind board presses and iso rack presses for athletes?
I tried to talk to Jay Schroeder about his training methods. He was anything but informative. He basically told me that I knew nothing, was not that good an athlete, and that the program would cost me 500.00 per six months. I would imagine you may have talked to him as a colleague. What do you think?
That’s true, however the problem with the GHR is that it’s hard to quantify progress precisely. I really like the natural glute-ham raise and the bench glute-ham raise. I use it often in the training of my athletes. But I find the 2/1 leg curl to be very effective at strenthening the hamstrings. But when it all comes down to it, the choice of exercise is not as important as the execution and the method used.
It depends on the workout objective…
Monday the volume is high and the intensity is low. We will often do abs circuits. The following is ONE example:
- Roman chair sit-ups x 15-25
- Leg raises on dips station x 15-25
- Incline russian twist (no weight) x 15-25
30 seconds between stations, repeat 2-5 times.
Wednesday the volume is low and the intensity is high. We use straight sets, not circuits. We normally use 2 exercise on this day for 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps.
I like to use the cable crunches and side bends.
Friday we use 2-3 dynamic abs exercises (med ball throws). We normally do sets of 10-15 reps, but really, I let the quality of the execution dictate when a set is over.
Why don’t you care for the decline and flat press? Both are very good exercises and provide a much needed brak to the shoulders which are under an awful lot of stress. This is especially true of the decline press.
Coaches who are dead set on always being 100% specific will say that these two movements are not good, but in my opinion, strength training doesn’t have to be 100% specific. What we basically want is to strengthen all the muscles in the body and increase CNS efficiency.
But in regard to your question, varying grip width is a viable option (which I use with my younger athletes). In fact, Poliquin stated that even a 1" difference in grip width can be sufficient to spark new neural gains.
To increase limit strength and duration-dominant neural drive of a high magnitude. As both of these movements provide an important overload compared to full range of motion movements.
I have not talked to Jay and he has not replied to any of my emails. From what I gather he doesn’t care much for me, which is odd considering that our methodologies are somewhat similar in nature (but not so in application).
He doesn’t seem to be open to sharing. That’s too bad, but I don’t think he’s anything special. His methods are great, but many other good coaches have been using the same methods for years.
Thanks. Reasons I don’t like flat and decline are:
- It seems you increase incline and you increase flat and decline as a result
- They’re always taken by the typical college gym type
i’m so sick of jay schroeder. i watched the archuleta video and i remember adam saying the same thing about jay telling him he wasn’t a good athlete and that he knew nothing. who does this guy think he is that he can just put down people like he does. imo, jay is a punk, his program is incomplete and we shouldn’t waste our time talking about him on this forum anymore.
[QUOTE=Christian Thibaudeau]I have not talked to Jay and he has not replied to any of my emails. From what I gather he doesn’t care much for me, which is odd considering that our methodologies are somewhat similar in nature (but not so in application).
He doesn’t seem to be open to sharing. That’s too bad, but I don’t think he’s anything special. His methods are great, but many other good coaches have been using the same methods for years.[/QUOTE
I thought you said you had worked with Jay? Or was that Tony Schwartz?
In my experience it doesn’t effect things as much as one would think. If your going for a PR I can understand, but doing the core work first does great things for warming up those muscles and “turning” them on. I think I have avoided many injuries as a result.