This question is for any of the Sports guys who manipulate Westside for increased sports performance. Is increasing max strength and increasing flexibility in the same muscle group possible? When using Westside powerlifters Range of Motion is extremely limited and therefore lack mobility but for football players that mobility is needed. What have you done to help specifically football players to increase mobility while gaining max strength?
Not specifically for football, but I’ve always found hurdle walkovers to really increase my ROM. I think this would transition over fine for football, even though I did this during my track season. Combine that with a good warm-up and cool down (the cool down is where you really focus on improving your flexibility through static stretches) and I think it’s definitely possible to do both at the same time.
I don’t know for sure but I think quite a few people who employ powerlifting methods also do a fair amount of assisted stretching or jumpstretch work. I havn’t read his site for ages but i’mn pretty sure defranco does this. Personally, i’d be careful using a pure powerlifting workout for any team sports player because of the conflicting demands of the sprint/game work involved. There is a ton of debate on this in the archieves.
TC
Over the summer I did hip mobility drills before sprinting and I never felt better sprinting after hip mobility. I did walk overs/ duck down, trail leg lifts and others that I got from WSFSB 2.
I have read some of the Westside debate and liked the arguments for and against but it then turned into a question whether the dyanmic effort day was really needed because as sprinters are always sprinting a LB DE day would be futile. I am definantly going to be doing a Westside hybrid focusing more on my weak areas to enhance my play for college ball next year. If I post my workout for the next 2 weeks can you critique it and tell me what you would change and why?
Footballstar06’ - post it, I’ll take a look at it.
The hip mobility stuff is HUGE, so important. Powerlifters, especially those with Dave Tate at Westside, have stretching fairly high on their list of priorities (as far as anything I’ve ever read). As long as you don’t forget your an ‘athlete’, keep practicing on the field and real good dynamic warm ups, static stretching after weight work, a Westside template can give you tremendous gains on the field.
Again, post your workout, we’ll see if we can set something up for you.
As well as hip mobilty stuff done in the squat rack with pins or the smith machine the best exercises to add into the westside program and which Defranco has done in his WSSB is unilateral exercises. The one legged squat, reverse lunges and those types of exercises improve range of motion as well as correct muscle imbalances greatly. Also upper body dumbell work helps as well as scarecrows.
I have gone through periods of max strength development where I also increased flexibility at the same time. Overhead squats, butt-to the-ground improved my flexibility a lot. Quickashell’s recommendation of one-legged squats is also a good one, those flat out git-r-done.
I know I preach the gospel of overhead squats often but they are great for strength AND FLEXIBILITY. Touching your toes or throwing your leg up on a hurdle is not the kind of dynamic flexibility you need for track and field. Instead, you need to challenge, shape, stretch, pull, groove, and move all at the same time…as often as possible. The deep position at the bottom of the OHS helped greatly in this area, more so than simple, traditional stretches. Am I unique in this?
Definitely Quick - Good point. Mike Boyle and the guys from Athletes Performance are huge fans of a ‘new’ exercise, the Single Leg Box Squat. It’s a really good way to hit the ham’s, as when most people do the SL Squats, most of the weight goes to the toes, and thus stress’ the quads. As far as I know, they stress range of motion before weight, and once the athlete can squat to a 12" box while holding controlled negatives, and can perform the eccentric with out rocking, they had weight, progressing until the bar is on the back as a normal back squat, and then on from there.
Reverse Lunges are like broccoli, disgusting, but so gooood.
Hey Heat, love the OHS. Just as you said, strength and flexibility. When do you do them? Right now, I do at least one set of 10 (sometimes 2) during my warm up, with just the 20kg bar. I started working up in weight with them a few phases ago, don’t really know why I stopped. Do you do them as a warm up? Or do you do them heavy, as a strength exercise?
I try to be as open-minded as possible, and listen to whoever has something to say, but there are definitely times when people need to be put in their place, and the OHS is one of the things I use to put them there. It takes a lot of flexibility, static strength, and hits your core like nothing else. A trainer thinks he’s a got the perfect athletic body, and is cocky about it, challenge him to an OHS competition, 90% can hardly break the quarter squat
big rock,
True, I have seen some people humbled by the overhead squat. There are a lot of typical stud wanna-be’s who gloat, brag, and strut around the weight room as they pump out endless sets of curls and bench press. Try asking the typical, “I’m just trying to get pumped up for the bar scene” lifter to do overhead squats and/or a set of heavy deadlifts and it won’t be pretty. My little brother is a case in point, he couldn’t even get to parallel with the overhead squat using just the bar and a 10 on each side.
I think there is a point to the dynamic flexibility that the OHS can provide and I attribute my flexibility to this one lift. I usually do three sets of three with my bodyweight (175 lbs.) usually at the end of the workout when my body is already warm and sweating. I don’t like to do these cold at the beginning of a workout.
I either power clean/press the weight up or I just do a jerk to get it overhead if I’m using a rack.