I have a problem. I play high school football but injuries repeatedley hold me back. I feel i could soon play college ball so I am not going to give it up. Well here is my track record.(Ranges over 2.5 years in order)
Note: none of these involve contact from football
A strained right hamstring
-A stress fracture in one of my toes
-I had a minor tear in my left hamsting tendon which developed into chronic tendinitis(11 months)
-Had a minor pull in my right quad
-Strained left quad
-strained right lower back
-severley strained left lower back
-Tendinitis came back and i am now nearly fully recovered
Please dont get me wrong, i am not a wimp and i am not exaggerating.
I am 5-7 150 lbs and nearly sixteen years of age. I also eat well and stetch before i run. I am skinny but i have a good muscular build-legs and upperbody. I am average in my flexibility. I bench 160 but i am not sure how much i squat.(last year i did 8 reps of 185?)
I was wondering if there is something medically wrong with me or if you could go by my injuries and tell me what i could do.
What is your strength training like? It sounds to me that you need to build alot of strength e.g. squat a lot more, hit your PC hard, etc. Maybe you’ve had bad luck with injuries! Are you currently playing sport at school? If not, I’d suggest that you use something similar like westside to increase your strength base more rapidly. Throw out DE days and use RE (repetition methods). Also, Look into DeFranco’s Westside for Skinny Bastard program at t-mag. Kenn’s tier system might work well since he also incorporate CFTS into his system.
When you said you stretch before you run, what exactly do you do? Static or dynamic stretching?
The injuries tell that your postural alignment is out of whack. You really need to get the deeper level of muscles into balance before participating in high demand sports like football. There are some good exercises mentioned in the article, but you really need to focus on your specific weaknesses to get balanced.
i just thought that my friends dont get injured nearly as much on the team and they do the same stuff i do. I dont do a lot of strength training right now because i dont have very good acess to weights. maybe once a week.(squats, bench) What is a P.C.? What is DE and RE? Whats the difference in westside and a regular workout program? as u can tell a am a newbie to all this so you will probobly have to explain.
Postural alignment is the resting position of your joints. This is called Gait as well.
If you have muscles firing when they shouldn’t and muscles that are tight and not allowing proper movement patterns, then you’ll run into problems. Especially if you’re like this for awhile and also pushing your body hard with sports and training.
You’ll need a professional to look you over. I’m lucky enough to have some close friends that are chiropractors and really good one at that. (If they were quacks I wouldn’t be their friend.) They can have you stand and probably tell you 5 things wrong with you in 10 seconds. They’ll probably have you a few movement patterns concentrating on the areas you’re having problems with and expose other possible issues.
Get on it or things will just continue to frustrate you.
my mother will not take me to the doctor anytime soon. is there anything you can tell by my injuries that can help at all. just some pointers to think about when i run (for me specifically)?
Would alot of ab and back work do the trick? what exercises promote good
posture that could carry over to sprinting and running?
P.C. is short for posterior chain which consists of hamstring, glutes and lower back which is essential for speed and power. Nearly all HS althetes are underdeveloped in that area because they focus on the muscles too much that they can see like chest, shoulder, biceps, you get the idea. DE is dyamic effort or speed workout but you don’t need it because you’re not strong to begin with. RE is repetition method, just regular stuff like 3 sets of 10. It’s mainly for muscle building. ME is maximum effort. Its for strength building. <5RM. In your case, i’d stick with 3-5RM, never max out. For optimium results, you need to hit muscles twice a week, one day is ME and another day is RE. I’m not sure what other alternative is since that you don’t have access to the weights. I thought you’d be able to workout at your school. Then again, I did suffer alot of injuries in HS, mostly football related but performance wise, strength training helped tremendously.
I agree with whoever said that strength is the problem. Dude, there are distance runners who are stronger than you. I am not trying to bring you down, but of course you are going to get injured if you are playing a contact sport like football with those strength levels. The wear and tear alone will be murder without proper strength. All of the muscle strains point to problems in the Posterior chain and a lack of overal strength.
One other thing of note, there seems to be a lot of connective tissue damage. How is your base-line physical preparedness? BTW, what position do you play?
The suggestion for westside sounds like a good one. Some GPP work (sled dragging?) sounds good as well.
So you are telling me to do RE(reps) and then ME(max effort), dont max out, and dont do speed training? How does (ME) differ from maxing out? when you say 3-5rm do you mean reps?
i play receiver.
how does westside differ from a regular workout?
Also, in regards to postural alignment: are there any specific lifts i can do do encourage good posture and carry that over to sprinting?
read it. What do you mean by regular workout? There are hundreds of program, some excellent, some decent and some not so good. Anyway, the program by Defranco should be sufficient for you if you’re playing sports because you only have to do one leg workout per week (ME) to gain strength. If you’re playing sports quite alot where you’re working on speed for legs anyway, you don’t need to do 2nd leg workout (RE or DE) like traditional westside. Give it a try!
When I said 3-5 RM, that means the maximum reps you can do at given weight. You gradually build up the weight all the way to 3-5 RM. An example:
For bench press (assuming your best is 165 for 5RM)
dynamic warm up
set 1 - push ups 5 reps
set 2 - push ups for 5 reps
set 3 - bar weight for 5 reps
set 4- 65lbs for 5 reps
set 5 - 85lbs for 5 reps
set 6- 105 for 5
set 7 - 125 for 5
8 - 135 for 5
9 - 145 for 5
10 - 155 for 5
11 - 160 for 5
12 -165 for 5 reps
13 - 170 for 5 reps
14 - 175 for 3 (missed). call it a day and proceed to work on something else.
Usually toward the end, the rest is 3-4 minutes between sets but I always do superset with upper back like pull ups (another ME exercise but i dont know if others do this way, I like to balance things between front and back). That would be 1.5 -2 mins rest between sets in this superset method. This saves me time. You can actually use CFTS to work on speed in this strength program if you want! (assuming you’re not doing anything at all)
You should have good posture in everything you do. Posture isn’t just a static standing position for example. But you can do something to help you train the correct muscles while lifting weights (remember these things should happen automatically without you concentrating on them): keep your feet straight ahead and about hip width apart (a little wider is ok), keep your shoulder blades pinched together and keep the back arched and head up (especially when squatting). Don’t use heavy weights until you can maintain a good posture in lifting or you will get hurt. Use mirrors if possible and confim that in the squat for example your hips stay level etc.
In regards to posture/imbalance problems, i like to videotape my overhead squat for the sake of analysing imbalances (learned this from a defranco article). Any problems become obvious really quickly. Otherwise, constantly practicing good posture is a great idea
Here is another couple of questions that might have something to do with my large number of injuries.Please give opinions
1-I dont know what they are called but its when you use one leg to hop as fast as you can to get to the finish(one legged sprint?). I am alot faster on one leg (my left) than the other. By the way my dominant leg is the right one. Does this mean I am weaker in one leg or could it be form or something? Should I include this in my workout to let the slower leg to catch up?
2-Could me having very large and pretty strong calves, but small skinny weak legs play a really big role in it?
3- Considering my weight (152 pounds), my height (5’7"), my age (16 in March), and the position I play (wide receiver) how much should I be Squatting and Benchpressing?
lltruett, WOW! Way too much for this kid. He needs to train for hypertrophy.
Sixteen y.o., 152 lbs. Come on. Picture this guy in your head. How many years of training do you think he has? Not many if he’s 152 and 5’7" with a 160 BP and 185 x 8 squat. He can’t handle WS training at this point. Not even the modified DeFranco version.
DeFranco likes to…(breathe deeply)
…(remember your gastritis)…
…forget it. I’ll let it go.
I’m not going to rant.
James,
Are you timed in this one-leg race? What is the distance?
No.
A big BP and squat have no bearing on whether you can catch the ball and run with it.
What are you talking about? DeFranco does train HS kids with that type of program. it’s highly modifiable based on the needs. It’s titled westside for skinny bastard and you said the kid needs hypertrophy. Did you even read the article word for word? It’s not purely WS like powerlifters at Westside barbell or ELITEFTS. It’s based for athetes.
