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MG86's Football Training Log

Training Logs
#1

Hey everyone

I’m new here to TNation and look forward to sharing my training log with everyone. A little background on myself:

Height: 6’4"
Weight: 250
Body Fat: 14%
Age: 20
Years (seriously) Training: 4

I was first thrown into a weight room my freshman year of high school because I wanted to play for the football team. I was given absolutely zero direction and had no idea what I was doing. It wasn’t really until my senior year of high school before I really started to somewhat train hard. I didn’t come from a stellar high school program which makes sense due to the lack of weight room commitment. Despite my underwhelming strength, I got a few feelers from some Division I programs from conferences like the Big Ten, Missouri Valley, Ivy League, and others. I decided upon a small university in Indiana. I came in as a freshman tight end at 210 pounds while benching around 185 and squatting 200. 2.5 years later I am 250 pounds, benching 275 pounds, squatting 375, power cleaning 280, and front squatting 300. While these numbers are still much lower than I’d like them to be, I feel they are a great improvement from my lack of lifting early on. Right now I am focused on further strength/performance gain while trying to clean up my diet and lose some body fat, while still keeping my weight up. I will do my best to post my training, as well as my diet, the best I can.

I look forward to any questions and comments you guys may have!

#2

Will definitely be following you. I’m a football player myself, so it will be interesting to see what you have to bring to the table. Good luck, man.

CS

#3

Upper Body today. Here’s what we did:

Warm-up: Consists of lots of foam rolling, stretching, mobility, etc

Snatch Grip Power Shrugs: Did 3x5 with 185 lbs

Bench Press: 4x5 I did 225 for all sets (Strength coach wants same weight all 4 sets) I wasn’t too happy with these.

One arm DB rows: 3x8 Used 75 lb DB. I like to do these very controlled with a pause at the top

Alternating Standing DB Shoulder Press: 3x8 I used the 50’s for this at it was pretty light. I should be able to get up in weight on these pretty easily

Chins: 3x5 Chin ups have always been a weak point of mine so I have to really work at these

Neck Extension/Flexion: 1x12 I don’t remember the weight, but it was something around 60 pounds or so. Used a very controlled motion with pause at the top of each rep

I don’t always agree with everything my strength coach has us do, but it’s pretty hard due to the limited time/space we have. We lift at a very fast pace in order to get everything done with within our one hour time slot. We got a speed workout tonight, along with lower body tomorrow.

#4

Got back an hour or so ago from our speed workout tonight. We do speed on Mondays and more agility/acceleration type stuff on Wednesdays. For speed work, we do a lot of accel/decel/accel type work. For example, we’ll sprint 10 yards or so, coast for ten, sprint ten, coast, sprint. What this does (I’m stealing this description from an old Defranco post btw lol) is it teaches you to be more relaxed while in top speed, so that you can reach your ultimate speed potential. This is a speed workout. not a conditioning workout, so full recovery between sprints is ideal.

Tomorrow is a lower body day, and I’ll try to post some nutrition/supplementation stuff tomorrow for ya’ll too.

#5

Just finished up a lower body workout. My legs feel pretty dead right now. Here’s what we did

Power Clean (from hang): 4x5 Did 205 for three sets and 225 for the last set. Grip gave out on the last. We didn’t have chalk today for some reason lol.

Squat: 4x5 Did 280. I’m really working getting to proper depth which I did easily with this. Will definitely be going up next week.

RFE Split Squat: 3x8 Held a 45 lb DB at my chest. Nothing too heavy, just working on some unilateral stuff.

GHR: 2x5 Hamstrings were on fire at this point

Slideboard Leg Curl: 1x10 I had never used a slideboard before this year so this was pretty new. Felt pretty similar to TRX leg curls that I’ve done in the past.

Neck side Flexion: 1x10 each way

#6

Just wanted to update you guys on what I’m doing in terms of nutrition/supplementation.

I don’t count calories or macros or anything like that. I do a carb cycling of sorts, where I eat high carbs on mondays and fridays (lifting workouts and speed workouts those days), medium carbs on tuesday-thursday (just one workout a day), and low on the weekends (no workouts). High days I try to eat carbs with every meal, medium days are more carby before/after the workout period, and low is low. Pretty simple stuff.

Supplement wise isn’t too much. Mostly due to financial purposes. I take a generic multivitamin every morning, and will throw in fish oil capsules throughout the day. Post workout I’ll have about 50g of whey isolate with 5g of creatine. Pre and during workout will be a power bar and gatorade, or something along those lines.

Food choices basically depends on what they have in the cafeteria that day. For example, I’ll give you what I had today. (medium day)

9 AM Breakfast
Decent amount of scrambled eggs w/ salsa
Cup of mixed fruit (kiwi, cantaloupe, pineapple, etc)
Glass of milk
25oz water
(breakfast was quick today because I had a presentation to prepare for. I’ll throw in oatmeal occasionally as well)

1 PM Lunch
Grilled rosemary chicken sandwich w/ bacon
Cup of chili
Mixed veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, etc.)
25 oz water

Workout was at 4. Had 32 oz gatorade before and during. Had 50g of whey and 5g of creatine post. Also had a handful of blueberries before and a few blueberries after (they’ve been in my fridge awhile)

5:45 PM snack
I ate a generic brand fiber bar to fill me up a bit because we had a meeting at six and I didn’t have time to grab some dinner

7:15 pm dinner
They had an all you can eat “Fat Tuesday” dinner. Uh oh. I kept it somewhat clean. I had two plates of bourbon chicken stir fry, two small chicken bowls (rice, black beans, chicken, salsa, cajun sour cream) and a cup of oreo pudding (oreos are my weakness). I then proceeded to shit my brains out. Lets just say it’s a good thing my cafeteria isn’t always an all you can eat.

#7

Just finished our acceleration/agility workout. Good stuff. We work on this using a lot of your basic agility tools: speed ladders, shuttles, 3 cone drill, speed bags etc. We also did a lot of technique work in terms of acceleration (proper body position, stride length, etc.) This is the stuff I really work hard at because as a tight end, this stuff is a lot more important than top end speed. As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think I’m gonna be burning any 180 pound corners down the field lol. We got upper body workout tomorrow, followed by our early morning “team competition” workout Friday (fun stuff) and lower body later that day.

I’ll check back with ya’ll tomorrow.

#8

Hey everyone.

So we had to go lower body today because of scheduling conflicts. It’s whatever. Here’s what we did.

Power Snatch (hang): 3x5 135lbs
Front Squat: 4x5 I used 235, ass to grass baby! Don’t see too many 6’4" guys gettin’ that low!
GHR: 2x5
RFE Split Squat: 3x8 50 lb dumbbell held to chest
Slide Board Leg Curl: 2x10 (eccentric only)
Neck Extension/Flexion: 1x10 70lbs
Calf Raises

#9

That’s quite a transformation you’ve made! That’s awesome. What has happened to your speed and jumps after adding that 40 pounds? I suspect they improved.

#10

[quote]Cardinal136 wrote:
That’s quite a transformation you’ve made! That’s awesome. What has happened to your speed and jumps after adding that 40 pounds? I suspect they improved.[/quote]

Thank you. My vertical jump has increased from 25 inches to 30 inches and my 40 time is around 4.8-4.9 (previous test in high school was a 5.3 but i was running with a bad back that day)

#11

Just finished out the day here. This morning was our “team competition” workout (bright and early at 5:30 AM). This is always a fun day. It would be impossible to explain everything, but basically we do a lot of relays (both strength and speed based), tug of war, stuff like that. They split us up into small teams and we all really get into it. It’s a good time.

We also had an upper body workout this afternoon. There’s a big event going on today at the facility so it was more of a brief workout, but here’s what we did:

Power Shrugs from hang: 3x5 185lbs
Incline Bench: 4x5 185
DB Rows: 3x8 70’s
DB Curl and Press: 3x8 45’s
Upright rows 1x12 45lb plate
KB Shrugs: 3x10 70’s
Neck Side Flexion: 1x10 60lbs
DB tricep extensions supersetted with KB Hammer Curls: 2x10 65 DB and 20’s KB

#12

Upper body workout done. Here’s what we had:

Snatch Grip power shrugs: 3x5 225
Bench: 4x5 215
DB rows: 3x8 75’s
Chins: 3x5
DB Shoulder press: 3x8 55’s
Neck extension/flexion: 1x10 70
Plank series: 60 sec each
I had about 5 minutes to spare so I did 3 supersets of tricep band pulldowns and KB hammer curls

We then did a “finisher” as a team with 15 pushups/situps, then 14, then 13, and so on. On the last pushup we held at the top until failure.

We got speed workout tonight, followed by lower body tomorrow.

#13

Hey everyone. Speed workout is over with. It was a pretty good session overall. Just wanted to update on where i am weight wise and everything.

I weighed in this afternoon at 253, with no real visual fat gain (according to the mirror). I’m pretty happy about this. I will continue to eat cleaner and cleaner, while focusing carbs around the workout periods. Obviously once spring practice hits I will increase carbs, but for now I have some leeway. I hoping to get down to around 10-11% by May, and into single digits for the upcoming season.

I have also been watching the NFL combine, and what an inspiration it is. If watching a guy 346 pounds running a 40 yard dash in 4.8 seconds doesn’t inspire you to get faster, then I don’t know what does!

#14

Finished up in the weight room just now, here’s what we did:

Power Clean (from hang): 3x5 205
KB shrugs: 2x12 70
Squats: 4x5 I did my first two sets with 285, but my shoulders were feeling very tight and were bothering me, so I switched over to front squats and did 225)
GHR: 2x5
RFE Split Squat: 3x8 50
Slideboard Leg Curl: 1x10
Neck Side Flexion: 1x10 55
Med Ball Slams: 2x10

#15

Just finished up the agility session. Overall it was a pretty good workout.

However, halfway through I came to the realization that this was my last agility session of my life (next week is spring break, with spring practice following). I really can’t believe that I’m going into my senior year already. It felt like just yesterday I was a lowly freshman going into fall camp. We haven’t sent a guy to the pros in almost ten years, so that’s not really too much of a possibility for me. I honestly don’t know what I will do when football is done. I’ll need something to keep my competitive juices flowing. I guess we’ll see.

Ok enough blabbering. Tomorrow we got a full body lift (no lift on Friday) followed by our usual team competition period early morning Friday. I’ll check back with you guys tomorrow.

#16

Just finished up our full body workout. I really didn’t like what we did today, but here’s what it was:

Front Squat: 4x5 225 I tweaked my hip flexor during the third set and could not finish. I should be ok.
Incline Bench: 4x5 185 I got these pretty easily.
Chinups: 3x5
GHR: 2x5
DB Rows: 3x8 75’s
DB Curl and Press: 3x8 40’s I hate these. After my biceps were fatigued I just whipped the DBs up and did about ten extra shoulder presses. I just don’t understand prescribing an exercise like this where one body part fatigues so much faster than the others.

We have lifting off tomorrow, but I think I’m gonna go in and do a CT 6 weeks to superhero workout. I’ve wanted to try this for awhile so it should be interesting. I’ll do either the bench or shoulder press complex and the squat complex

#17

Soooo I was going to try a 6 weeks to superhero workout today, but the damn weight room was closed. Looks like the coaches were really looking forward to spring break haha. Oh well, I’ll live. I will be on spring break for the next two weeks, so my training will be a little different, as I’ll be in a different facility, but I will still be doing 4 days a week with an upper/lower split.

#18

Felt real nice to get back to hitting the weights. Unfortunately, it was in a damn commercial gym! Gotta love spring break…

So I tested out a “6 weeks to superhero” workout and I really enjoyed it. I’m forced to do the “crowded gym” version (3 points instead of 5) due to limited space and availability of equipment. I’ll do a 2 week mini-cycle of it before going back to school and to the program we’re doing there. This is a good way to mix up my workouts to keep them fresh. Without further ado…

Warmup- all the foam rolling and mobility stuff that we do everyday at school

Shoulder Press Complex:
Had to do this with dumbbells because of the power rack being used…
Warmed up with 25’s x 5, 40’s x 5, 65’s x 5)
Then did the complex: 65’s x 3, 65’s x 5 push press, and then 8-10 plyo push ups.

Did 6 cycles of that with about 45 seconds in between each exercise.

Squat Complex:
Warmed up with bar x 3, 135 x 3, 225 x 3
Complex: 305 x 3 box squat, 115 snatch, db jumps with 40’s

Again did 6 cycles with about 45 seconds in between, except towards the end I increased the rest period a bit between the jumps and the squat.

#19

A little behind on updates. Sorry to everyone who religiously follows my log (aka noone lol)

Tuesday’s workout was a trainwreck. Gym was packed so I didn’t get a chance to do any of the complexes. Don’t really remember half the stuff I did, basically just a lot of pressing and pulling. Highlights include 245 bench for an easy 3 reps and 275 close grip from pins.

Tried something slightly different today, as the gym was somewhat crowded once again. I did 2 points of the complex (aka a superset lol)and then did some other work.

Front Squat/Snatch Superset: 6x3 225fs 135snatch
45 degree hyperextensions: 4x12x25lb plate
Shoulder Press/Push Press Superset: 6x3 (5 for push press) 155
Facepulls: 4x8
Hanging Leg Raises: 3x10

I read awhile ago in an EliteFTS Q&A post about contrast showers (I think it was Chad Wesley Smith). I tested it out on my legs today and it felt great. I did about 3 minutes of as hot as i could handle, followed by 1 minute of as cold as you could handle. Once I went to the cold, I could feel it immediately. I will now be doing this everyday.

#20

Another cluster fuck of a workout today. I’ve officially decided to cancel my experiment with the 6 weeks to superhero program, because the gym I’m going to just doesn’t have the room. Thankfully I only have to deal with this gym 2 weeks out of the year. Here’s what I did today.

Deadlifts suppersetted with hang cleans: 5x3 275 for the deadlifts, 205 for the cleans
Bench: Worked up to 255 for an easy single, so easy that I did two more singles
Lat Pulldowns: Every chin bar was taken (wtf?) so I did pulldowns. Don’t remember weight but i did 3 tough sets
Rope Pulldowns: 3x10
Inverted Rows: 2xmax
DB Shrugs: 3x6 with a 5 second pause at top 75’s
Rope Cable Curls: 3x8