Strength training for football

Just about everyone knows that when using weight training with the goal of increaced sprinting speed the priority should be on the posteriorchain since these are the muscles that are the primery movers when sprinting forward. But as a linebacker I also need to be fast lateraly and backwards. Does this mean that i should pay more attention to the abductors, adductors and hipflexors and train them with the same combination of maximum strength (reps between 1-5) and ballistic training (plyometrics, ellastc cords, etc.) that i use for the posterior chain. And if I should do this what “maximum strength” exercises are there for the abductors/adductors? I know of side lunges but are there any more? Opinions please!

Good comment - few understand the aspect of ensuring your training retains sport specific elements. While your question concerns, strength development you should broaden it to include your agility, linear speed, mobility work along with sport specific training (ie, drops, reactionary reads…). As far as training loads that gets into a far greater topic that concerns the periodized model of your training. One very common fault of many football training programs beyond lacking sport specific training is consideration of development of speed (via “speed-strength” work). I will be happy to discuss further if you wish. In faith, Coach Davies

Before I’ll try to explain my training I think that I should mention that I play football in a team in Sweden, here the season starts may the first and ends the 28:th of august so we are now in the pre-season period. And because of that football isn’t a big sport here in this country my team doesn’t have the money fore a indoor arena so we have to compete with outer teams and sports when booking a training facility this means that my position only has two or sometimes three training sessions with the team a week. This will increase when we can start to train outside. Personally I have the possibility to train almost when ever I like in my schools training facilities for free. My training program looks like this: Monday: (AM) Strength training: Core strength, one exercise for the posterior chain, one for the hip-flexors, one upper-body pull and one upper-body push exercise performed in a circuit taking as much rest as needed (but not any more) between exercises, reps between 1 and 5. (PM) Conditioning: Sprints and agility drills targeting perceived weaknesses. Tuesday: (PM) Technique: Linebacker drills (that are possible to do alone) and low intensive agility drills. Thursday: (AM) Auxilary strength training, targeting perceived weaknesses. (PM) Positional training with the team. Saturday: (AM) team practice. (PM) Core eccentric training, like Mondays training but eccentric. All other days are GPP, stretching and/or recuperation method (sauna, massage, etc). I train like this for 2-4 weeks then take a week of followed by the next training period which looks like this: On strength and auxillary training days I use lighter weights for the same amount of reps for speed-strength work. The eccentric training is exchanged for plyometrics, and the conditioning and technique training is of higher intensity (of cause I don’t have any control of the team training). I use this training period for 2-4 weeks followed by a week of rest and then I go back to the previous training period. The main goal of my training is to increase my side-shuffle speed, I try to accomplice this by including abductions and adductions in my auxilary training and of cause by side-shuffling a lot in my conditioning and technique training. Any suggestions on how I could change my training to be better on the field would be highly appreciated! One thing I forgot to mention is that we in the class that I study in have 4-6 hours of physical education a week varying from soccer to gymnastics to almost any sport which can sometimes be a bit draining so I sometimes have to decrease the intensity or volume of my training. Thank you for your help!