Thoughts on Preparation for High School Football, Part 1
by Dr. Ken Leistner
Other than being best known for taking out the garbage and recycling containers at my house, I am perhaps most closely associated in the lifting public’s mind with my twenty-two year column and many additional articles in POWERLIFTING USA MAGAZINE. However, with over 1200 (not a misprint) articles published since 1969, I have covered the gamut from professional journals associated with spine function and injuries, to the more popular muscle building magazines. My experience in all aspects of the “Iron Sports” and fifty-two years of consistent weight training has provided a lot to think about but I perhaps learned most about effective and ineffective weight training as a ten-year high school football coach. Though I also coached track and field, my true passion was and remains football and it was always the primary focus when training high school, collegiate, and professional athletes. With much involvement in strength training, one of my proudest and I believe most important tasks and eventual accomplishments was hosting a number of strength training seminars that for the first time brought together those with very differing training philosophies. Some of the best known and most highly respected representatives of high intensity training, Olympic weightlifting based, powerlifting based, and off-the-wall-because-I-wish-to-make-a-name-for-myself based philosophies shared the bill, and presented their methodologies in an atmosphere of harmony and a true sharing. Having used all (other than the off-the-wall-look-at-me-now! approach) of the mainstream approaches to becoming muscularly larger and stronger, it is now most commonly seen that strength coaches on all levels incorporate a bit of “everything” to insure the most progress among their players.
While the aforementioned is positive, trying to utilize everything that is available relative to philosophies and equipment is most frequently a recipe for limited gains and frustration for the coach and players. One of the best examples of constructing an effective high school program was given in a mid-1980’s seminar by Kim Wood who was the very first officially hired full time strength coach in the National Football League and he remained with the Cincinnati Bengals for thirty years before retiring. (For those who are thinking, “No, Alvin Roy was the first strength coach in the NFL” – allow me please, as one who knew Alvin, trained at his Baton Rouge health club on Oklahoma Avenue, and who had and has great respect for his work, to clearly state that he was the first “strength consultant” in the NFL and while with the Chargers, Chiefs, Cowboys, and Saints was never a full-time, every day employee of those clubs.) Kim gave the following paraphrased analogy: “If you take over a high school program that has not had a recent history of winning, are you going to-circa mid-1980’s-introduce the San Francisco Forty-Niners West Coast Offense and Dallas Cowboys Flex Defense? No, you’re going to teach the young men to block and tackle and master a dozen or so plays on offense until they can run them perfectly, and hit and pursue like mad dogs from two basic defenses.” He carried that analogy into the weight room and again to paraphrase: “It makes a lot more sense to focus on a few basic, effective exercises that work major muscle groups and have the players learn and perform them as well as possible while pushing them to make as much progress in those few movements as opposed to giving them a computer tear-sheet and the latest Bulgarian super-cycle system incorporating a dozen or more movements each workout.”
Gee, did this resonate with me. My training had always been “limited” relative to what most of the fellows did. I would choose a pressing movement, a pulling movement, and a squat and knock the living beejesus out of myself. I would, for the sake of variety and because almost every serious trainee from my era either performed or competed as an Olympic weightlifter and a powerlifter (and allow me to interject that the typical advanced bodybuilding programs of the mid-1950’s to mid-‘60s usually contained squats or front squats, press, bench press, deadlift, and power clean), include the press, push press, and bench press; some variation of deadlift or pull from the floor; and the squat or front squat as my primary movements. I would not do all of these movements in any single workout but would rotate the exercises and on occasion, add a row or chin, curl or pulldown, or perhaps a hyperextension. The simplified approach worked well for me and for the high school athletes I trained and as the 1970’s evolved into the 1980’s and weight training for athletes became accepted and eventually mandated, I watched as coaches and athletes became confused with the many choices of equipment and exercises placed before them.
I would like to simplify that for our LEGEND UNIVERSITY readers and begin by demonstrating how the LEGEND Half Cage, a barbell, and a few dumbbells can truly give the high school football player all that is needed to become big and strong. Most importantly, I will explain why.
MORE IN PART TWO