Increase your testosterone bio-availability–naturally

Below is a guest post from my good friend Mike Westerdal. Mike is the owner of one of the world’s largest fitness sites as well as the author of the Critical Bench training system for increasing bench pressing strength and muscle mass. CLICK HERE to learn more about getting a BIG bench and massive muscles with Mike. Enjoy! – Elliott

Increase your testosterone bio-availability–naturally

Testosterone drives muscle growth. It’s no secret that a lot of guys take what they think is a “short-cut” to boosting their testosterone levels by injecting themselves with dangerous–and illegal–steroids. Years ago, I started hearing about natural ways to boost testosterone levels so I embarked on a quest to find out everything I could. The problem, is that there is a lot of misinformation and outright lies out there on the Internet. How’s a guy supposed to separate fact from fiction? How do you know that you’re not wasting time and money on yet another scam? In the beginning I struggled with these questions too until one day I began uncovering information that led me to truth. And today, I’m here to tell you that there is a better way and you can boost your testosterone levels naturally. Let’s find out more.

Testosterone is the principal male sex hormone and an anabolic steroid. It has both anabolic and androgenic properties. In men, it is primarily secreted by the testes, but also in small amounts by the adrenal glands. Testosterone is responsible for the development of lean muscle tissue, maintaining libido, energy, bone formation, and immune function. Basically, testosterone is what makes a man a man. A typical man produces five to 10 milligrams of testosterone a day–about ten times more than women. Normal testosterone concentration in men is between 300 and 1000 nanograms per deciliter. Once a guy hits about 40, his testosterone levels start to drop by about one percent per year.

Interestingly, not all of the testosterone floating around in your body are available to do what most guys want it to do–build bigger, leaner and stronger muscles. There are a number of proteins that can get in the way by binding with the testosterone before it has a chance to work its magic on our muscles. The testosterone that hasn’t bound with a protein is available to reach the muscle cell receptors. Therefore, bioavailability refers to the levels of unbound testosterone available in the bloodstream. There are several different proteins that testosterone is fond of binding with, and unfortunately, once it binds with one of these proteins, it’s game over. The testosterone is no longer available for our muscles. Of the binding proteins, the one we’re most concerned with is Sex Hormone Binding Globulin or SHBG.

We focus on SHBG for a couple of reasons. First, the levels of SHBG in our body rise and fall in our bodies, depending on certain conditions which we’ll discuss in just a minute. Second, of the various binding proteins to be found in the bloodstream, SHBG has about the highest affinity for binding with testosterone–significantly more than the others. Think of SHBG as a hooker who has her eye on a drunk guy with a fat wallet stumbling out of a bar (the testosterone). Once SHBG spots testosterone it’s going to do its very best to hook up with the testosterone.

Therefore, the higher the levels of SHBG in your bloodstream, the less testosterone you’re going to have available to reach the muscle cell receptors. Knowing this, it makes sense that by lowering the level SHBG in your body, you can increase the bioavailability of testosterone in your bloodstream. What you actually want to achieve is “normal’ levels of SHBG. Like all of our body’s systems, we want to strive for balance. When anything is either too low or too high, it’s going to lead to problems.

There are a number of things that we can manipulate or control that raise or lower the levels of SHBG in the bloodstream. Chief among these are drug or alcohol abuse, anorexia, excessive stress, obesity and anything else that causes your testosterone levels to drop. First off, lower testosterone levels means lower bioavailability of testosterone--regardless of your SHBG level, when these levels drop, there is less testosterone available to reach the muscle cell receptors. The second part of this is that these things impact the aromatase factor in the body. The aromatase process not only increases estrogen levels, which signals the brain to decrease testosterone levels, but it also increase SHBG levels in the body. Essentially, what you get is a “one-two” punch that starts a vicious cycle of decreasing bioavailable testosterone, coupled with increasing estrogen levels–ouch!

Now let’s see what a guy has to do to increase the bioavailability of testosterone in his body. First, maintain a healthy weight. Get rid of excess body fat, especially the fat around the middle. This type of fat has particularly high levels of the enzyme aromatase, which leads to higher estrogen and SHBG levels. Second, don’t abuse drugs or alcohol. Third, learn to manage your stress levels.

Fourth, get plenty of exercise and make sure you include strength training work. Strength training in particular helps to naturally elevate your testosterone levels. Fifth, get plenty of rest and don’t overtrain. Most of the great things our bodies do happen while we’re at rest or sleeping. Guys who overtrain or don’t get enough sleep have significantly lower levels of testosterone than guys who recognize the value of rest and give it the attention it deserves. And lastly, eat a healthy diet that includes the proper balance of lean proteins, healthy fats and complex carbohydrates. Ignore the fad diets and any diet that goes to any sort of extreme.

There are also some things you can to help block the testosterone-binding effects of SHBG. There is some evidence to suggest that supplements such as Nettle, Pygeum and Avena Sativa can be effective. Supplements that may help inhibit aromatase in the body include Zinc and Chrysin.

About Mike Westerdal

Mike Westerdal is a personal trainer and amatuer powerlifter residing in sunny Clearwater, FL. Mike is a contributer to REPS! Magazine and Powerlifting USA. Hi is also the founder of CriticalBench.com and author of the Critical Bench 2.0 program one of the Internet’s fist muscle building sites.

Anabolic Energizing

Johnny slams his sister in the back of her head with a balled up pillow, sunk down to the far end of his pillow case, and knocks her off of her bed — flat on her face!  When Johnny’s dad scolds him and asked, “Johnny, you know better… why the heck did you do that?”.

Johnny admits that he knows better, but has absolutly no good reason why he would “go off on the deep end” like that, he just “forgot”.

I think what really happened was that Johnny allowed his most primal (and unevolved self) to get a moment in the sun.  This “primal urge”, to do what we know we shouldn’t do, comes to all of us at some time or another.  We “know better”, but yet we get carried away in the moment and allow instinct to rule our better judgment.

One area where I’ve made this, “Elliott, you know better!” mistake has been with the way I train and how I failed to follow up my excruciating, catabolic tirades with Anabolic Energizing exercises and  lifestyle habits.

This imbalance digs deep into our physiology and disrupts the natural balance of the nervous and endocrine system.  Leaving us over stimulated and under nourished.

Here is how it works…

So, there is a branch of your central nervous system called your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Your ANS is responsible for all of the nervous functions that you don’t have to think about.  This includes hart rate, digestion, the release of hormones, breathing and sweating… among many other things.

Within your ANS you have two opposing branches… your Sympathetic (SNS) and Parasympathetic (PSN) Nervous Branches. Each branch acts as two ends of a see-saw.  As one side is stimulated the other side is suppressed.

Both sides have their benefits…

The SNS stimulates the Catabolic Hormones Adrenaline and Cortisol. Both of these hormones are essential for getting you up and going in the morning, getting you fired up to train heavy and giving you energy in a stressful situation (think about being chased by an angry baboon!)

The PNS stimulates the release of Anabolic and Sex Hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone… your body’s own natural source of natural anabolic steroids!

The problem is that most people have a severe imbalance between theses two branches.  It is this imbalance that makes us ill, tired, fat and old!

So if you haven’t figured it out yet… many of us are Sympathetically Overloaded – this means that our SNS is over stimulated and in turn we are in a constant state of fight or flight.  When in this type of predicament, you can rest assured that all of the anabolic hormones that are associated with the PNS are suppressed…

This leads to:

Decreased Strength & Vitality
Poor Concentration
Chronic Fatigue
Foggy Headedness
Decreased Sex Drive
Night Sweats
Orgasm / Genital Inhibition
Waking Un-Rest
Anxiety
Jittery
Fungal Infection
Constipation
Digestive Disorders
Rashes & Skin Problems
Decreased Immunity
Increased Risk For Injury
Poor Sleeping Patterns – Wake Up With Cold Sweats
An Overall Loss In You Capacity To Realize Your True Potential & Become The Strongest Version Of You!

Does any of this sound familiar to you? If you are experiencing 2 or more of the symptoms described above… you suffer from an imbalance and need to read the following VERY carefully!

You can take all of the supplements, eat healthy organic diet, exercise regularly and still be getting nowhere.  This is due to a fundamental issue that has not been addressed… balancing your nervous system. If your nervous system is dysfunctional – so is everything else!

So, How Did I Get Like This?

The simple answer is poor lifestyle and nutrition choices… you eat shitty food, don’t drink enough water, your wife pisses you off, your boss is a jerk, you don’t get to sleep on time and don’t get enough sleep, you abuse alcohol and caffeine , OVER TRAINING shall I continue?

Excessive Stress Hormones Are Secreted Because Of:

Financial Stress
Poor Food Quality
Overeating
Eating Wrong For Your Metabolic Type
Relationship Problems
Sex Problems
A Toxic Environment
Dirty Air
Chlorinated Water
Poor Sleeping Patterns
Negative Thoughts, Words and Deeds
Improper Exercise Application, or OVER Exercising (like me)

“So, What Can I Do About It?”

What Is Stressing Your Out? – If you figure this out you half way there.  Most of your primary stresses will probably come from Security (survival, financial) Sustenance, or Sex issues.

Do Something About It – I can hear you “Elliott, don’t you think I would have already done something about this crazy wife and credit card bills?”  — NO, you haven’t done anything because you have not set it as a goal and you have not made a plan for its accomplishment…. Otherwise it would no longer be a stressor.

Remember, “Same Old = Same Old” – it is not until YOU decide to take decisive action to rid yourself of the primary stressors in your life that they will go away.  It is no one else’s responsibility!

And you MUST do this!  I really don’t want to hear any of the tired old excuses that people use in order to continue living their sick, sad, dysfunctional lives.  Drastic results call for drastic measures… just do it!

Eat Right – Make sure that you are adequately prepared to deal with stress by filling your body with nutritious foods.  Drink plenty of water. Eat more fats and proteins during stressful times.  Take a Cod Liver Oil Supplement.  Avoid toxic foods and processed foods.  Eat right for your metabolic type.  .

It is when you are most stressed out that you need the most nutritious foods… it is also the time when junk food seems most appealing, be mindful!

Exercise, Properly! – Over exercising, particularly aerobic exercises can cause more damage than good.  In fact, “over-aerobicizing “ can lead to an increase in catabolic hormones (remember the SNS) such as Cortisol and Glucocordicoids.

Make sure that you include sufficient anaerobic exercises into your program.  This would include weight training (less than 60 minutes at a time) and “Anabolic Energizer” exercise that I’ll teach you later.  In fact, if you are feeling really stressed out – these Anabolic Energizer exercises will reduce your stress levels and rebalance your nervous system getting you to release more Testosterone, etc.!

Sleep - Get to bed as many hours before midnight  that you can.  I once learned that every hour of sleep had before 12am is worth 3 hours of post midnight sleep!

Think Right – The power of your thoughts shape your life.  You literally are what you think.  Regular mind exercises like meditation help you to “see through the clouds” of your life.  Also there are many mind power techniques that you can use to keep your mind focused on the things that you want, and off of the things that you don’t want.

Using daily affirmations is a powerful tool… its like purposely planting flowers in the garden of your mind.  And remember, if you don’t plant flowers your garden will fill up with weeds by default!

To ignore lifestyle and balance in order to excel in Superficial Strength & Muscle Building often leads to a diminishing return on our investment.  Leaving us sick, sad, tired, and unfulfilled.  Leading a balanced life is much more then allocating a certain amount of time to scratch all of the important things off of your to-do list… it also means letting go of our external lives (including the building of outer-strength) for a few moments to allow our internal strength (nervous and hormonal systems) to catch up and support our efforts instead of working against us.

Train hard, but remember.

QUESTION! – Some of your responses to my post last week about my Sick, Sad Addiction were incredible and I was SUPER impressed.  One of the things I noticed is that many of you partake of ancient forms of exercise that are meant to revitalize and energize the nerves and hormones.  They included Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Gung and Meditation.

Please, I would like to learn more about how you are using these types of exercise modalities to Build “Stronger Hearts” (a term used to described “internal strength” as one of the 6 Principles)? — Thanks!

How To Become The Strongest Version of YOU!

Elliott describes his evolving position on personal development, health and fitness. The 6 principles provide a holistic perspective for becoming “The Strongest Version of Yourself”.

Discover How To Build A STRONG SERVICE, Teaching People About The Things You Are Most Passionate About While Earning A Strong Living! — Click Here ==> http://www.PassionCashControl.com

Bull Strength Conditioning Interview With Joe Hashey

The True Stories Behind “Brutal Bull Workouts” With Joe Hashey

http://www.BrutalBullWorkouts.com

Last night I recorded a casual conversation with Joe Hashey, the psychotic author of The Bull Conditioning workout manual.  Instead of all the typical “brilliant trainer” rhetoric that pollutes most expert interviews, Joe and I just “shot the breeze”.  He revealed several weird and interesting stories about how some of these brutal conditioning workouts came into existence (one story was a about a client who got kicked out of a gym for…. well, I won’t spoil the joke!).

Also, since I tend to value character over technical BS… I got Joe to talk about his family life and new business, an incredible warehouse gym in NY where he literally transforms boys to men!

I think you’ll really enjoy this interview.

==> CLICK HERE TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THIS AUDIO <==

If you’re thinking about giving some of these workouts a try, drop a few bucks and grab yourself a copy of Bull Conditioning => http://www.BrutalBullWorkouts.com

Brutal “Bull Conditioning” Workouts that you should NOT try!

These workouts are freaking BRUTAL… do not try any of these workouts if you are out of shape.  And definitely DO TRY the workout on page 49 if you value your life!

http://www.BrutalBullWorkouts.com (Bull Conditioning Workouts that make you sick, vomit and get ridiculously LEAN!)

Pro Strongman Interview: Andy Deck

Last week I attended the Strongman Show of Champions in Orlando… the same show that I won my Pro Card at last year.  Well, this year Andy Deck was the man who made the ascent from amateur to pro on this day!  Andy is lean, strong and SUPER explosive!  I was able to corner him last week for a short phone interview about his background and unique training style.  He uses a ton of exercises and methods that I’ve never experimented with… but will be now!  Enjoy!

==> CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN <==

Fixing Muscular Imbalances with Kevin Yates

Here is a great audio interview I conducted with Corrective Exercise Specialist Kevin Yates, all about how corrective stretching and training can prevent and cure many common pains experienced by weight lifters and other trainees.  Kevin can be found at http://www.functionaltrainingcoach.com/

CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN <====

“Working In” Interview with Paul Chek

***HULSE STRENGTH & WISDOM TRIBE MEMBERS ONLY***

Early in my career I took a keen interest in Holistic Health and Corrective Exercise. As a result I spent several years studying under my first mentor Paul Chek. In this audio coaching session Paul reveals his secrets to living healthy and strong well into your middle ages and beyond. He tackles issues concerning Strength Training, Nutrition, Tai Chi, Breathing, Rest, Recovery and Recreation. This is one of my favorite sessions ever.

Listen Here:

[podcast]http://www.hulsestrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/paul-chek.mp3[/podcast]

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS AUDIO

Pat Wilson: Strength Camp Sponsored Strongman

When I opened Strength Camp, my warehouse gym in Florida, little did I realize that besides being a place for me to train and to train athletes that it would become a — “Man Cave” of sorts.

Now, I really do hate this term… “Man Cave”, because it assumes that men are nothing more than post modern neanderthals in need of a place to hide from doting women and an oppressive society.   I use the term only because of its recent popularity (along with the televisons portrayal of men as either lazy, dumb-asses like Homer Simpson or as aggressive, testosterone driven competitors who cheat on their wives like Tiger Woods).

Where is popular cultures example of the courageous and responsible man who lives an upright and integrous life?

Anyway, today’s post was not meant for one of my manic rants.

Today I would like to introduce you to one of the neanderthals that train with me in my Man-Cave gym… a place where men can lift heavy things, spit, cuss and have pissing contests without the distractions of “skinny jeans” or Ellen Degeneres”.

Meet Strength Camp’s newest sponsor:

Pat “Young Beast” Wilson

LW Strongman Competitor

Age 19 yrs. old (no shit!)

Ht – 5′11

Wt. 243

Pat just wooped ass in The SW Florida Strongman Event and has been training at Strength Camp with me and a few other strong  boys looking to snatch up some trophies, pro cards and world records next month at The Strongman Show Of Champions in Orlando FL (4/16 – 4/17)

Check out some of Pat’s prowess as he moves heavier things, faster and farther than his competitors. Strongman — What a great sport!?!?!

Hey! — If you have any awesome (and I mean AWESOME) videos of you or someone you know training like a maniac with Strongman implements send them to me at strengthcamp@gmail.com and I may post them here on the blog.

Also, if you are a strongman beast (and I mean a BEAST)… let me know about your upcoming competition and I’ll send you some Strength Camp t-shirts to rock.  All I ask is that you send me some pictures and videos of you kicking butt with while wearing our shirt.

Have a great weekend!

5 Steps to Building Insane Explosive Football Strength and Speed

Guest Post By Coach Steve Morris

The world of football training is in a sad state of affairs.  A downturn, if you will.

See, a lot of programs I see on the internet promise explosive football strength, but, very few deliver. Unfortunately for us football players, most of the workouts and programs are written by some 170-lb personal trainer (who no doubt couldn’t make the team in high school). They come up with these odd programs filled with high volume, stability balls, “core” work and lots of cool, new-age exercises they learned at the latest ACE certification clinic.

Last summer, the football training world hit rock bottom. In a Google search for “football training” one of the top results was a football strength workout written by a trainer from Bally’s and listed on the fraud gym’s website.

What I saw damn near made me vomit with rage. Essentially, everything was 3 x 8, eventually working your way down to 4 reps (strength work, I suppose). It was a horrid combination of the old bodybuilding stand-by sets and reps meeting weenie-personal-trainer inspired Western Periodization.

This sad state of affairs is unnecessary. There’s around 180,000 websites with some sort of football strength training info, and, honestly, about 179,995 of them are total trash. Obviously, Elliot’s site is packed with awesome football training info, and I go out of my way to make sure my site is as well. Maybe it’s because we both actually played the game and know what it takes to excel?

Despite the almost unlimited fountains of misinformation parading as strength training sites confusing players, there is hope. Getting stronger, faster and more explosive for football is actually not that complicated. It’s gut-busting hard work, but it’s not really rocket science. True football training will build your body, mind and character and you will become a better man for having lived through it.

How do you actually go about getting stronger and more explosive?

Glad you asked.

Here are 5 easy steps to building insane explosive football strength and speed.

1. Do Max Effort Work

Make no mistake about it, unless you are strong, you will not be a great football player. Strength dictates all other aspects of athleticism (speed, agility, explosiveness, etc). The stronger football player will almost always win.

This confuses most people. They assume that you don’t need to be super strong to be a great football player. They also fail to see the correlation between strength and speed (we’ll cover that in #2).

Now, a lot of players do accept this but go about it in the wrong way. I get countless emails from people asking me to evaluate their programs. Usually, they’re working hard but not getting the results they want. And, usually it’s because they are confused about how to actually get stronger.

We’ve been conditioned to think that doing sets of 4 – 6 and simply adding 5lbs to the bar every week is getting stronger. It’s not.

First, you’re not building maximum strength.

Second, you will plateau rather quickly. If we all added 5-lbs a week forever, guys would be benching 5,000lbs.

You must work with low reps, yes, even as low as singles, to build raw, max strength.

I know, “low reps are dangerous!” Bull. High reps are more dangerous. Ever watch someone do a set of 10 in the Squat? Reps 7 – 10 are ragged, they twist, their knees pinch in, and they use way too much back. The more reps you do, the more fatigued you will become and the worse your form will get.

If you’re a beginner or you train beginners, and you still fear the single, do multiple sets of 2 or work up to a max set of 2 – 3. This will build top end strength. And, for those of you who feel you need to do higher reps, think of it this way; you’re max bench is 200lbs and you can do sets of 8 with 150. You smarten up, decide to get stronger, push your max up to 250 and suddenly find that you can now do sets of 8 with 200. Which is better? 150 x 8 or 200 x 8?

And, before you get excited, it doesn’t work the opposite way. As many a disappointed “projected-max” following football player will tell you, focusing on increasing your weight on high reps sets has nothing to do with your max strength.

So, you need to do Max Effort work. You need to “work up to” a heavy set of 1 – 3 reps, constantly trying to beat your previous records.

Working up is simple, so stop over thinking it.

It should take 5 – 8 sets; depending on your strength (obviously a 600-lb bencher will need more sets than a guy pushin’ 150).

Do this:

Bar x 5
95 x 3
125 x 3
135 x 3
155 x 3
175 x 3

Next time, beat 155. I know, there’s barely any volume, how are can this make you stronger? Rest assured, most top power lifters, the strongest guys on Earth, use a similar approach.

Lead off one Upper Body day and one Lower Body day with a Max Effort exercise. Stick to big, compound movements like Bench, Incline, Deadlifts, Box Squats, etc.

2. Maximum Force to the Bar

If there is one area of football training, and, strength training in general that confuses people and fuels the fringe, anti-strength idiots it’s the subject of bar speed. The HIT Jedis, the personal training crowd, the CrossFit Cults and the Wobble Board Wrecking Crews all have done a great job teaching young football players and lifters that lifting heavy will make you slow. “Just look at that big, fat Powerlifter Squatting 800-lbs! He’s moving slow, and if you get strong, you’ll be slow too!”

Much better to do Indian Club Juggling Front Squats on a Swiss ball, eh?
What they miss is the intent to move the bar fast that counts. This might be the simplest concept in strength training yet so many miss it. Just try to lift the bar as fast as possible, every set, every rep, every exercise.

You need to train your Central Nervous System to act fast. When it gets the message that we need to move several hundred pounds quickly, it can easily figure out to move just your bodyweight pretty damn fast. Try lifting a heavy weight slowly and see what happens.

When I get high school players telling me they were taught to lift the bar with a 4 seconds up and 3 seconds down bar speed, my head explodes. They wonder why they can’t get faster! Well, they just spent an entire off-season teaching their brain, body and muscles to be slow, what else would you expect.

Dave Tate wrote something to the effect of, “Warm up sets should feel like maxes and maxes should feel like warm up sets.” That, my friends, does a hell of a job summing it up.

Every set, every rep, every exercise…lift the bar like you’re trying to throw it off of you because it’s about to crush you and end your existence. That’s good motivation to get the bar moving.

3. Posterior Chain

If you want to get faster for football, be able to drive a defender into the stands, or run people over, you need to work your posterior chain like your life depends on it. Your hamstrings, glutes, calfs, and all the muscles of the back must be hammered, often.

I don’t blame young players for training the beach muscles. They don’t know any better and that’s where you’ll notice progress the quickest. But, for coaches and writers who over-promote “bodybuilding” style programs, there’s no excuse.

You need to center your program around:

Box Squats
Box Front Squats
Deadlifts
Cleans
Deadlifting of odd objects (sandbags, stones, etc)
Snatch Grip Deadlifts
Romanian Deadlifts
Squats and Front Squats (regular, no box)
Lateral Lunges

If you focus your efforts on those exercises, you will be miles ahead of the competition. Do them heavy, lift them fast, and do them often.

4. Build Transitional Power

Another place where many football strength programs fall short is in the area of transitioning weight room strength into on the football field power.

There are plenty of big, strong dudes who stink up the collective football fields of the world every year. Sometimes it’s because they are just dumb or hopelessly unathletic. More often, it’s because they lifted hard but never took the steps needed to transfer power from the gym to the field.

The two quickest ways to do this are:

Using a modified Dynamic (Speed) Training method
Using a simple Plyometric program

Dynamic training is simply lifting a sub-maximal weight as fast as possible. Typically, this would be 50 – 60% of your max. This is done for leg training exercises like Squats and Box Squats.

Because the body has a built-in protective mechanism, simply lifting a lighter bar has its limitations because the body will slow you down as you reach lock-out. To get around this we need to “accommodate resistance.” This is done by adding bands, chains, or weight releasers to the bar so that as you lift it, it actually gets heavier. In this case, you must continue to accelerate all the way through lockout but you over-ride the body’s instinct to slow down because, again, the bar will move a bit slower despite your intent to move it quickly.

Bands can be a bit extreme for the beginner and hard to set up, so your best bet is to use chains. EliteFTS.com has good ones. By training in this way, you teach the body to have speed and power at every joint angle. See, when we lift, we often over-train the bottom portion and under-train the top, since we are weakest at the bottom of a lift and strongest toward the top.

Chains gather on the ground at the bottom of the lift, and begin to come off the ground as you lift the bar, actually increasing the weight progressively as you near completion.

This can not only make us weaker but it can teach the CNS bad habits. Think of your body position when you start to explode through a tackle…it’s a lot like the last 1/3 of a squat. Why would you want that area to be weaker than necessary?

Plus, it teaches acceleration. Your body is forced to accelerate through the entire movement, rather than slowing down as most do naturally.

The next step in transitioning power is to use a simple plyo program. I do mean simple.

People have this weird fascination with plyometrics. I don’t know if it’s the old “if it’s Russian and secret, it must be awesome!” school of thought or because every commercial for overpriced spandex shows guys jumping around on boxes. Either way, people have managed to take a highly effective training tool and pervert it.

Plyometrics, by definition, are exercises that allow the muscle to reach maximum strength in as short a period of time as possible.1 Re-read that and think of its applications to
football training! That’s what it’s all about. Producing as much force as possible, as fast
as possible. This is what makes them so great at teaching the transfer of strength to the field.

Remember, Force is Mass x Acceleration. Your mass x your acceleration = big plays and big hits…

Plyos are great, but you must start slowly. Guys read an article about plyos and start doing depth jumps off the roof of their house. Don’t be that guy. Start off with something as basic as a Box Jump.

Stand in front of a box, dip quickly and leap onto the box. Step down and repeat.

The next step would be Multiple Box Jumps. Excellent exercise, but this is where guys start going wrong.

When you do multiple Box Jumps, you must absolutely focus on spending almost no time on the ground. Jump, step off, hit the ground and immediately jump to the next box. Too much ground time will make you slower!

When you first start just keep it simple. 3 – 4 sets of 5 jumps before your heavy leg work is plenty. Concentrate on speed and explosiveness and minimizing ground time.

Between the Dynamic Training and the Plyos you’ll be well on your way to taking all of your new-found strength and size and turning it into useable power to mow down your competition on the field…that is the point of all this training.

5. Fix Strength Gaps

Even with all the Max Effort, Dynamic Effort, chains and plyos, you can still fail to reach maximum potential. Don’t get me wrong, those things are the foundation of training and doing them will take you far. But, I know the guys who read this site and the guys I train are not interested in just being good…we want to be elite!

No matter how hard you train in the weight room, you can still develop strength gaps.

Strength gaps are just what they sound like. Little gaps in your strength that can take a 600-lb Squatter and render him unable to throw a block.

See, when we lift barbells we go up and down and, as we discussed, can lose out unless we use bands and chains.

But, even with bands and chains, the weight remains in one plane of motion and relatively fixed in resistance (bands and chains add resistance as the bar goes up).
Dumbbells and K-bells help by training some of the stabilizers and Prowlers and sleds allow us to move laterally. But, there’s still something missing.

That missing something is Sandbags and other Odd-Object/Strongman style training. We tend to go mostly with Sandbags because of the safety factor, but, we also do Farmers Walk, Sled Pulling, Truck Pushing, and some Stone Trainer work.

Sandbags work because they are “alive.” They move, the weight shifts, the bag changes shape…it literally fights back, like an opponent.

I’ve seen some strong dudes get embarrassed by a 150lb Sandbag because they don’t have the stabilizer strength to tackle the beast.

Look at the Sandbag Clean and Press.

You have to pick up this moving blob of weight. Then, you shift it to the thighs and explode up to the chest – all while engaging the muscles of the back, arms, shoulders, biceps, low back, glutes, hamstrings and abs. Now, you have to press this thing overhead.

Again, the bag moves around forcing the stabilizers in the shoulders to work hard (so the bag doesn’t come down on your big head). Once you get it overhead, you’ve worked the shoulders, the triceps, the upper chest (as a stabilizer) and the back and legs again.

It’s a fight from start to finish.

This is the kind of movement that makes the body one piece, a whole of strong, unshakable muscle. No leakage is possible when you are used to wrestling Sandbags.

You can use Sandbags and Strongman movements as finishers at the end of your training session, as a stand-alone conditioning tool, or in place of barbell exercises.

The Take Home

Now you have a plan to increase your explosive strength, get faster for football and become the kind of player you always wanted to be. Or, you can choose to go with the run of the mill style of training and be average. If you choose the latter, don’t worry, you can hide for a while. But, eventually you’ll run into guys who train the right way…and we’ll be waiting for you.

Steven Morris is a Strength Coach in the Philadelphia and South Jersey areas and owner of Explosive Football Training. He still plays football and will only retire at gun-point. He has been lifting weights for over 16 years and has been helping people achieve their fitness and strength goals for over a decade.
You can get the Free Book “7-Steps to Building Insane Game Speed” at www.ExplosiveFootballTrainingProgram and www.ExplosiveFootballTraining.com

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