Grant Skinner – Page 8

Football Training for Linebackers

The Linebacker position requires Strength to be able to take on and shed blocks from Offensive Linemen; Agility to tackle running backs in the open field and Speed to be able to drop back into coverage. In today’s SST Blog we will look at three exercises that will help you improve in these areas.

Log – Hang Clean and Press

One of SST favorite exercise for improved hand strength SST we like to use a Log with thick grips because it improves hand strength. This is important for taking on blocks, as well as tackling. The important part of this exercise is generating power through triple extension. That is using your hips, knees & ankles to generate force through your body and accelerate the bar up to your shoulders. Once there you re-bend your knees and again use triple extension to help lift the weight above your head.

This is a great exercise for not only taking on blocks, but also explosively driving through tackles.

Sled Shuffle

For this exercise you load weight on the sled and attach it to your waist with a belt. In a strong athletic position with knees bent and chest up the athlete drives off the leg closest to the sled. You can perform this exercise with higher weights and slower movement earlier in the off-season. As you get closer you want to use lighter weights and move more quickly. This is a great exercise to help shuffling and cutting. It is difficult to find an exercise that helps functionally strengthen those muscles, but this is our favorite.

Prowler Sprint

The prowler is one of the most polarizing pieces of equipment at our gym. Most people have a strong love-hate relationship with it. We have a term called the “Prowler Flu”, as several athletes have been forced to sign the bucket when they are done with it. You can use it in several ways – as an energy system workout when you push it for longer distances. But in this case we are going to focus on 10 yard acceleration runs. This is great for filling the hole during running plays, or having to change direction and accelerate after a quarterback throws the ball.

Throwing the Heat – Part 1

Decelerating For Harder and Faster Throws

One of the most frequently asked questions we get at S.S.T. from Baseball players is, “What exercises will make me throw ‘The Heat?’”. Often the short answer to this is “Do the opposite of whatever you are doing right now.” We’ll explain this answer later in this article, but first, to completely and properly answer this question we start with gathering some info from the athlete:

What are exercises are you doing to improve throwing now?
How many sets are you doing?
How many reps?
What is your tempo? (How fast you are moving the weight)
How long have you been doing this program for?

The most common answers we get at S.S.T. are a couple sets of bench press, a few sets of dumbbell chest press, some triceps stuff, and the odd med ball throws. The athletes complain that they have reached a plateau and can’t for the life of them throw any faster, or worse are starting to throw slower and have shoulder pain. This scenario is all too common amongst baseball players and often detrimental to any shoulder and guaranteed to lead to an injury. (Note: injured players don’t get to play.)

OK, so what should baseball players be doing to throw harder? The first thing we have our athletes do at S.S.T. is to go through an athletic assessment. One of the things we have them do is different strength tests to find out how strong the athlete is relative to their opposite lifts. For example, we may get a 160 pound athlete who might be able to close grip bench press 200lbs but then can’t do two medium grip chin ups properly. This is a relative strength imbalance which will limit their throwing velocity.

Another strength assessment we do is called the Paretials Test which is a test of the upper back and posterior part of the shoulder. Most baseball players and other throwing athletes fail this test miserably using just their bodyweight, let alone any sort of external resistance (For more information on S.S.T. assessments click here). This is because they have worked the muscles they use for throwing to a point where they are short and tight leaving the opposing muscle long and weak. Whenever this imbalance happens, your body automatically decreases the neural signal to your short tight throwing muscles as a defence mechanism to try and prevent you from throwing your arm out of its socket (If you keep it up, your shoulder can pop out). (For more on preventing shoulder injuries click here)

Solution #1: Stop training the muscles on the front of your body.

Most of our baseball players and throwing athletes at S.S.T. who have done this have had a significant increase in performance. Pitchers are throwing faster – some more than 10mph in 4 months – and our fielders and other athletes are throwing further, without pain!

Here is a sample beginner program to train the decelerators of a throw. To be done 2x/week on both arms.

A1 Paretials sets: 3-4 Reps: 4-6 Tempo: 2018
A2 External Rotators on knee sets 3-4 Reps: 10-12 Tempo: 2020

B1 Scapular Retractions High Pulley Sets: 3-4 Reps: 4-6 Tempo: 3013
B2 Pulley External Rotations Sets: 3-4 Reps: 10-12 Tempo: 2020

This routine is just a sample and should only be used for about 6 workouts because a routine is only as good as the time it takes for your body to adapt. (For information on why click here) Once your body adapts, you need to progress. This routine addresses only two shoulder imbalances and is not a cure for all imbalances of the shoulder muscles. There are several other assessments that we do at S.S.T. to determine shoulder health and all need to be addressed to really be able to “Throw the Heat”.

Mary Orr

Just a big Thanks for working with Mary .. Since we have been coming to see you at SST she has become a two -time junior national medalist and has just been named to the Junior International pair figure skating team and has just accepted a international assignment representing Canada in Latvia in August.. Here is a great picture from 2013 Skate Canada Nationals.

Flash Back Football Blog: Who wants to take that next step???

Here we are the Super Bowl is 1 week away, Bowl season at U.S. colleges over, the CFL has long been done and high school football seasons’ ended over a month ago. What this means is there is many players done playing at their respective levels; and ready to take that next step. This is an exciting time for many, but it also filled with much nerves. If you played so well over the last year or two and are a sure fire # 1 pick, or if you have already committed to a school at that next level, you are coasting, you are set. However, this only is a lucky handful of extremely gifted athletes. Most are left unsure of where they are going to end up – or more importantly how they are going to get there!

This, for a great number of football players is where combine or team testing comes into play. Now is the time that you not only have to prove that you can play the game of football but teams and scouts want to see how much of an “athletic freak” you are during testing. This can help to separate two players from earning a roster spot but it can also help to improve draft stock as well, hello Oakland Raiders and two stud “athletic freaks” Jamarcus Russell and Darrius Heyward-Bey who got drafted simply on being tremendous athletes. Look what that did for Al Davis!

I came across an interesting study by McGee & Burkett breaking down the NFL Combine, and how the players faired in the tests in relation to the draft status. Common and crucial combine tests include perhaps the most important and well known football test, the 40 yd dash (as well as 10 & 20 yd split times), broad jump, vertical jump, 225 bench press test for reps, pro agility and 3 cone shuttle. It is well known that a player who tests well in the 40 yd dash should also test well in the vertical and broad jump tests. This is because power and strength dictates running speed, whereas the jump tests measure lower body power. So in short if you can run fast you can jump high – and vice versa.

It has been shown that the most accurate predictors of draft status for RB, WR & DB were the 3 cone agility, 10 yd dash and vertical jump; this is because these positions are the most reliant on speed and agility. The best predictor for OL & DL happened to be height, weight, 225lb bench press and broad jump; which also makes sense as to play these positions you have to be big and strong, clog up space and basically maul your opponent. The positions of QB and LB were much harder to predict based only on testing numbers as being excellent at these positions maybe more than any other rely on decision making and reaction skills rather than physical characteristics.

I know shocking!!! But it was shown that over all positions the players who were drafted in the 1st and 2nd rounds were collectively stronger, faster and could jump higher than those players taken in the 6th and 7th rounds.

Here at SST, we not only focus on getting our athletes stronger and faster in the weight-room, we also work to improve an aspiring athlete’s combine numbers. In fact with specific training and much hard work and dedication from many young athletes SST has had 4 players drafted in the first 2 rounds of the CFL draft over the last 2 years. Because of these players recent success and many others over the part number of years SST has been rated the #1 speed training facility in Canada, and in the top 15 overall in North America.

Not only do we train aspiring pro athletes, our main focus is helping young athletes aspiring to reach that next level. To find out how the pros train, and to undergo the exact same techniques check out two of SST’s upcoming football camps;

8 Week High Performance Football Camp CLICK HERE

Stay tuned next week for a sample program from one of these athletes who showed so well at the CFL combine that it helped to ensure a high 1st round draft pick. If you want, it could be you too!!!

Why Strength train for Baseball?

For years baseball players have been labelled the worst athletes amongst the four major professional sports in North America. However in the last 20 years we have seen a remarkable improvement in player’s strength and conditioning. Players today are bigger, stronger and faster. Professional baseball players now realize that working on their swing or pitching mechanics in the off-season is just as important as increasing their maximal strength through resistance training.

We are now starting to see teams and organizations implementing strength and conditioning programs for their players, and most teams now have strength coaches at every level of professional baseball. So why have so few amateur players/teams embraced this key element in their off-season program? Why do they continue to focus solely on “skills” and “fundamentals” every winter? Sure Billy has a smooth swing and he hit .400 last season but 80% of his hits were singles and he’s 16 years old and 150lbs soaking wet. Will working on his swing and hitting a thousand balls of the tee and iron mike make him that much better next season? Maybe he’ll hit .450 or .500 that will for sure get him noticed by some pro scouts or some interest from some schools in the States right? Think again.

Scouts like kids who hit doubles and homers. Scouts like guys who are big and strong. Scouts like guys who throw hard. Heck, go to Central Scouting Bureau and read scouting reports on players, you will see it for yourself in almost every description of a player. You will read stuff like “Big Frame”, “Pro Body”, “and Strong as a horse”. You will also read stuff like “Great Swing, needs to get stronger”, “Small Frame”, “Lacks power to drive the ball”.

Throwing Velocity and Bat Speed/Ball Exit Speed can be increased through resistance training. I have listed an article that shows ten studies that each demonstrated a positive effect of weight training on throwing velocity. The authors in the review above also have a table that summarizes 26 studies that examined the effect of different strength protocols on throwing velocity and 22 of the 26 showed increases over controls who just threw[1]

So with that being said I would like to share with you our results this past off-season that we got with one of our baseball teams, Team Ontario.

Team Ontario is a group of Elite 16-18 year old ball players who play out of the PBLO. We started a 2 x week training program, 1 upper and 1 lower starting in November and running through to March. Of course the first thing we did here at SST is we tested them to see where their strength level was at. Then we tested them again at the completion of their program. Testing included; 10 yard runs, pro – agility shuffle and sprint, push ups and supinated chin ups. The results were nothing short of spectacular!

I’m not going to list individual numbers but I will provide team averages:

Push ups went from 26.8 to 35.1
Chin Ups went from 5.6 to 9.9( full chins ups- full extension and a four second eccentric component)
10 yard run times were awesome with every single athlete improving his time.
The worst time when we started was a 1.96, when we tested again it was 1.79.
The best time when we started was a 1.59, when we tested again it was 1.52.
Most importantly our team average times dropped by more than 10/100 of a second.
Same with Agility Sprint and Shuffle times. Amazing! Not to mention how much their Front Squats and Trap Bar Deadlifts poundage went up.

How did our athletes make such incredible gains? Here are some examples of exercises we used in their program.

Upper body: Chin ups (supinated, pronated, neutral, thick bar, thin bar), DB and BB incline Bench Press, Scap Retractions, Rope to Neck/Face, Every Row you can think of, external rotations…and many more
Lower Body: RDL’s, Trap Bar Deadlifts, Front Squats, Sled Pulls, Tire Flips, Split Squats, Hamstring Curls…and many more
Plus we incorporated core and low back work, as well as plyo’s and med ball work.
Foam Rolling and Static stretching plus a sound nutrition protocol with proper supplementation.

I can’t wait to see how our guys do on the field this year, something tells me we will be seeing a lot more doubles and homers, as well as our pitchers throwing Gas!

[1] Cressey, Eric. Strength Training for Pitchers. January 2009