How to Maintain Your Size During Football Season

At the end of last season, you made a commitment to yourself to gain 15lbs of muscle.

You came up short on a few plays, and you knew it was because you just weren't strong enough to get it done.

You lifted hard, you took your protein shakes, and by the time football camp rolled around, you were all jacked up.

Now you find yourself two weeks into your current season, and you weigh less than you did last year.

You start getting pushed around, your body starts to hurt, and you start looking more like Justin Bieber than Justin Tuck.

Is this what you trained 8 months for?

What a football player should look like ...

So what happened and why are you nervously walking around the mall looking for this shirt?

While I may not know everything, I have a few pretty good ideas as to why you lost all your muscle.

5 Reasons You Shrunk During Football Season

1. You Stopped Lifting

If your training regime over the summer consisted solely of football position drills and gassers, how jacked up do you really think you would be when you reported to camp.

If you want to keep on your muscle, you need to continue resistance training with heavy loads.

2. You Stopped Having Recovery Shakes

If they are good enough to drink after a lifting session in February, why are they not good enough after a practice session in September?

3. You Stopped Getting 8 hours of sleep a night

Getting adequate sleep enhances the process of muscle growth and development.

5 hours of sleep a night does not cut it.

Without enough sleep, your body will never be able to fully recover.

4. You Stopped Drinking Enough Water

I am not really sure why, but most football programs stop stressing water breaks once summer camp is over.

I guess most coaches think water is only needed when its 100 degrees out and they legally have to give it to you.

Unfortunately for them, the slogan "water is for the weak" couldn't be more wrong.

A dehydrated muscle synthesizes protein at a much lower rate than muscles that are well hydrated.

The more dehydrated you are, the less your body will use protein to build muscle.

Thanks Coach.....

5. You Stopped Soft Tissue Work

How many teams do you see stretch after a practice?

Better yet, how many stretch after a game?

I will not even get into how many use foam rollers or lacrosse balls.

Unfortunately for them, the less they stretch, the less blood will flow to their muscles.

The less blood that flows to the muscles, the smaller that muscle will get.

Enough said.



Wrap-Up

If you don't want to lose everything you trained for over the past months, make sure you don't make the same mistakes listed above.

If anyone wants advice or help on this topic, please feel free to contact me.














  

How to Get Jacked Up After Getting "Jacked" Up

One of my best friends in college was a guy who loved to hit the gym hard.

Unfortunately, that was not the only thing he would hit hard.

He also loved to hit people's faces, brick walls, and steel doors.

As many of you know, the aftermath of one of these punches is usually some broken bones in your hand.

While you may temporarily feel good after "winning" your fight or blowing off some steam, you will soon become miserable when you realize you can't use both hands in the gym for the next 8 to 12 weeks.

Fortunately for you street brawlers and wall smashers, there is a way to stay jacked up after you get "jacked" up.

This point is extremely important for athletes as well.

If you play a contact sport, there is a good chance that you are going to encounter an acute injury that may temporarily take one of your limbs out of commission.

Rather than sit home and shrink, get creative and continue to grow.

How is this possible?

It's simple:

Keep moving heavy loads with your body parts that still function properly.

The effects of overcoming these heavy loads will permeate throughout your entire body, even if you are only using one limb.

I was actually able to test this "theory" a few years ago when one of my best athletes broke his hand during summer training.

I put him on an intense One Arm training regimen for 8 weeks, and when the cast came off, he ended up benching more than he did at the beginning of the summer.

If you are looking for a way to actually execute a one arm lift, check out the clip below of a one arm bench press.

(One key coaching point is to brace the entire body prior to executing the lift.

Not only will it help you to get jacked up, it will also keep you from falling over due to the imbalance of weight.)