Recently, I was asked a question on what I thought was better for football conditioning – endurance runs or sprints.  I answered the question for the individual, but I thought I would use today’s newsletter to give a more thorough answer.

My answer to this question started off with a question.  I know that probably isn’t the polite thing to do, but I wanted to really get specific to exactly when this football conditioning would be taking place.

If it was right now, which for most teams college and high school, then the answer is going to be a little different than say if we’re talking a week before the season starts.  Currently, we are in December and most college teams just got done.  At this point, I might just do some endurance runs to keep the heartrate pumping and stay in shape.

At some point, you would start your off-season lifting for football.  Let’s say it is January.  The goal for a lot of high school football players and some college athletes is to gain size.  In this case, you would not want to do a lot of endurance running.  I would say anything over 20 minutes would be a detriment because at that point you might start losing muscle size.  Meaning, if you don’t have enough calories for energy, then your body would start burning muscle for energy.  Thus, you would lose size and strength.

In this example, like I said, I would keep it around 15-20 minutes maybe 3 times a week.

Now, if you are getting closer to the season, let’s say 8-12 weeks out, then we are talking a different story.  At this point, you need to get your cardio conditioning to closely match the energy demands you will have when you play football.  When you play football, you do not go out for long runs on the football field that take 20 minutes.  You run at full speed for 4-6 seconds and then retreat back to a huddle for 30-35 seconds.

So, we would run your cardio accordingly.  I would start doing sprints for 5-10 seconds, maybe 5 seconds longer, but that would be the max.  I would then have the football player sprint that duration, then rest maybe 30-35 seconds, much like he would in a game, then sprint again.  I might even go the same duration that you ran your endurance training for, with the exception that it would be in this interval format.

If you wanted to get even more football specific, I would do something called pattern running.  What is that you ask?

Well, pattern running is something you could do about 4 weeks prior to the opening of your summer training camp.  Up until that point for 4-8 weeks you were doing interval sprinting, maybe even some suicides for conditioning.  Now, you will start doing pattern running.  Basically, pattern running you have 10 patterns for a player based on his football position.  I work with a lot of receivers, so my 10 patterns might be: 10 and 20 yard sprint, a curl, an out, a 10 yard slant, all to one side, then all to the other side.  There are your 10 patterns.

You would sprint the pattern full speed, jog back to your starting position, sprint again for the duration of the patterns, then rest for 1-2 minutes before you do another set.  It is a great conditioning program for football players, especially when you’re trying to develop potential mental toughness.

There you have it.  I would love to answer more questions that you might have.  No question is a dumb question, so feel free to ask away and if I like it, I’ll make a newsletter out of it.  Take care.