Strength Training for Offensive LIneman
Strength Training For Offensive Lineman
The positions of the football offensive line are some of the most important positions in all of football. Especially if you are a left tackle blocking the blindside for your quarterback.
As an offensive lineman setting into pass pro, coming off the line, or maneuvering into run block positions, you have to be explosive. You also need to be a large individual to play offensive line, which means hypertrophic gains.
You also need to be able to move extremely quickly and be mobile. Being mobile as an offensive lineman means your hips can get low and you have good thoracic rotation.
Having good thoracic rotation, mobile hips, larger stature, and extremely explosive you will be able to pick up offensive blocks against extremely athletic defensive linemen.
To anchor down and own the real estate on the line of scrimmage, you have to have a ton of absolute strength, technical coordination, and dynamic trunk control.
You first need to have sustained impulse. Over time, impulse is a term that needs to replace the term power. You need power, but impulse is a better measure. Impulse is force over a specific time.
Once the ball is snapped, offensive linemen at the highest levels make contact with the defensive line in around .4 seconds. That engagement lasts for about another half second before the block is shed. The sustained impulse lasts for a half second or more.
Offensive linemen have to train sustained impulse! This means your first step has to be explosive and, after you make contact, your body will recruit more of your high threshold motor units. This leads to the next characteristic of training absolute strength.
Absolute strength training for offensive linemen needs to be performed through full ranges of motion. You need to focus on unilateral strength through full ranges of motion. Exercises like walking lunges, Cossack squats, band walks, overhead squats, bench presses, back squats, front squats, and the list goes on. All of these movements will train absolute strength.
Absolute strength training will also add mass to offensive linemen while allowing you to still move as agile when smaller.
Sustained impulse and absolute strength are non-negotiables for offensive lineman strength development. The same goes for dynamic trunk control. Your whole goal as an offensive lineman, based on the play and scheme, is a piece of real estate you have to own. Dynamic trunk control allows you to post up, rotate your trunk, and own the edge pass rusher.
Dynamic trunk control contributes to your ability to change direction and agility. It also contributes to your ability to rotate. Using the contrast method of combining front squats with hydro weight tornadoes will do wonders for your offensive lineman strength development.
Anything that leads to rotational strength in conjunction with absolute strength is great.
The last key factor is power endurance, or as you should start saying, impulse endurance. Offensive linemen need to be able to apply a ton of force over a short period repeatedly over a long time.
One of the best things you can do as an offensive lineman is head into the season hitting 12 to 15 singles of hang power cleans, two box power cleans, or one box power cleans on the minute.
On-the-minute training mimics the game clock. For instance, if your max power clean is 160 kilos but you can maintain 150-kilo power output on the minute, you will know that you have impulse endurance to dominate and control that line of scrimmage real estate in the fourth quarter.
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