Oct 4, 2017Hip Strength, Part III
Part I of this article, on why hip strength is important, can be read here. Part II of this article, on selecting exercises, can be found here.
To give you a better look at how to incorporate hip strengthening into a team workout, included at the bottom of this article are two example workouts. The first is an early off-season workout for the skill position players in football, and the second is the final cycle of an off-season workout for the larger position players on the team. Hip strengthening is a key part of our off-season football training and is included in each of our three workouts per week.
The skill players include running backs, quarterbacks, receivers, defensive backs, and kickers. Two of the workouts for this group (Monday and Friday) are dumbbell oriented, while the other workout (Wednesday) is barbell oriented. I have our skill position athletes work with dumbbells twice a week because of the additional balance and motor skills required. The idea is that if these skills are trained in the weightroom, they will transfer to the field.
I use a two-scheme format so that the athletes have a primary and secondary emphasis each training week. For this group during this training cycle, the primary goal (scheme one) is to increase muscle size and the secondary goal (scheme two) is to increase muscular endurance and strength.
For our larger position players, including the offensive and defensive linemen, linebackers, and tight ends, there is more emphasis on increasing size and strength and less emphasis on balance and motor skills. During the late-stage cycle detailed, scheme one focuses on power development and scheme two focuses on maintaining hypertrophy and muscular endurance.
We reverse the program in terms of training modality and have the larger players train with barbells on Monday and Friday and dumbbells on Wednesday only. This allows the athletes to use heavier loads on Mondays and Fridays during this cycle, so they perform more sets with fewer repetitions per set.
Because football players begin their on-field movement based on an auditory or visual cue, we use “command” training for one of their weightlifting movements each day during the power cycles. For that day’s command exercise, each repetition is started by a visual command like a coach’s movement or auditory command like a teammate calling out the snap count instead of the athlete self-initiating the movement.
Though developing strong, powerful hips is a key to improving performance, great strength and power in the hips without flexibility is of little value for an athlete. Simply stated, high quality movement is not possible without good hip flexibility.
The ability to move quickly and efficiently is directly related to hip flexibility. Moving the body occurs by moving the legs and movement of the legs occurs at the hip joints.
Having good hip flexibility is also important for athletes because the ability to correctly perform many exercises that strengthen the hips is dependent on it. Exercises such as cleans, snatches, squats, front squats, single-leg squats, lateral squats, and lunges all require a good level of flexibility if they are to be performed correctly.
When coaching the athletes I work with, I emphasize that all of our exercises be taken through a full range of motion. For example, when an athlete cleans, squats, or lunges, I look for their hips to go lower than the knee joint, and this requires a high degree of flexibility.
Because dynamic flexibility is more specific to athletic performance than static flexibility, and because static flexibility has negative consequences to subsequent dynamic activities, we emphasize dynamic flexibility prior to activity and static flexibility post-activity. Walking lunges, reverse lunges, side lunges, and crossover lunges are all examples of dynamic flexibility movements we use to increase range of motion in the hips.
Static flexibility is effective at increasing flexibility and is appropriate as a post exercise activity for athletes. These movements include static knee tucks, lunges, and butterflies.
While it may not be glamorous, developing hip strength, power, and flexibility is critical for most athletes. Once athletes begin to understand why, you just may hear them walk into the weightroom and say they are ready to work on their hip strength.
SKILL POSITIONS
Monday (Scheme One)
Total Body
DB power jerk
DB split alt.foot jerk
Lower Body
DB front squat
DB straight-leg deadlift
Trunk
DB crunch
Upper Back
DB row
Neck
MR flexion/extension
Quarterbacks only
Empty cans
Wednesday (Scheme One)
Total Body
Power snatch
Power cleans
Cleans
Lower Body
Squats
Lateral squats
Upper Body
Bench Press
Trunk
Bicycles
Friday (Scheme Two)
Total Body
DB push press
DB power jerk
Chest
DB incline press
Manual resistance decline pushups
Trunk
Plate lift and twist
Stabilization (60 seconds each leg)
Neck
MR lateral fexion
Quarterbacks only
Functional rotation
LARGE POSITIONS
Monday (Scheme One)
Total Body
Command power snatch
Split alt. foot snatch
Complex
Box jumps
Lower Body
Front squats
Side lunges
Complex
Lateral box jumps
Trunk
MB off-center throw
Neck
MR flexion/extension
Wednesday (Scheme Two)
Total Body
Command DB hang alt. power snatch
DB hang split alt. foot snatch
Lower Body
DB jump squats
DB single-leg squats
Partner eccentric leg curls
Trunk
Standing band twists
Keg twist lift
Chest
CB alt. bench press
Friday (Scheme One)
Total Body
Command hang clean
High pull clean
Chest
Incline press
Complex
MB lying chest pass
Trunk
Bus drivers
Neck
MR lateral fexion
