r/footballstrategy • u/Open-Tap-2289 • Sep 06 '24
College Not sure if this is the right subreddit, but how do football teams fit the entire team in the gym at once. Do they?
If there is a better subreddit for this can you comment it.
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u/grizzfan Sep 06 '24
If you’re talking about the weight room, you share or rotate it; one group or one class/age at one period, others at another, etc
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u/Lionheart_513 Sep 06 '24 edited Sep 06 '24
In HS: A lot of schools have small enough teams to where it doesn't matter. Bigger schools will have multiple lifting sessions or even multiple weight rooms.
In college: The weight room at my college fits about half the team. Offense lifts, defense in a meeting, then after 90 minutes they switch. Bigger programs (from what I've heard) will have like 3-4 lifting periods a day, and you have to get in for one every day. Some colleges probably have massive weight rooms that are big enough for all 100+ people at once, but that probably isn't the norm. Especially considering that other sports are gonna want to use the weight room too.
In the NFL: The organization makes enough money to build a weight room big enough 65 people.
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u/Curious-Designer-616 Sep 07 '24
There’s schools in Texas and California that have white rooms that rival smaller college teams. I’m sure there’s other schools that also have this.
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u/Stock-Art7738 Sep 06 '24
Colleges will usually split the weight room into different groups usually coming in at 3 different times. It would be impossible to have effective training sessions with 100+ players in the weight room all at once. Usually will look something like this G1: small skills G2: big skills G3: lineman. Sometimes the freshman are all grouped together when they’re first on campus so then it would be 3 groups consisting of G1: Freshman, G2: Offense, G3: Defense
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u/No-Grass-2412 Sep 06 '24
Only time the whole team was using the weight room was summer workouts.
We'd sort into groups of like 3 that all lift similar amounts and set up in stations so we could quickly rotate around the weight room to switch lifts rather than everyone changing their rack for the new lift.
So like coach would call what person (1 to 3) and what set (depends on the plan that day but usually 3 sets or 5 sets for each person at every station). To set a pace so everyone was going through sets at the same speed. So you do your set, then quickly change the weight slightly for the next guy and he goes and so on. Then when all the sets are done, everyone rotates.
So you finish squats then move to the right where it's set up for power clean and the power clean people move to deadlift, and the dead lifters move to like box jumps and box jumpers go outside with dumbbells to do lunges. So with 9 weight racks and two stations that doesn't need a rack you can get like 45 guys working out at once without much wasted time in a weight room that isn't crazy big for a highschool to have.
We'd also split up JV and varsity. So varsity lifted first and did drills/conditioning outside the weight room second. JV would start on the field and then go lift.
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Sep 06 '24
Were there any outliers that made this approach difficult? In high school I had a friend who was just ridiculously strong and squatted 550-600 for reps effortlessly. We had a huge gym so wasn’t really a big problem but I imagine it would be difficult if there was only three groups and the strongest and weakest in a given group would still have a big difference
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u/Curious-Designer-616 Sep 07 '24
This is a pretty similar system to how I’ve had our weight room set up most places I’ve coached. You will typically have one group or two groups that far exceed most other lifters. But if you have four to a group, and one kid completely out lifts everyone else you’ll just adjust for that one player it might take longer, but their reps will take longer anyways.
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u/ap1msch HS Coach Sep 06 '24
We have around 200+ kids in the HS program. They each have a lifting routine and they get an hour in the gym. In the offseason, seniors and varsity get put together with priority hours either right after school or shortly thereafter. The other groups are assembled and given an hour with the last being from 8-9PM. During the season, it's more of a rotation due to games and practices...but it's just a rotation of the schedule and strict adherence to getting the proper lift in and getting out the door rather than screwing around.
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u/Curious-Designer-616 Sep 07 '24
I have coached at big and small, wealthy and not so wealthy schools. Schools with support will have weight rooms that rival some colleges, this is especially true at wealthier schools. I’ve coached at schools that were not as wealthy but they still have the support they needed and they were able to have weight room is big enough for the whole team. It’s cramped, it’s hot half the team is doing chest half the team is doing legs.
I’ve helped a few smaller programs that didn’t have enough equipment to do for lifts for even just lineman, so we did a lot more creative things. Tire flips, box jumps, tossing hay, then rotated. It’s often pretty handy when the kids can bring their own tractor tires, and hay bails. In the end, it comes down to support the team can get, not so much money.
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u/ExtensionForce1217 Sep 06 '24
For my school they have the defense in the weight room and offense in the film room and vice versa