OFF SEASON - LB

Good Morning! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas spent well with family. If your still in Season, or potentially had a game on Christmas, I hope you had an amazing day spent with your football family. Today, I will focus on training Linebackers for this off season.

*The injuries discussed in this newsletter are for general educational purposes only. I am not affiliated with the athlete’s medical team, and the information shared does not reflect any insider or team medical details. Specifics about the injury are often unavailable, which can significantly influence the estimated timeline for return to play.

Growing up playing football, the first thought to mind about linebackers are they’re crazy guys that love to hit (in PG wording). But their assignments on the field are much broader than this and they require a specific style of exercises to improve performance and reduce injury risk.

If we think about the linebacker position, a big-skill player, the position demands rapid acceleration and deceleration to run to the ball and to cover often more athletic tight ends or slot receivers. They require hip mobility to be able to open and turn to run. Then to top it all off, they have to take on blocks from much larger offensive lineman and control the contact to not injure themselves nor get blocked at high-speed collisions.

Therefore some of the buckets we want to include in their training program are:

• Ankle mobility and strength of inverters and everters

• shoulder fast eccentric contractions

• lateral power

• rotational mobility/strength/power

• hip mobility and strength

• BOSCH Drills

• grip/ hand/wrist strength

• Lateral Flexion

• Agility

• Single Leg Power/Strength

Since some of these buckets have already been explained in the previous weeks I’ll try to stick to only the ones we haven’t covered. However, one thing I do want to point out are the consistent buckets we have seen across positions. This is absolutely what we would want to see. Because now, it makes programming for a team that much easier and more efficient on our end with creating their program.

A couple weeks ago, an old friend of mine from high school (and subscriber to this newsletter), Ryan Daugherty, reached out to me telling me about the book above. Have you read the book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” On my flight back to Ohio, I decided to finally open it and read it on the plane. Its a short read, about 50 pages on my Ipad with the app, Libby. Even though its a short read, it brought a very powerful message about change in life. Often times, we feel so comfortable in where we are, but life forces us into a different direction. “Who Moved My Cheese?” is about 4 characters who deal with change in different ways. Sniff, who notices changes happening prior to them occurring. Scurry, who goes straight into action without thought. Hem, who denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse. And lastly, Haw, who learns to adapt in time when he sees change can lead to something better.

Some of my favorite quotes from this book:

• “… what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagined. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.”

• “Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come.”

If you like books like this, or curious of other books I’ve read that have applied to my life and practice check out my book recs!

Lets dive into some of these buckets!

Shoulder Fast Eccentric Contraction

Training shoulder fast eccentric contracts is a way of training a linebacker to accept contact on the field (taking on a block). Not only does this increase performance by providing more rigidity with accepting a block to fill a hole, but it also provides resilience to the shoulder to take a further step in preventing shoulder injuries, specifically dislocations.

So what doe fast eccentric shoulder exercises look like? Some exercises could include a DB Y-Raise, with a drop catch. The athlete does a Y-Raise, than at the top they drop the DB (with the hands still around the DB) and catch mid way through the motion. Another exercise athletes could do is a high plank with shoulder taps. Lastly, you could include a medball drop catch, where the athlete brings the medball overhead, drops and catches the medball below the knees.

This positional series is helping shape a larger course I’m building around football performance and injury prevention. The questions, conversations, and feedback around these newsletters help guide what eventually gets built.

Agility

It is important to point out that change of direction and agility are different. Change of direction is what it sounds like, however, the caveat is the athlete knows where they are changing directions to. While Agility is a change of direction, the athlete does not know where the direction of change is. Agility is reactive and is a great bucket to cover for all football players, but the requirements of agility for a linebacker is even greater. This is a extremely reactive position. Whether thats reacting to offensive lineman movement on runs, trying to tackle a shifty running back, or breaking to a drop on a pass play. Therefore, an essential bucket that needs to be addressed during the offseason. Some exercises for agility would include a reactive ball toss and catch, blaze pods, reactive box drill, or a mirror drill.

*Due to my professional association with the Atlanta Falcons during preseason and my current role with the Florida State Seminoles, I will not provide educational content or commentary on any injuries within these programs during or after the season.

Hip Mobility and Strength

Beyond direct agility training, developing the muscles that support agile movement, such as improving hip mobility and strength, can enhance overall agility performance. This is, because having the actual range of motion to open up the hips to break into a smooth drop will make the movement faster. Once you have the range of motion, than layering on strength to create a smooth and powerful movement can put your athletes in the best position possible to perform great on the field. Some hip mobility can be IR/ER on a PVC pipe, Hip cars, fire hydrants, or quad cars. Hip strengthening can be as simple as 4 way hip with a band, or single leg squats to activate the adductors and abductors for stability.

When I zoom out, linebacker performance keeps coming back to three buckets: agility that holds up in real game situations, hips that can move and produce force without compensation, and shoulders trained for fast eccentric contractions in contact. Train those buckets with intention, and performance improves while injury risk drops.