Football Conditioning
This article is part of a series of articles focusing on the problems with conditioning protocols for various sports. This article is all about football and the typical conditioning protocols associated with it. Today we’re going to talk about a few things:
The energy systems you need to develop for football
The type of conditioning you’re probably doing
The problems with the kind of conditioning that you’re probably doing
The type of conditioning that you need to do
What is Conditioning?
Conditioning is considered a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement. In fitness, it’s often thought of as cardiovascular training like running, cycling, swimming, or getting on an ergometer of some kind. On the field, it’s usually sprints of some kind done at the end of practice.
Conditioning is often done with the best of intentions. Coaches want to make sure their team doesn’t get beat in the second half, the fourth quarter, the third period, or in the ninth inning. However, there’s mounting evidence that much of the conditioning we’re doing for sport isn’t just a waste of your time, it’s actually making you worse off.
Conditioning for Football
In football, you’ll run typically gassers, half gassers, 300-yard shuttles, and 110s. I’ll break down these drills below:
Gassers
A full gasser is running sideline to sideline and back two times. You run the width of the field and back twice. This equates to 213.33 yards and typically takes the average player about 35-40 seconds.
Half Gassers
A half-gasser is running from sideline to sideline and back. You run the width of the field and back one time. This equates to 106.66 yards and typically takes the average player 15-20 seconds.
300 Yard Shuttles
A 300-yard shuttle is a sprint broken down into 25-yard down and back sprints. You’ll start at the goal line and sprint to the 25-yard line, and then back to the goal line 6 times. It is twelve 25-yard sprints with a change of direction. There are also variations of this particular sprint that will break down the sprints into 50-yard segments. In this variation, you’ll start at the goal line and sprint to the 50-yard line and back three times. Both variations add up to 300 yards. This sprint should take the average player from 45 to 60 seconds to complete.
110s
110s are 110-yard sprints. You start at the back of one end zone and run through the opposite goal line. It takes players between 15 and 20 seconds to complete, with skill guys being closer to 15 and bigs being closer to 20.
These are the most common conditioning drills seen in football with a team setting, especially at the youth level. They’re relics from our fathers’ time in the sport, and they tend to get used because “that’s what we did when I played and we won.” Football is a weird sport and as much as it’s started to head in the right way when it comes to training, some coaches can’t help but knuckle drag and hold their players back.
True story: I was interning at the University of South Florida and over the summers, every Wednesday the football team would do their 300-yard sprints on the track. It was a nice change of pace for the players but I often wondered why they didn’t do it on the field. If we’re talking about specificity then the track isn’t the place to spend your time conditioning, after all, football isn’t played in a straight line. When I asked the associate director of strength and conditioning why we ran on the track, he looked me dead in the eyes and said “That’s what they did at The U.” I kid you not, we sprinted on the track because that’s what Jimmy Johnson did with his players back in the 80s. It’s kind of wild that you would vocalize that the reason for doing something a certain way is because a different team did it back when they were good, but this is football.
And most sports performance facilities don’t stray too far from these types of conditioning either. You’ll often see 300s, and gassers/half-gassers at many of these facilities. You’ll also often see coaches throwing a kid on a treadmill as a conditioning modality as well. And again, this is mostly with a youth athletic population. It’s insane because these conditioning drills don’t mimic the demands of the sport, like at all. We’re going to talk about that next.
Energy System Demands for Football
In the above section, we went over conditioning drills for football, and in this section, we’re going to discuss why those drills are absolutely moronic when it comes to development. Here’s a breakdown of typical play times, rest periods, and total work time in football:
Football Per Play Time
NFL - 5.2 seconds
NCAA - 6-7 seconds
High School - 6.5-8 seconds
These are averages, and these plays can last anywhere from 1 to 30+ seconds. Believe it or not, in 2003, there was a game between Arkansas and Kentucky that had a play that lasted 25 seconds. There were seven laterals in this play, and it covered 66 yards of the field (more if you add in the sideline-to-sideline movement). This, very obviously, isn’t a typical play in football, though it’s a total outlier. The longest play in NCAA history is still not as long of a run time as a gasser. Keep that in mind here, as our conditioning is actually meant to get us ready to play football. The average play time across all levels of football is between 5 and 8 seconds.
Football Work-to-Rest Ratios
Another thing to think about here is the play clock. At the high school level, it’s 25 seconds. At the NCAA and NFL levels, it’s 40 seconds. This means that you’re getting work-to-rest ratios of the following:
NFL - 5.2 seconds of work and 40 seconds of rest. This is a 1:8 work-to-rest ratio.
NCAA - 6.5 seconds of work to 40 seconds of rest. This is a 1:6 work-to-rest ratio.
High School - 7 seconds of work to 25 seconds of rest. This is a roughly 1:4 work-to-rest ratio.
This means that you’re going to get anywhere from four to eight times the amount of rest when compared to the amount of work that you’re doing. One more thing that we need to take into account with these is the total play time at each level. What I mean by this is to total amount of action in each game.
Football Total Work Volume (In Time)
NFL - Four 15-minute quarters totaling 60 minutes. The total actual playtime at the NFL level on average is 12 minutes. This means that on average the offense and defense will be on the field for 6 minutes each, or a minute and thirty seconds per quarter.
NCAA - Four 15-minute quarters totaling 60 minutes. The total actual playtime at the NCAA level averages between 14 and 18 minutes, or 16 minutes on average across the board. On average the offense and defense will be on the field for about 8 minutes of play each, or two minutes per quarter.
High School - Four 12-minute quarters totaling 48 minutes. The total actual playtime at the high school level is about 13 minutes. This means that, on average, the offense and defense will be on the field for about 6 minutes and 30 seconds per game, or 1 minute and 37 seconds per quarter.
Breakdown of All of It
I’d be willing to bet before you came across this information, you would have thought the actual playtime was significantly higher across all levels. I know that before I got into this field I sure did. Below is a breakdown of all of the above information:
NFL
Play Time: 5.2 seconds
Rest Periods: 40 seconds
W/R Ratio: 1:8
Total Time of Work: 6 minutes spread out over 60 game minutes
NCAA
Play Time: 6.5 seconds
Rest Periods: 40 seconds
W/R Ratio: 1/6
Total Time of Work: 8 minutes spread out over 60 game minutes
High School
Play Time: 7.25 seconds
Rest Periods: 25 seconds
W/R Ration: 1:4
Total Time of Work: 6 minutes and 30 seconds spread out over 48 game minutes
The above demands all rely on what’s called the ATP-PC energy system within our body. This energy system utilizes ATP as its energy source. Now, over time, the collection of these short bursts of work begins to rely on what is called the glycolytic energy system. This energy system uses glucose and glycogen and breaks it down to ATP for use. It also involves breaking down lactic acid to use as energy as well. And even further down the line, over the course of a game, you’ll rely a little bit on your aerobic energy system as well, which breaks down fatty acids for energy. The vast majority of your energy production relies on the ATP-PC system each play and the anaerobic/glycolytic energy system each series of downs. You’ll have a little bit of contribution from each energy system. However, the vast majority of your energy needs are being provided by your phosphagen system (this is another name for the ATP-PC system).
An easy way to think about these energy systems is to think in terms of what time they turn on. Below is a breakdown of that
ATP-PC/Phosphagen - 1-15 seconds
Glycolytic/Anaerobic - 10 seconds to 120 seconds
Aerobic - 2 minutes
These systems will overlap in their use. For example, your glycolytic system might turn on at second 9 or 10 while your ATP-PC system is still in use. And the ATP-PC system may remain in use until second 15 or 16. These energy systems also don’t completely shut off, as it costs energy to recover in between bouts of work. This is where your aerobic energy system comes into play. It will be utilized for most of the time that you’re playing, possibly shutting down during half time but then it’ll be back on a few minutes into the second half. This energy system just isn’t the predominant system being utilized.
The conditioning done in football tends to rely on anaerobic and aerobic energy systems, which neglects the ATP-PC system for the most part. Typical football conditioning is geared toward the totally wrong energy systems. As Jim Wendler said, “If you’re bad at football conditioning, then you’re probably pretty good at football.”
Why This is Dumb
If you look at the typical play time, typical rest time, and the typical time on the field, you’ll see that the energy system that we need more than any other, is the ATP-PC system. This system is not the energy system that traditional football conditioning conditions. This is why you’re losing when it comes to getting the play time that you want and you’re not winning the battles you get into on the field either.
Furthermore, the game of football is played at high speeds and maximal levels of effort in every play. Sure, there are some plays where you can bail on a route, pull the chute, or you don’t end up with an assignment (maybe you blew it), but for the most part, you’re getting after it every time the ball is snapped. These conditioning drills are done at a slightly above moderate pace, for an extended period of time. They don’t match the effort levels needed for football at all. You can’t go 100% for 200+ yards (with changes of direction), and you damn sure can’t do that over and over again.
So, these typical drills used for conditioning in football are not preparing you to play football. It’s the wrong energy systems, it’s the wrong effort levels, and it’s the wrong speed. Next, we’re going to talk about why all this matters.
Why This Conditioning is Making You Worse
For starters, it’s conditioning you to be able to function at a moderate pace, and a subpar effort level for significantly longer than your average football play. Secondly, when you start to spend too much time with this stimulus it will diminish your capacity to grow and get stronger. This is incredibly important when we’re talking about youth sports and long-term development.
Spending too much time, at the wrong time, performing these drills will leave you unable to adapt to strength and growth stimuli, which are both necessary for success in the game of football. These varying stimuli pull the body in too many different directions to the point where the body won’t adapt to any of it. You’ll be weak, small, slow, and unconditioned. There’s a thread from our Instagram account here to drive that point home. The concurrent models just don’t really work when it comes to conditioning and strength/size acquisition simultaneously.
That also means that you have no business conditioning until damn near when the season is about to start. You need to reserve most of your off-season time for getting stronger, faster, and creating more strength and speed endurance. Please understand that conditioning adaptations are the quickest and easiest adaptations to obtain. They’re also going to stick around for upwards of a month without any stimulus! This means that conditioning isn’t even needed during the season, especially if you run a good practice as a coach. I did an episode of Strength Coach Rants on In Season Conditioning, where I lay out all of those adaptations and their timetables, so make sure you go check it out!
So to wrap this section up, these conditioning drills are doing the following:
Conditioning you for the wrong effort levels
Conditioning you for the wrong energy systems demands
Conditioning you for the wrong work times, and work to rest ratios
Taking away from your ability to gain speed, strength, and size
Taking away from your ability to attain strength and speed endurance
Taking energy away that could be much better utilized getting stronger and faster
It’s wild that many of these youth sports are trapped in a time warp where we’re training like it’s 1979, football’s not alone in this. This is an easy fix that will leave you more time for strength and speed acquisition, more time to run actual football plays and drills, increasing your skillset and football IQ, and maybe the kids will actually look forward to practices if they know they’re not doing worthless conditioning at the end!
What Should We Do Instead?
My first recommendation is to throw conditioning away and kick it to the curb forever. Especially if you’re working with a youth population where development is the prime objective. There’s no part of conditioning that leads to long-term development. Secondly, if you are going to condition, the energy system demands need to more closely mimic the needs of the game of football. Here are a few things that you could consider:
10-15 yard sled pulls and pushes
Weight training
Speed training
Jump training
The above modalities significantly more closely mimic the energy and effort demands of the sport of football. It is A LOT more nuanced than that, and the breakdowns are well outside of the scope of this article, but these are good places to start. The sled pulls/pushes, weight training and sprint training also lead to better long-term development as they’ll increase speed, power, and strength! These are qualities that take years to acquire, and they need to be honed all year long, so the earlier you can start on these things, the better.
Also, believe it or not, when you start dropping games late in the season and you think you’re not conditioned, you’re wrong. Three to four months into the season, there is NO WAY that you’re not conditioned. What’s happened is that you’re either aerobically overtrained or, more likely, you’re weak, and you’ve lost strength/speed endurance. Focusing on the above qualities will help ensure you’re firing on all cylinders all season and that your players will get better from year to year.
If you’re a coach and you don’t have access to sleds or a weight room, then you want to keep sprints short. Think 25 to 40-yard sprints, and 60-yard shuttles. These types of sprints keep you within the efforts and times needed for football. They’ll work the energy systems that we need, and they’ll also help your players to develop more speed and strength endurance, which is really what we need on the field.
But, as a strength coach, I would implore you to give up on the sprints almost altogether. The reason for this is that there is no conditioning tool better for football than practicing and playing football. It’s the same movement skills, the same sport skills, and the same energy systems that they’ll need for football. Build drills that challenge them and force them to operate at 100%. This is truly the way.
If you were to condition for 20 minutes at the end of every practice, by the end of a 12-game season, you would have spent about 900 minutes, or 15 hours, conditioning. Could that 15 hours be better spent? 100% the answer is yes, and it’s especially yes when we’re talking about youth development. Extrapolate that out over the course of a four-year high school career, and that’s 60 extra hours of intent-driven skills acquisition. That might be the difference between a kid playing in college, and not playing in college. Think about that the next time you pull out the whistle and tell your players “Get your toes on the line!”
Wrapping This All Up
If you’re a football coach, a football player, or a sports performance coach with a large roster of young football players I would implore you to spend less time conditioning, and significantly more time actually training. Conditioning in the way we’ve gone over today is just exercise; there’s no real direction or end goal other than to be tired and “in shape.” Look at the demands of the sport, and try to create conditioning protocols that will give you the effort and timetables the game of football demands. Remember that the average play is somewhere between five and seven seconds, and conditioning drills that last 40-60 seconds will completely and utterly miss the mark.
The purpose of this article was to hopefully persuade some coaches, parents, and players that conditioning isn’t the end all be all. We need speed endurance, and we need strength endurance. If we focus on that, then the cardiovascular system will adapt just fine! Laying out training programs was well outside of the scope of this article, so if you’ve got more questions send me an email at Connor@theLDSP.com, and I can help walk you through them. There are too many variables and situations to say, “You need to do x,” or “You need to do y” so this article painted with very broad brushes.
