Increase Football Speed with 3 Deadlift Variations
How to Get Faster and Increase Football Speed with Deadlifts
If you need to get faster for football, you need to build crazy strength. You can’t rely on gimmicks to increase football speed – no matter what, it’s all about hard work on basic, heavy exercises.Parachutes, weird cones, towing devices…they all look cool, but they won’t make you any faster!
Most football players, especially younger ones, have been misled by marketers of silly products like those mentioned above.
For the most part, football strength & speed training programs are a disaster. Sad, since it took a hell of a long time for the football world to catch on to weight training, especially as it applies to getting faster for football. Then, when it did, it fell into the Flex-inspired bodybuilding laden football training programs. After overcoming the “muscle-bound” theory, bodybuilding style programs made many players just that – big, bulky, and slow. Thankfully, some of the top D-I schools started to buck the trend and base their training programs around exercises that would actually help football – The Powerlifts, the Olympic Lifts, and their accessory movements.
Most strength and speed training programs for football are now have their base in big, compound movements, but some still over-rely on some, and ignore others. For example, I’ve received about a billion emails from high school players and coaches about Box Squatting. Glad to hear they’re using such a great movement; but, when asked about Deadlifting I almost always get the same reply: “We don’t do them because we don’t want to hurt our backs.” And back to the dark ages we go…
Box Squats and Box Front Squats are phenomenal football exercises! They’ll make you bigger, stronger, faster, and more explosive. But, they can be overdone. Squatting in general is overdone, but that’s a hate-mail producing article for another day.
The Seat of Power – Your Key to Explosive Football Speed
Just about anyone who’s read even one article about strength training for football knows about the prosterior chain; all the really powerful muscles that run along the back of your body…someteims known as the muscles you see when walking away.
Box Squatting in all it’s forms is excellent for training the PC. However, as I said earlier, it can be overdone. It can also neglect the back and traps, areas we always want to strengthen for football and for looking jacked in undersized T-shirts.
So, if we need to hit all the PC muscles plus the back and traps and build insane starting speed, what’s the answer?
Increase Football Speed with Deadlifts!
The Powerlifting style Deadlift is a tremendous football exercise but it’s far from the only type of deadlifting that will have you jumping higher, hitting harder, and running faster.
There are several Deadlift variations that are guaranteed to take your football training to the next level, making you faster, stronger, bigger, and more explosive.
Snatch Grip Deadlifts from a 4-inch Box
Let’s take a brutally effective exercise and make it even harder by performing it on a 4″ box (or block of wood). This exercise will absolutely terrorize the hamstrings and glutes…with a nice added bonus of hitting the upper back and traps quite nicely. One thing you’ll notice with Deadlifts and SnDLs is that the upper back and traps are usually pretty sore the day after. Anytime you have to hold a heavy bar and then do multiple reps in a pulling movement, the traps and upper back have to work hard to stabilize the load.
The 4″ box will create a greater range of motion but isn’t so high as to alter body mechanics significantly. This will really stretch and strengthen the glutes and hamstrings; the keys to football speed and explosiveness. If you find your form breaking down at 4″, try using a 3″ box.
Focus on sitting back and letting the hams and glutes do all the work. If there’s one mistake I see over and over again on this movement, it’s that when the weights start getting heavy, lifters start using their arms…that is a recipe for disaster. If you find that you are arm pulling, lower the weight a bit and build back up.
Romanian Deadlifts
RDLs are similar to a straight-leg deadlift, with the exception that instead of simply bending at the waist and pulling up on the bar, you have the hips travel backwards when bending over. This is a movement borrowed from the Olympic Lifting world, and with good reason; they are one of the most effective hamstring exercises ever invented. For many, the SLDL neglects the hamstrings while overworking the lower back. This is especially true for short-leg, long-torso lifters.
The RDL will probably do more for your hamstrings and glutes than any other exercise, with the exception of Deadlifts. It really is a very underrated movement for both football performance and for aesthetic appearance. I’ve seen guys’ football speed go through the roof after adding RDL’s to their training program. They are a true Get Faster for Football All-pro exercise!
Be sure to keep a flat back; you can use both clean and snatch grips for variation. This is a movement where you definitely want to keep the reps low. 4 X 6 is a good set-rep scheme to start with. Really push those hips back, stretch those hams out, then pop up.
This can be made more difficult by using one DB at a time.
Clean Deadlifts/Clean Pulls
A Clean-style DL (ClDL) is set up much like a Power Clean, except that you only pull the bar to waist height and shrug. You will start with the bar closer to the shins, start off the floor slowly. Then, as the bar hits mid-shin/just below knee level, start to explode the weight up. This is a great exercise for football because there are times in a game where you will need to move from slow to 100mph in a hurry. Clean Pulls/DL’s teach this skill.
I’m sometimes reluctant to recommend this lift to someone who is looking to purely raise their Deadlift for competition because, much like when doing the Olympic Lifts, your shoulders will be over the bar, rather than behind it. This can hinder form in the Powerlifting style Deadlift if you’re not careful. But, there is a way around the problem.
Sometimes, especially with athletes, especially football players who are not quite ready for Dynamic Effort work, I’ll have them perform Clean Pulls rather than Clean Deadlifts. A Clean
Pull is a much faster version of the ClDL and can be used as a speed Deadlift on Dynamic (speed) day. Because of the increased speed, less weight is on the bar and you can keep your shoulders back and not worry about missing the lift.
About the Author
To get the Free Football Books, “14 Must-Do Exercises to Get Faster and Stronger for Football,” and “7-Steps to Insane Football-Game Speed,” please visit How to Increase Football Speed and How to Get Faster for Football
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