With football season on the horizon, the team is already working hard.
Although football season is not until September, the football team has been practicing for three months now. They have been in weight training and in practice without pads for the basic stances for their position(s). From January through mid-February, the team has been preparing for their first “max-out”. Max-outs serve one main purpose, to make the athlete stronger and faster. Max-outs consist of bench-press, power-clean, squat, 40-meter dash, and shuttle-run.
With the first max-out week done the coaches now have to figure out which athlete goes in which group, so that he [athlete] is in a group of people with, or around the same strength. These groups start with the people who are the strongest all the way down to the weakest, but that chart changes with every “max-out”. Coaches have also created several percentage charts that show the maximum weight an athlete reached. The percentage chart will also help with the weight the athlete should use for the workout, depending on what’s written for the week or day of that workout.
The veteran players lifting heavy had a few small surprises from the new players. “Julio Arevalo, a Freshman, at South East High School did some of the weight that most new players do when its their first time maxing-out, but Kevin Romano, a Junior, at SEHS surprised me a lot because he lifted more weight than I expected him to lift,” says Carlos Cid, a Junior, at SEHS and also a captain of the team.
Now that the first max-out week has come and gone [Febuary22-Febuary26] the team can start working on their techniques. The light weight is the first week because the coaches will not be as lenient with border line max-outs [not doing complete squats, etc.] on the upcoming max-outs.
Not only do they have to practice those techniques, but also work on their stances and techniques for the position(s) the athlete intends to play. With the team already practicing many different techniques for their next max-out and upcoming season, they will be extremely busy trying to balance out their schedule, so that they are not grade-cut.
