Auxillary Lifts

Coach K,

As you already know, the neck and rotator cuffs are especially important in football so continue to train them as you are. My only suggestion with the shoulders is to use the routine as a warm up for muscular preparation (not to be confused with the pre workout warm up such as jumping jacks, jump rope, dot drill, jog, etc.)

Abs are actually a big part of the core strength region and should be treated as such. I noticed you train abs by doing crunches from all angles. Well, crunches aren't bad by any means, but you should also include bending and twisting in order to prepare your players for the field. Things like cable ab pulldowns, twisted cable ab pulldowns, planks, fwd rolls (with the little wheelie thing), trunk twists and crunches with slow eccentrics should be a part of your ab routine.

As for other auxillary/assistance lifts, I will train my most lagging or weak bodypart and maybe the second weakest after that. For example, to have a strong bench or overhead press, one must have strong tris and lats. So in this case, I would perform my compound lifts 1st (Bench or Incline, rows, push press, pull ups, etc. then afterwards, I will perform assitance lifts to bring up my weaker parts such as tricep extensions and then maybe seated rows (depending on what the weak bodyparts are). In a lower body scenario, I can almost guarantee that your athlete's hams will need work. In this case, perform your main lifts (back or front squat, rdl, lunge, glute-ham raise, etc.) and then finish up with some more hamstring and posterior chain excercises (cable pull through, reverse hyper, plate drags, etc).

With abs I will either superset a couple of ab exercises that correlate with each other (such as planks and fwd rolls or cable ab pulldowns and twistes cable ab pulldowns) and do around 3 sets after each workout, or even set up an indivudual day for abs and train them by themselves (maybe a 3 day split and an extra "ab day").

Bottom line, you don't want to waste time in the gym so 1)warm up the upper body muscles with some rotator cuff work (the lower body muscles can be warmed up with a light superset of high pulls, squat and press and bent over row--also preparing the muscles for oly lifts), 2) hit the main compound lifts (between 2 and 4 depending on your split) , 3) follow them up with one or two assistance lifts (focus on bringing up the WEAKEST bodyparts) and 4) finish up with ab training and neck training.

These are just general guidelines, other factors such proper equipment, time available and number of athletes you are training at once will have an effect on how your program is laid out. Not all athletes will have the same weaknesses either, however most will be weakest in the hams, tris, lats and abs.

Hope this helps, Coach.