Letter from AFM - Getting Stronger

Now that your season has ended, it’s time to focus on what you can do to strengthen your program during the off-season.

Last year in our December issue, our “panel” of eight legendary high school coaches covered a variety of topics related to off-season priorities including player and staff evaluation, working with graduating seniors and methods to keep your team involved and motivated during the winter and spring months. You can access the article, “Building Blocks” and hear directly from these esteemed coaches on AmericanFootballMonthly.com.

This year, we put our focus on what our panel unanimously agreed was their number-one priority for the off-season – putting together a comprehensive strength and conditioning program. Not only to make athletes physically stronger, but to also develop the leadership and teamwork skills that will be critical to success next fall.

In our cover feature, “Get Strong”, we present four specific high school off-season S & C programs including facility descriptions, coaches’ philosophies, program specifics and athlete motivation. From the larger school with the state-of-the-art strength and conditioning facility to the small program with the bare-bones weight room, there is something that every high school in America can relate to. We also think that, regardless of your school size, you can pick up valuable tips from all of the coaches we spoke to.

There’s more. These features are also designed to help with your planning and execution of off-season strength training and conditioning programs:

• Our Drills Report, “Conditioning Cadets” gives you drills used by the U.S. Military Academy’s
sprint football team.

• In the Strength Report, Wyoming’s Strength and Conditioning Coach Trent Greener details their off-season player development program.

• In the Speed Report, Football Speed Specialist Dale Baskett talks about advanced-level
training in the off-season.

• In his “Managing Your Program” column, Baldwin Wallace University’s Keith Grabowski
shows you how to keep your athletes focused and motivated in the off-season.

Need even more? Then head to AmericanFootballMonthly.com where you can check out over 700 strength and conditioning articles dating back to 1998 in the world’s largest coaching library.

Any way you tackle it, we hope your off-season strength and conditioning program produces good results and is a positive first step for next season’s squad.

On behalf of everyone at AFM, we wish you and your family a joyful holiday season and a healthy and prosperous 2014.


John Gallup
Editor & Publisher