Quadrennial Planning for American Football Athletes

August 29th, 2023

American football is a highly demanding and competitive sport. There are several key characteristics that contribute to sporting performance and outcomes. Over the years, research has shown that athletes have gotten taller, heavier, more powerful, and faster across previous decades. Conceptually, this can lead to faster and more physical training and competition. Additionally, this may also pose higher risks to common and novel injuries within the sport of American football. Jacobson et. al. (2022) outline these changes in their recently published article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

One interesting aspect of performance as it relates to high school and university American football athletes (and many others who participate in a 4-year program) is the attention given to immediate physiological development. Although this may have acute benefits (e.g. athletes get stronger and heavier quicker), this is surely the road to underpreparation, overtraining, underperforming, and burnout. However, I posit that an emphasis should be placed on the orderly and sequential processes that support long-term athletic development, irrespective of the level of play. This has been practiced in Olympic sports (e.g. weightlifting, track and field, etc.) for decades with great results.

Ian Jeffreys provides an outline here for developing quadrennial strength and conditioning plans for high school athletes. Below, I will do my best to provide a few thoughts on the topic.

1. Where do we begin: Knowing that you NEED to plan for the long-term and develop an organized approach for helping your athletes reach their full potential at the right time is of utmost importance and perhaps the most essential step.
2. Organized approach: Whether you are new to strength and conditioning or are seasoned veteran, an organized approach to long-term athletic development is ESSENTIAL. Here are just a few of the key elements that are recommended:
   • Needs analysis: At the least a needs analysis is composed of an assessment of common injuries, movement demands, and bioenergetic demands relative to the sport that you work with.
   • Annual training plan: An annual training plan outlines every single training session, competition, strength and conditioning session, etc. This is a tool that you can utilize to organize your approaches, stay proactive, and plan for success. This goes hand in hand with goal setting.
   • Testing and assessment battery: As strength and conditioning practitioners it is best to assess, not guess. Testing and assessment is a key aspect of legitimate strength and conditioning programs. In this regard, health status, body composition, movement capacity (flexibility), strength, power, speed, agility, and cardiorespiratory fitness are common assessments that can be implemented or utilized within athletic populations. Testing should occur at least 3 times throughout a competitive period (pre-, mid-, post-season) with the motive being to gain insights into how well your athletes are handling the demands of training.
   • Goal setting: Goals should be meaningful and contribute to athletic performance. If the main goals set by your strength and conditioning (or athletics) program have no correlation to enhancing sporting performance then you are headed in the wrong direction. A general recommendation is to set your goals based on the needs analysis, annual training plan, and data gathered from your testing and assessment battery. Set timelines for goal accomplishment, be realistic in regards to timelines and the goal itself, and motivate/monitor along the way. Also, utilize data analysis to support training and outcomes as well as to assist with classifying exercises.
   • Exercise program design: One of the last key elements that contributes to an organized approach to long-term athletic development is the exercise program design portion. For athletes who have never resistance trained, the goals will look entirely different than those who have. Of course, there are several other factors that will contribute to training approaches, but we can discuss this in more detail later.
3. A Blueprint for Long-Term Athletic Development
   • Phase I (Foundation): Phase I of the LTAD emphasizes the development of adequate general physical preparation (fitness), movement patterns, stability, mobility, motor control, muscular strength, power, speed, and work capacity. This phase is one of the most important and should last for at least 1 year for most athletes. It is integral for athletes to have a proper foundation of movement, mobility, stability, and muscular strength in order to participate in more advanced levels of training. Additionally, an objective assessment of these abilities should be employed before athletes are promoted to the next level of training.
   • Phase II (Development): Phase II of the LTAD emphasizes the development of adequate general-specific physical preparation, movement patterns, stability, mobility, motor control, muscular strength, and work capacity. Here, a higher emphasis is placed on functional hypertrophy, power, speed, and relative strength development. This phase should also last for at least 1 year for most athletes.
   • Phase III (Perform): Phase III of the LTAD emphasizes the development of specific physical preparation exercises. These exercises focus on movement patterns, ranges of motions, distances and durations, loads, and velocities that have a high carry over to sporting success. Here a higher emphasis is placed on specific power, speed, and strength development. This phase should also last for at least 1 year for most athletes and they are exposed to peaking cycles.
   • Phase IV (Peak): Phase IV of the LTAD emphasizes optimizing sporting performance. This phase can last for 1-2 years if planned correctly.
4. QJF Exercise Levels based on Phase of Development
   • Level I: General systemic capacity to support function (supports general functioning in anatomical position).
   • Level II: General functional capacity to support performance (supports functioning in general sporting positions).
   • Level III: General-specific performance capacity to support specific function (supports specific functioning).
   • Level IV: Specific functional capacity to support sport performance (supports specific sporting functioning).
   • + Exercises: Consider load, magnitude, and direction