HIT LACROSSE WORKOUT
BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER
HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING
I started lifting weights when I was about 13 or 14 to start getting stronger for all my sports. I played football, hockey and lacrosse through high school, so my goal in training was to get bigger, stronger, and keep myself as injury free as possible.
One thing that I see with youth athletes today is that they see all the “body-builders” in the gym and think that they have to spend three hours in the weight room just like them. There is no point! There are weight coaches that will argue for the rest of their lives which way they think is the best way to lift, but that is their job! It would be like a politician not arguing over ideologies....they wouldn’t know what to do.
My main point is, if you can get in the weight room and go hard for 45 minutes to an hour, you will get stronger. I was trained my whole life by Martin Streight, who is now the assistant strength trainer for the Minnesota Vikings. He has trained in the NFL for over 15 years, so I trust his opinion.
The one thing that I learned from Martin is that you can get strong from going through a HIT (high intensity training) regimen without wasting your whole day in the gym. Basically, I would train 2 to 3 times a week, doing a whole body workout in an hour. You go from one exercise to the next without any rest in between. You only do one set on each exercise, and on each one of those sets you lift “to failure” which means that you lift the weight until you cannot do another rep. Then once you reach failure, you “strip” the weight down 20% and do three or four more reps. For example, if you are bench pressing 185, you try to get 8 to 12 reps. Then once you cannot do a single rep more, you put down the weight, and strip the weight down to 145 and do 3 or 4 more reps. You can do this “strip set” super slow, letting the weight down for eight seconds, or you can just do normal reps. If you do super slow “negatives” then this has been shown to increase your strength even more than just doing regular reps. So, on this example of bench press, as you push the weight off your chest, it should be a controlled movement, taking about 2 to 3 seconds to get to the top. Then as you lower the weight, on a regular rep it should take 3 to 4 seconds and on a super slow negative rep it should take about 6 to 8 seconds. When you first start working out, you don’t even need to do a strip set, so all these options are just ways to change it up as you get stronger.
Here is a typical workout that I did through high school and college, which kept me in great shape and for the most part, injury free:
WARM UP ON BIKE FOR 10 TO 15 MINUTES
LEG PRESS : 1 SET X 15-20 REPS | STRIP SET WITH 20% LESS WEIGHT THAN FIRST SET
LEG CURL : 1 SET x 15-20 REPS | STRIP SET
LEG EXTENSION : 1 SET x 15-20 REPS | STRIP SET
CALF RAISE : 1 SET x 15-20 REPS | STRIP SET
BENCH PRESS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
PULL-UPS / CHIN-UPS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET WITH SUPER SLOW NEGATIVES
INCLINE PRESS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
SEATED ROW : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
DECLINE PRESS / DIPS ; 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
LAT PULLDOWNS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
SHOULDER PRESS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
LAT RAISE : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
BICEP CURL : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
TRICEP EXTENSION : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
SHRUGS : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
NECK MACHINE : 1 SET x 8-12 REPS | STRIP SET
If you do all of this without any rest in between, you can accomplish this workout in less than an hour. For a sport like lacrosse, this is a great way to workout, because it also gives you a cardiovascular workout as well.
Also, notice how I do not list any DEADLIFTS, SQUATS, or CLEANS AND JERKS! There are a lot of professional trainers out there today that insist that these are the only exercises in which you get stronger. These exercises are great for bodybuilders who want to compete in competitions which test their strength in these exercises but they can be harmful for athletes. I was always thankful that the strength coaches at Princeton did not advocate this type of lifting. A lot of my friends who played lacrosse at other schools had to lift like this and a lot of them hurt their backs and got other injuries just from lifting! The whole point of lifting for athletes is to reduce injury, not make them more susceptible to injury. And yes, all the trainers out there will say, “Well, those guys just were not lifting properly.” There is a ton of great technology out there and all the machines that are in today’s gyms are very effective in helping athletes to become stronger. There is simply no reason to do these types of Olympic lifting anymore. Some people believe that these types of lifts make you stronger, than machines or other exercises, and it may be true. But, there are many studies out there that dispute the results. Even if these Olympic lifts made you significantly stronger, which is doubtful, I do not personally believe that it is worth the risk of getting hurt.
Here are a few more tips for safety reasons :
Lift safely by using controlled motion on the way up and way down, pause for a second at the top of your movement.
Lift with a partner.
If three days a week is too much for your body and you are feeling fatigued, then cut it down to two days.
Always stretch and warm-up before lifting and stretch and cool-down afterwards.
If you ever feel any pain in your joints, then stop lifting immediately. If your muscles are burning, then that’s a good pain! Keep going!
Always get your doctor’s permission and advice when starting a workout routine.
I’m not a professional trainer, nor do I claim to be. However, I spent a lot of hours in the weight room and I made the most of those hours. When I was training, it was not social hour. I worked out very hard and then I got home so I could practice lacrosse or do school work. There were some times when I trained with my friend Martin, that I went so hard that I puked afterwards or could barely walk! I was never an overly big or strong kid, so I knew that I had to work hard in the weight room to be able to compete with athletes that were more naturally gifted than I.
So, I hope some of these tips help you out! You don’t have to be huge to play lacrosse. You just have to be strong, fast, and in good shape. So...be smart in the weight room!
