If it is your job to oversee the football weight training for a team, the hardest part might be controlling their enthusiasm. Everyone knows that to play football effectively, you have to be strong. Even positions like quarterback, where for years the only strong part of the body most folks thought they needed was the arm, are weight training now.

The reason why you need to watch the training so closely is that many players, especially young, high school aged kids, tend to overdo things. When a player overdoes his training, one of two things happens:

Injury – Even in the NFL and in professional leagues around the world, football players sustain injuries in the weight room. Most NFL players have expert knowledge on how to train and what the warning signs are to stop and take a rest, but often times, the urge to get better and stronger quicker wins out. The right football weight training begins with knowing your limits and sticking to them.

If you feel a twinge in a leg, arm or your neck, it is time to stop and evaluate your body before you jump back into training. Injuries from football weight training either come from lifting more than your body can lift in an effort to speed along your training, or from doing the same exercise too many times so that your body becomes tired and cannot do it any longer. Weight training injures for football players are just about the worst kind of injury you can face because they are the most preventable with proper training.

Loss of flexibility – This problem has become increasingly common in positions like wide receiver and cornerback where speed and flexibility are more important than brute strength. Even with your offensive and defensive linemen, they have to have excellent arm and leg flexibility and movement to fend off defenders and to be able to fall correctly since they spend so much time on the ground. If you have gotten so muscular that you can hardly move, you will not be an effective football player, at any position. It can be tough, however, to convince a bunch of anxious and undersized high school kids of this, but weight training needs to be done carefully and with an expert master plan.

You need to make sure you go from muscle group to muscle group and work on everything. Strong thighs don’t mean much if the calf muscles are weak. The same goes for the chest, arms and abdomen. Being strong means being strong all over and if you neglect a particular body group you will be more vulnerable to injury. But you have to have the proper road map to a sound football players body. You want large arms so you can hold off onrushing defenders, but you also don’t want them so big that you can’t move them quickly when need be.

Football weight training can be a tough job to handle when you consider the tightrope every football coach or trainer much walk.