How to Prepare to Play College Football
Preparing for college is difficult enough for many students, but when you’re a college football recruit, your preparation is focused on how you’ll perform in the classroom and on the field. If you’re serious about playing college football, here are a few ways to make sure you’re prepared for the next level.
Perfect your movement
It can be difficult to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses. Having a professional performance coach evaluate you to see how you stack up against other recruits can help you zero in on your skills. One way we gauge talent at Accel Performance and Wellness is through movement assessments. Before any member is allowed to train with our performance coaches, they must complete an athletic movement assessment. These assessments give you a full picture of how you’re moving and help you understand where you can improve.
The Fusionetics® movement assessment gives us a baseline movement pattern for each athlete and provides data regarding flexibility, mobility, and stability. It tells us which body parts are over- or under-compensating during movement, and it helps us create a personalized corrective exercise program to improve movement. This assessment tool is used by Division I college sports teams across the country.
Train for the field
Attending agility training sessions and other boot camps can increase your chance of getting noticed by recruiting coaches and collegiate football programs. These intensive training camps are usually held for a few weeks at a time and focus on improving biomechanical fundamentals – arm strength for quarterbacks, speed for running backs, solid cores for linemen, agility for wideouts and defensive backs.
With all of the strength and speed training that go into the preparation for a freshman season on campus, it can be easy to forget about the fundamentals. Whether it’s running routes, hitting blocking assignments, dropping into coverage, or carrying into the gaps, the college game will run quicker when compared to high school. Having a good foundation for movement can help you avoid injury on the field.
One-on-one performance training sessions and small group performance classes also allow you to improve your skills in a more intimate and personal setting. These workouts are tailored to each athlete, and the exact type and duration of every workout will change, depending on the position of the player. While you’re plenty capable of completing a workout by yourself, the eyes of a professional performance coach can spot areas of improvement you might not catch.
Learn how to recover
College sports coaches expect you to move faster, better, and stronger than you did in high school. These coaches are looking for healthy athletes. They don’t want to recruit someone, only to have them facing a sprained ankle or torn ACL in the first week of practice. Showing that you know the importance of recovery proves you can handle any gameday situation.
At Accel, we offer a wide variety of recovery modalities. Our hot and cold tubs help your muscles “warm up” before a workout and help you “cool down” at the end of one. These recovery techniques help reduce muscle soreness, inflammation, and damage. We also keep our members healthy with our NormaTec recovery boots, manual therapy and massage therapy, personalized blood flow restriction therapy, and more.
Eating a well-balanced diet and understanding nutrition education are also important to proper recovery. When you match your fueling with your training, you’re able to achieve your performance and wellness goals. We get that training for college sports can be overwhelming. Knowing where to start and what to focus on are where many students struggle. Additionally, the effects of COVID-19 have not made it easy for high school students to stay committed to their game. Many football seasons have been canceled, causing players to miss out on not only their senior season, but the workouts and training sessions that are crucial to their future success. Our coaches use a pro-level approach to help future college athletes meet their goals. We are taking every precaution to provide a safe facility and workout experience for all athletes. If you’re ready to get back in the gym and compete at the top of your game, reach out to our team today.
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