Fun Football Summer Workouts – Tabata – High Intensity Interval Training

Last week I started football Summer workouts for my son and a few of my youth football players (9-11 years old) from the last 3 seasons.  I wrote last year about Tabata workouts which are High Intensity Interval Training sessions ( H.I.I.T. ) and Plyometric  (jump training) exercises.  This year I have combined the two workout strategies into one workout system to get our youth football players into shape for the 2012 Fall youth football season.

The Tabata Protocol is named after Dr. Izumi Tabata. He is a former researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Fitness and Sports. Tabata is an interval training method developed by the head coach of the Japanese speed-skating team. (It is termed a protocol because Tabata and his team took the speed-skating coach’s workout and studied it to quantify how effective it really was.) The Tabata workout consists of six to seven 20-second full-speed sprints interspersed with rest periods of 10 seconds.

For our football summer workouts are working out 45 minutes 4 days a week using the Tabata method of high intensity interval training with various plyometric exercises and your standard calisthenics / dynamic exercises.  Other than some agility type blocking dummies we use no equipment and do most of the exercises in my backyard.  I do use a Tabata interval timer to track the time.  The also have some Tabata workout tracks / music.

The Tabata high intensity interval training is a 4 minute set made up of 8 different exercises done in 30 second intervals broken down into 20 seconds high intensity movement and 10 seconds of rest.  Our workouts are 6 to 10 Tabata sets and a mile run afterwards.  We will also do Tabata hill sprints one day a week with Burpees or Up / Down Rolls mixed into the sets.  Below is one of our football summer workout plans or download pdf here. These HIIT workouts will test anyone’s endurance and stamina.

Easy Football Summer Workouts at Home

	1	2	3
1	Run in Place	Box in place	Mogols
2	Jumping Jacks	Pulling Grass	High Knee Claps
3	Seal Jacks	Jumping Jacks	One Foot Hops
4	One Foot Hops	Wide Push Ups	Close Push Ups
5	High Knee	Set Ups	Bike Crunches
6	High Kicks	Body Builders	Burpees
7	Toes to Sky	Mtn Climbers	Sprint Climbers
8	Opp Flutters	Standing 2 Toe	Butterfly

	4	5	6
1	Hole Bounces	Lunges	X Boxes
2	High Kick Claps	Get off Ground	Lunge w/ Twists
3	Rotation Jumps	Seal Jumps	Jump Jump Jack
4	Finger Plank	Spidermans	Plank Push Ups
5	Leg Lifts	Leg Levers	Dead Bug
6	Up Downs Rolls	Burpees	Body Builders
7	Squats	Sd to md Climbers	Bird Dogs
8	Rt Hurdler	Lt Hurdler	Rt Quad

	7	8	9	10
1	Long Jumps Lunge Bks	Box Square Jumps	Seal Lunges	Standing Toe
2	Side Karate Kicks	Tuck Jumps	Up Down Rolls	Butterfly
3	Plank Jump Jacks	Delt Jumping Jacks	Pwer Jack Sqts	Rt Hurdler
4	Sky Divers	ABC Push Up	Inch Worms	Rt Quad
5	Side Plank Rt	Side Plank Lt	Venus Fly Traps	Lt Hurdler
6	Up Downs Rolls	Burpees	Body Builders	Lt Quad
7	Vertical Scissor	Sissy Sqts Camels	Sprint Climbers	Back Bridge
8	Lt Quad	Back Bridges	Sphinx	Sphinx

Sorry for the table but Excel tables and html are not user friendly.  I hope you like the football summer workouts plan and all the different exercises. The youth players and coaches like the HIIT / Tabata workouts. They are fun and also pretty tough and challenging.

If you would like a more formal high intensity interval training H.I.I.T. plan for your summer football workouts then check out the HIIT plans over at Darbee. The Darebee Resource is an independent fitness resource run and maintained by a small group of volunteers and fitness professionals.

What are you doing for your football summer workouts?

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment below.

Remember to Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!

Thanks,
Coach Parker
Keller, TX / DFW / Fort Worth Texas

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