OT: Toughest conditioning exercises?

[Thunder]

Our football season is coming up, and I always like to have fresh ideas for conditioning. What are/were your toughest or your favorite conditioning exercises when you played football, basketball, etc.?

I always found up-downs/hit-its/hit-ems the worst. You run in place, hit the ground when the coach blows the whistle, and then get up as fast as you can. We used to do 50-100 of those per practice, which meant 100-200 a day during two-a-days.

[je93]

Football was sooo long ago for me.

As a jarhead though, how about “turbo-decktowel,” “inspection matress,” or just old fashioned gasmask runs?

Brutal

[Thunder]

I don’t know what some of those are…and maybe I don’t want to.

[ragingbull]

agreed, up-downs / hit-its = the worst. i hated those at every level. we usually did them in sets of anywhere from 10-50 so 100-200 per day sounds about right.

as much as i hated them, i respected up-downs as a tried and true method of conditioning. they helped improve, strengthen, test and measure ones quickness, flexibility, explosion, desire, work ethic, cardio, strength, etc (all to varying degrees of course) – and in terms of putting out and suffering together as a unit, position group or team, i cant think of many better methods.

as i grew and starting lifting and doing all manner of S&C, i came to despise other exercises for different reasons – i really hated power cleans in college and im sure they contributed to my current joint problems as much as any other activity. cleans and squats and the like are more lifting-oriented but in terms of conditioning work, its tough to top up-downs.
i actually didnt mind resistance running (chutes, bands, sleds, etc) as much as most of my teammates, nor did i dislike the standard hill running / incline conditioning (usually until vomiting) as much as most. but up-downs / hit-its, forget about it! theyre the worst.
its only been like 10 years but i still vividly recall our S&C coaches blowing their damn whistles and demanding what seemed like endless up-downs (the process only lengthened by our mouthier teammates bitching).

so yeah, up-downs are a classic and theyre certainly a great way to condition and test while also bonding a unit, at any level – but they suck

[Roanman]

If you have a hill nearby, you can get a lot done there.

We have a pretty good sledding hill near the house, I had a kid that absolutely could not run. He was all elbows and knees pumping like crazy with no forward motion. Out of desperation, I took him to the top of the hill when he was about 12, pointed him at the tree line about 40 yards away and 15 – 18 yards below, told him about how Valeri Borzov won the 100 meters at the Olympics and gave him a shove. He never got fast, but he did learn to stride.

“The Hill” became a thing in my family as pretty quick as soon as they learned to stride out, we quit running down, pretty tough on shins and joints, and started running up. Here’s the drill ….. Sprint up the long side to the pushup stands, 5 pushups, walk down the steep side, sprint up the steep side, 5 pushups, walk down the long side. Repeat 9 more times. thats 20 sprints and 100 pushups. Usually takes about 35 minutes. We’ve had some excellent puking. My all time favorite kid, other than my own, finished that workout one summer day, went home with his dad and puked his guts out there there, because he didn’t want the other boys to know. That’s damn near the definition of tough in my book.

My youngest regularly runs something approaching that workout now while carrying two, 3 lb dumbbells. As Bo once said of Anthony Carter, “he’s as hard as barbed wire”.

[Thunder]

Good stuff. Sometimes those “homemade” workouts are better than the run-of-the-mill, prescribed workouts we see on football teams, at gyms, etc. We have a pretty steep hill near our football field, and the players hate when we run hills…which means it makes them work hard, so it’s good.

[Author]

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