In my own personal opinion, muscle balance is one of the most neglected parts of a strength and conditioning program for athletes. In the NFL and NCAA the idea of muscle balance is widely accepted, but as you get down into the high school and amateur level, it is virtually nonexistent. Athletes must train comprehensively, which means not only training for strength but also for injury prevention. A 500 pound squat is useless if you are on crutches with a sprained ankle. A mural on the wall of my own high school weight room pictures an athlete holding a thick chain over his head, and underneath it reads "no weak links". It's a shame that we don't train according to this motto, considering that all our players do is bench press (and by some strange coincidence that's our only tested lift...but testing is a whole other issue). Although our team doesn't train by that motto, it is nonetheless a good rule to keep in mind. The idea of each muscle being just as important as another may seem different, but athletes and coaches must approach training with the purpose of strengthening all muscles equally if they want functionally strong and injury-resistant bodies.
In the past, football programs have consisted of "core lifts": the bench press and the squat. Having core lifts also suggests that there are secondary, or less important, lifts. This is not a great way to go about training for football. Yes, the legs are of utmost importance in the sport. Yes, you should squat or deadlift very intensely. However, you should do the same for your neck and your wrists. It is senseless to give more attention to one muscle group than another, especially in a combat/collision sport such as football. If there are only one or two "core lifts" tested, then the majority of athletes will only concentrate on those lifts and ignore the other equally important movements. The goal of a football program should be total body strength and injury prevention. Testing core lifts (and testing in general) merely encourages athletes to become good lifters instead of good football players. As coaches or players, who would you rather have on your team - a 300 pound bench presser or a functionally strong, injury-resistant athlete?
One of the greatest fallacies in football strength and conditioning is the bench press as the "sacred cow". Many top strength coaches, such as Jamie LaBelle and Dr. Ken Leistner, view the bench press as an inferior, or at least overrated, exercise to build upper body pressing strength. Exercises such as the overhead press and the parallel dip in addition to machine exercises like the Tru-Press and the Hammer Strength horizontal pressing machines are more efficient at building up the triceps, shoulders, and chest. Another argument against the unnecessary emphasis on the bench press is that it strengthens the body only in the front. Strengthening the front in one exercise is okay, as long as the athlete strengthens the back in another. However, due to the lack of emphasis on back training, chest, shoulder and triceps work is usually the only upper body training that misguided athletes perform. LaBelle cites an example of a Pennsylvania high school football player whose routine was comprised of over 100 sets for the front and less than 10 for the back. Most strength coaches at the college or pro level agree that the ratio for the front of the body (pressing muscles) to the back (pulling muscles) should be 1:2 or 2:3 because most athletes are much stronger in the front than they are in the back, and it should be the other way around. The bench press is also cited as "specific" to many football movements. This is a common butchering of the principle of specificity, which states that for one skill to make you better at another skill, the two skills must be exactly alike. You don't get better at pass blocking by bench pressing, you do it by pass blocking. In terms of strengthening, it is not as effective due to the back support, which won't be there in a game. This is precisely why athletes must have strong backs; if there is nothing behind the pressing muscles on the field, there is no use in having the pressing muscles in the first place. Rarely will you "deliver the shiver" in a straight line as you do in the bench press; the blows will be delivered across your body, up, down, and to the side. This makes the argument for specificity invalid. The bench press is a good exercise, but it is by no means essential as long as the athlete uses 2-3 other pressing exercises to develop strength in the triceps, deltoids, and pectorals.
Many exercises which are seen as unimportant are in fact essential for complete player development. Many athletes and coaches will look at exercises such as hip abduction/adduction, dorsiflexion, wrist extension, neck extension, external rotation, and posterior deltoid training as secondary. On the contrary, these are links in the chain, just like pressing and compound leg movements. For every person that hurts a quadriceps or triceps, there are probably fifty people that hurt their wrists, groins, and ankles. The same goes for the back. Nobody ever hurts their chest, arms, or anterior deltoids, but everyone hurts their backs, rotator cuffs/posterior delts, ankles, hands, and all of the other neglected areas. These areas are weak to begin with, and when they are not strengthened along with the rest of the body the athlete is put at risk. Many seemingly strong athletes can bench press a lot of weight, but their strength is virtually nonexistent in their posterior deltoid/rotator cuff area. Their pressing strength is negated by their lack of posterior strength, which is not important in the bench press exercise but is vital on the field when you have nothing cushy to put your back on. The key for football training is to strengthen the entire body so there are no weak links. If the chain is strong throughout, the athlete will be stronger and better prepared to execute his skills on the field.
