Many offensive line athletes set specific goals regarding their weight when approaching their off-season training. These goals are usually set because an athlete may consider themselves undersized, and feel that adding some muscle mass may benefit their performance. Likewise, heavier athletes may feel the need to improve their body composition by losing some weight over the course of the off-season. These are both great goals to go into summer conditioning with, but it is important to keep these goals in a long term perspective rather than getting into the habit of chasing numbers on the scale to determine progress. Putting too much of an emphasis on weight being gained or loss can lead to an athlete to develop poor nutritional habits that can be detrimental to reaching their long term goal of building themselves into a more functional o-line athlete. Because, at the end of the day, the weight that an athlete plays at is not as important as the strength and body composition that they have at that weight.

 

While gaining muscle will result in weight gain, it is important to keep fat gain to a minimum during this process. While building a bigger, stronger body can be beneficial to success, adding excess fat can undo these benefits and leave an athlete worse off than before they gained weight. Because, while the athlete may show improvements in weight room strength, the fat that they gained will place a higher demand on moving their bodies during performance.  Using bodyweight exercises to gauge the quality of weight gain can be a great tool to judge the quality of the gained mass. If an athlete is putting on a high amount of muscle relative to fat, bodyweight exercises such as pull ups, dips and vertical jump height will stay constant during this process. If too much fat is being gained, these exercises will show a decrease in performance. If relative strength starts to decline during weight gain, an athlete should cut a little bit out of their diet in order to slow down the gain of excess fat. Keeping performance in body weight exercises in perspective will allow the athletes to have a more accurate gauge on their muscle building progress than the scale provides.

 

While maintaining relative strength is important when judging the quality of weight gain, using absolute strength is a great measure to consider when improving body composition. While in the calorie deficit required to lose weight, many times athletes may find themselves losing strength in the weight room if they are in too much of a deficit. This can happen because while being in a calorie deficit is important for fat burning, being in too deep of a deficit will cause muscle to be burned as well, which will have an adverse effect on strength and body composition. While seeing progress on the scale is important in judging progress in weight loss, being aware how weight loss effects strength is an important tool to keep this weight loss in a perspective that is relative to performance.

 

The offseason gives athletes plenty of time to achieve their goals of improving strength and body composition, but we must remember that weight loss or weight gain that occurs too quickly will have adverse effects on performance. This process is a marathon, not a sprint. When considering building a better offensive line athlete, less is more when it comes to weight. Eating as much as possible to gain weight, or starving one’s self to lose weight should never be encouraged, and while gaining or losing 20 pounds in an offseason is not an unrealistic goal, it may appear as a daunting task to a young athlete. Setting short term weight goals along with monitoring strength gains to judge the quality of weight is a great way to keep these long term goals in perspective.