What is a typical summer schedule for a college football player?

Not often do fans realize how hectic the summer schedule is for your typical college football player, but here’s a quick run-down.

The May, June, and July months are often a pretty quiet time in the college football world. Spring practices and games have come and gone, and we are all itching for some understanding of what exactly has been going on with the players and teams this summer.

Coaches’ summer schedule

Due to the NCAA rules, coaches are extremely limited in their ability to interact with their players in football specific activities. Coaches are also limited in their freedom to reach out to prospective recruits. Every team holds at least one summer camp where high school player can showcase their skills. Many teams facilitate position specific or high school year specific camps. These camps are required to be instructional skill camps, but in reality, they are simply tryouts for hopeful high school students.

Other than these camps where coaches unofficially evaluate potential recruits, coaches are essentially on rest and relaxation until it’s time to start preparing for training camp in August. So what do the players do during these months? The players are fully invested in preparing for the next season all summer long.

Player’s summer schedule

After Spring Final exams, players will typically go home and have some rest and recovery time before the beginning of summer workouts. By the last week of May or first week of June, players come back to school to start their summer regime.

Teams will normally require players to attend one workout a day, while also encouraging the players to take at least one or two summer school classes. The summer school classes recommended to players will be those that are more difficult in order to lighten the load during the season. The goal is to allow players to focus on football in the fall, and then give attention to academics in the spring and summer.

As for the workout, teams will hold multiple workouts per day in order to facilitate, both player’s academic schedules, but also to allow strength and conditioning coaches to give more individualized attention to players during the workouts.

Additionally, most teams do not have the weight room and staff size to handle all 80 to 90-plus players. Often one workout option will be in the morning and one available in the afternoon. Some schools will even hold a third workout time to accommodate players who may have exceptional circumstances (for example a heavy academic workload, or even a part-time job).

So what do these workouts look like? Well it depends heavily on the methodology of the strength and conditioning staff. You would think that with all the technology, and nutritional and scientific advances, that there would be a clear path to optimizing a player’s athletic performance. However, there are still many different approaches taken by strength staffs.

Furthermore, the workout required for a quarterback is obviously much different from the needs of a defensive lineman right? Well yes and no. Both need to lift. Both need to run. Just how much is where the variation is applied. Here is a general approach taken by most teams.

Once workouts and classes are complete for the day, a player’s schedule can vary greatly. Most players rest and study for their classes. Some players pick up part-time evening jobs to supplement their living expenses, whether or not they are on scholarship.

Finally, most programs will finish up team workouts about a week away from the start of training camp to give players one final rest period before the season begins. Many players will go home again because there really is no time between August and the end of the bowl season for players to have any time off.