Hitting the Weights with Cassius Marsh

[youtube]w7rMtYCA8CU[/youtube]

Dig them tats man!

I hate it when guys stand around and talk in the weight room.

Bench press is a very overrated lift for most positions in football.

Lower body and core is where it's at.

Mark Bell is a pretty well known powerlifter. Some good advice there but hopefully Marsh strengthens up on his other compound lifts which will hopefully translate into helping his quickness and power game.

jdemps":35oj3cyt said:

I hate it when guys stand around and talk in the weight room.

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I am skinny, but I think the same thing. Those weights dont lift themselves!

I really envy these Cassius' his natural size and physical gifts.

My workouts are about 45 minutes with 40 seconds between sets. From 10 to fifteen different exercises.


I am 45 and did something to my neck. That means I need to figure out which one was the culprit a chill a minute.

Interesting video -- thanks for posting.

I now know my bench technique is disgustingly awful too.

I disagree that the bench or pressing strength in general is overrated in football. Depending on your position its definitely transferable for guys in the trenches who work in a similar plane. Thanks for sharing.

austinslater25":2jxvvclp said:

I disagree that the bench or pressing strength in general is overrated in football. Depending on your position its definitely transferable for guys in the trenches who work in a similar plane. Thanks for sharing.

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Bench Press is definitely useful, but i think the people downplaying it are referring to the players who can bench the most have the most "football" strength.

Dave Wyman every once in a while explains how he could always bench more than Tez during his playing years.

Agreed but Tez was gifted in other areas to make up for a lack of pressing strength. Kind of a tool in the toolbelt sort of scenario if that makes sense.

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Basis4day":j43w9ars said:

austinslater25":j43w9ars said:

I disagree that the bench or pressing strength in general is overrated in football. Depending on your position its definitely transferable for guys in the trenches who work in a similar plane. Thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

Bench Press is definitely useful, but i think the people downplaying it are referring to the players who can bench the most have the most "football" strength.

Dave Wyman every once in a while explains how he could always bench more than Tez during his playing years.

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Tez was loaded with functional core strength.

theENGLISHseahawk":3bvoprfk said:

Interesting video -- thanks for posting.

I now know my bench technique is disgustingly awful too.

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Lol I was just going to say the same thing. I've been doing 3 things wrong the entire time. No wonder my shoulders hurt.

Holy sh!t. We just learned something from the internet English !

Hawks46":2l16u9ar said:

theENGLISHseahawk":2l16u9ar said:

Interesting video -- thanks for posting.

I now know my bench technique is disgustingly awful too.

Click to expand...

Lol I was just going to say the same thing. I've been doing 3 things wrong the entire time. No wonder my shoulders hurt.

Holy sh!t. We just learned something from the internet English !

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:thirishdrinkers:

bjornanderson21":35gtc8lc said:

Bench press is a very overrated lift for most positions in football.

Lower body and core is where it's at.

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Bench pressing is the most effective and efficient way to develop strength in the upper body. Football is the most applicable major sport where the movement itself directly applies to real player movements when you're blocking or pressing. When your point of contact with another player is your hands and arms, you have to make your upper body as strong as possible to finish the kinetic chain from your feet through the rest of your body.

Bench pressing isn't overrated, but it is a problem when athletes and even regular people prioritize it over squatting. It's also a path to shoulder injuries for most if done increasingly heavy without overhead pressing to strengthen the parts of the shoulder bench pressing doesn't stress enough.

Bench pressing may have ruined gyms with the onset of bromania, but that doesn't devalue the importance of the lift for elite football athletes or general strength trainees.

vin.couve12":2zooqc5d said:

Basis4day":2zooqc5d said:

austinslater25":2zooqc5d said:

I disagree that the bench or pressing strength in general is overrated in football. Depending on your position its definitely transferable for guys in the trenches who work in a similar plane. Thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

Bench Press is definitely useful, but i think the people downplaying it are referring to the players who can bench the most have the most "football" strength.

Dave Wyman every once in a while explains how he could always bench more than Tez during his playing years.

Click to expand...

Tez was loaded with functional core strength.

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Tez wasn't much of Gym Rat. He had his own, unique, solitary-but-regimented workout that he did after the rest of the players were done. The 'out of sight, out of mind' nature of his workouts is probably what led the Behring family to label him as 'lazy,' which couldn't have been further from the truth. Ditto on the core strength. Dude was a beast.

Most NFL players are such ridiculously amazing physical specimens that you could do all kinds of silly things and they would still have significant strength adaptation.

The "functional" and "core strength" ideas that have reared their heads are mostly a cop-out by people who don't want to lift maximal weights to drive adaptation. A NFL lineman who can squat and deadlift over 700 pounds is going to have more "core strength" than he would if he was doing "core" training. And most of these guys can power clean a lot of weight, which is an expression of their strength and their elite athletic power recruitment.

bmorepunk":1t957n6w said:

Most NFL players are such ridiculously amazing physical specimens that you could do all kinds of silly things and they would still have significant strength adaptation.

The "functional" and "core strength" ideas that have reared their heads are mostly a cop-out by people who don't want to lift maximal weights to drive adaptation. A NFL lineman who can squat and deadlift over 700 pounds is going to have more "core strength" than he would if he was doing "core" training. And most of these guys can power clean a lot of weight, which is an expression of their strength and their elite athletic power recruitment.

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So the best DT to ever wear a hawk uni was one big 'copout?' Thanks for enlightening us all with that tripe.

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Sadly a lot of NFL teams have terrible strength and conditioning coaches but it gets masked because they are such good athletes. Bill Gillespie who was the long time strength coach at UW and short time for the Seahawks is one of the best in the country. Wish we still had him on staff.

Hawks46":1lg9qz90 said:

theENGLISHseahawk":1lg9qz90 said:

Interesting video -- thanks for posting.

I now know my bench technique is disgustingly awful too.

Click to expand...

Lol I was just going to say the same thing. I've been doing 3 things wrong the entire time. No wonder my shoulders hurt.

Holy sh!t. We just learned something from the internet English !

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Yeah, me too! I figured out that I haven't been doing them...at all. :1:

bmorepunk":15hqwiiv said:

Most NFL players are such ridiculously amazing physical specimens that you could do all kinds of silly things and they would still have significant strength adaptation.

The "functional" and "core strength" ideas that have reared their heads are mostly a cop-out by people who don't want to lift maximal weights to drive adaptation. A NFL lineman who can squat and deadlift over 700 pounds is going to have more "core strength" than he would if he was doing "core" training. And most of these guys can power clean a lot of weight, which is an expression of their strength and their elite athletic power recruitment.

Click to expand...

When I say functional core strength I'm talking about generating power outside of the framework of a lift. It is one thing to be able to put your body into a specific alignment to lift a lot of weight, but that's not the reality of football. The term "functional" in regards to football is the ability to bend, contort, straff down the LOS with muscle and tendon flexibility (which is often lost by pure lifters) and still generate a lot of power. I always found that when I played I had to balance lifting, flexibility, and more functional exercises lest you become too stiff and non-functional for actual gameplay.

Billings is a good example. I find that his ability to keep his shoulders square WHILE playing down the LOS laterally is kind of unique for bigtime weight lifters. Most of the time that is lost and you find them turning their body to go own the LOS vs keeping square with a good base and flexibility (like Mebane).

Functional football strength is absolutely a real thing and an extremely important one. Generally it relates to functional core strength. Some of the best football players aren't benchers or squatters and if you put on a film you'd think they're a lot stronger than they'd test at lifting. I.E. functional...

Sometimes I think Madden has damaged the game. Or at least how people view prospects anyway. Same with the combine. When I was young I used to squat twice a week with my FB who also played DE. My vert went up, weight went up, etc, but I also found that I wasn't as quick (slow twitch vs fast twitch) and lost flexibility. I used to think silly and manly things too....don't squat high weight twice a week. Your knees won't like it when you get older. Keep it to once a week, stay flexible, and don't do cardio on machines. That's still inside of a specific framework and is a non-functional exercise.