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When you’re watching safeties in the NFL, two physical assets usually comes to mind: strength and speed. Plain and simple: To be a good safety in the NFL, you need to be quick, have good strength behind you and be able to jump aggressively. To create an NFL workout that would resemble that of a safety, focus on building up your fast-twitch muscles along with improving your reaction time. The final point you’ll want to focus on when putting together an NFL workout for a safety is neck-strengthening. Since a great deal of neck injuries occur when playing this position, it’s essential that you take preventative measures to strengthen all the ligaments and tendons surrounding the neck.

THE WORKOUT

First, you should address the factor of quickness. Specifically, you’ll want to improve your quickness through both strength and cardiovascular activities so as to achieve the most well-rounded training possible.

In the weight room

On the strength side of things, be sure to perform a basic full-body workout program three days per week, really focusing on lifting weights up as quickly as possible. Also, be sure to slowly lower your weights as this is what will increase your strength as well as your speed.

The two main weight-lifting exercises you’ll need to be sure to perform include deadlifts and bench presses. Following those drills, you can add a few more isolated exercises if you like, such as bicep curls, tricep movements, leg extensions, and lateral raises. The goal here is to not push an absolute amount of weight; it’s to move the weight quickly, so lower the total weight lifted if you need to.

After those exercises are completed, find an open space somewhere and perform squat jumps; this will work the quad muscles and improve your ability to jump higher. At first, begin these with no weight until you get used to the movement, after which you can then add on resistance by using a weighted belt, holding onto tubing that’s attached to the ground or carrying a dumbbell in your hands in front of you near your chest.

Finally, to work on improving your neck strength, include three sets of eight reps of the shrugs exercise. Along with this, turn your head to one direction, and then have a partner gently put pressure against the cheek. As they are doing so, you should try and resist the force, thus working the neck muscles. It’s important while doing this, though, that you don’t overly strain your neck muscles as injuries can easily occur. A light degree of pressure should work fine.

On the field

Outside of the weight room, you’ll need to move onto an open field to work on your speed. Specifically, you’ll need to work on two kinds of speed in your training: Acceleration and speed maintenance.

To work on your acceleration, you should perform the following sprints:

- Three 10-yard sprints.

- Two 25-yard sprints.

- Two 20-yard uphill sprints.

Take approximately one minute to rest after each sprint has been performed to recover and perform the entire sequence in the order listed. After that, move on to your ability to maintain a higher speed by increasing the distance of the sprints. Specifically, you should perform the following sprints in the order listed:

- Four 40-yard sprints

- Two 50-yard sprints

- One 60-yard sprints

For these sprints, allow up to 90 seconds of rest.

The diet component of the NFL workout of a safety

Diet

In order to play the safety position effectively, you’re not going to want to have a lot of excess fat; this will slow you down and make you less agile. To help keep your body-fat levels low, you should consume high-starch carbohydrates right around your workout along with a good source of protein to help with muscle-repair and recovery.

For the remainder of the day following your workout, focus on eating protein, fat and vegetable-based meals; this will help to keep your blood-sugar levels and insulin under control, thus preventing fat gain. Be sure to watch your portion sizes as well, particularly if you notice that you are starting to carry a little extra weight. By simply cutting back on your serving sizes you should be able to get the leanness that’s needed to play this position well.

The last aspect of a safety's diet is to ensure that you are getting 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. So, when trying to create an NFL workout for a safety, make sure that these training factors are included. Always keep in mind that your primary goal will be improving your speed, quickness and strength.