As a football/powerlifting coach if it hurts my athletes being athletes I don't allow them to do it. I try to use powerliftng as a tool to help build stronger, bigger and more explosive athletes. I also research all the time with better strength and conditioning practices. Five years ago I came across Triphasic Training by Cal Dietz who is probably is the best college strength coach in the country. If you want your athletic program to get better you should take two four week blocks out of the year and run a two week Eccentric Phase and a two week Isometric Phase. Now Triphasic training is suppose to increase muscle density ie less pulled muscles and also give athletes more potential for change of direction and explosiveness. But the data I am going to share is strictly having to do with the sport of powerlifting and how much more strength was gained in less than a week of eccentric training.
The Workout was 8 set of 2 @ 80% of raw max with a 5 second eccentric descend. We use Safety Bar Squats and Bench Press on Monday on Tuesday we used Hex Bar Deadlifts and Meadows Rows. Here are the results of the Girls Meets with just one week of eccentric training.
Before
After
Before
After
As you can see the strength gains are incredible like I said that is only one many things that Triphasic can do for your program.
