I coach HS football and track at a very small high school. Most of the athletes, especially the good ones, play football, bball or wrestling, track, and baseball. Many also work outside all day in the summer.
I have tried various things, but this is currently our situation:
8th graders and freshmen do bodyweight lifts and lighter weights for 3 X 10. The main focus is to learn the lifts. Once they learn the lifts, we do a modified WS4SB. We don’t always do true ME lifts. We try to follow prilepen’s chart recommendations.
In season, kids lift at least 2 times a week (one upper, one lower, most lift at least 3 times (2 upper, one lower), and some lift 4 times (2 upper, 2 lower). Pretty much we do one ME day of upper, one ME lower, and one day RE / DE upper and lower each. The DE is simple - plyo pushups, and some jumps onto boxes right now (usually 3 X 5).
I guess I feel like the program might not be perfect, but if the kids are working hard and following it, it is solid. The problem is that we don’t seem to improve year round. Yes kids will progress from year to year, but who is to say that this isn’t just physical maturation?
Our QB is a great kid. A pretty hard worker, but maybe not a die hard meathead. He lifts at least 3 times a week, at least one being a lower body lift. His squat has gone down 30 pounds since fall.
Is it normal to have lifts get weaker? Is it possible for a kid to improve during season when they are doing so much running and sport specific stuff, especially conditioning?
I make an attempt to keeps reps to a (quality) minimum, and make the main focus the sport. I am worried that in some cases, we are always “maintaining” and never improving.
Is it unrealistic to expect more?
Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on this issue?
Your system looks good for the young kids, keep it up.
How many kids watch their diet and eat right? Take care of their body and, at the very least, foam roll and contrast shower? Probably not many. Combine this lack of particular body care with what I am guessing is a huge volume of work not conducive to getting stronger/faster (wrestling, baseball, etc.) and then you could have some problems I am guessing.
I actually like the way your program looks at first glance, just throwing out some possible ideas of why it seems there isn’t a lot of progress.
The kids are young I like to see young kids play many different sports, also you can do almost anything with them and still get pretty good gains.
I tend to agree–I do think some sports are not always run very well for developing athletes. Wrestling especially can cause problems if kids are forced to wrestle in a weight class below their normal weight instead of just letting them wrestle as they are (if you have 14-16 year old kids trying to cut 10-15lbs for not other reason than to just do it, you aren’t going to get great strength gains). Basketball, lacrosse, soccer, etc. I like though.
Makes sense but look at all the other benefits they will get from playing other sports, they may not get weight room strong but they will be functional strong - what some people call old man strength. For example you ever met a old man and he look weak ass hell but once he shakes your hand, he has vice grappers.
Thanks for the feedback. We do not use foam rollers or contrast showers. I will do a search and research this stuff a little bit. Any tips you can give me here?
We have been addressing the diet. My opinion is that most of them need to take in more calories. I almost feel like a little extra fatty food is ok for most of them who are always in season, as long as they stay relatively lean. We tell them that they probably can’t too much “quality” food. Breakfast and something to eat before bed are main points, and we have started drinking chocolate milk after workouts whenever possible - a cheap “weight gainer”. What do you think?
If you have CFTS, he describes a lot of techniques. For contrast shows, you go 3 rounds of [3mins hot as you can handle / 1min as cold as possible]. Have them do this at home after their workouts/practices/whatever. I usually go a little longer than 3mins hot on the first round so I can clean up a bit and then I just continue from there. Foam rolling is quite simple–buy a $10-20 foam roller from perform better and get them started! These things aren’t a miracle, but they are a start. Ice baths would be another good thing. Once you get these things in place, then you can move onto more elaborate techniques.
We have been addressing the diet. My opinion is that most of them need to take in more calories. I almost feel like a little extra fatty food is ok for most of them who are always in season, as long as they stay relatively lean. We tell them that they probably can’t too much “quality” food. Breakfast and something to eat before bed are main points, and we have started drinking chocolate milk after workouts whenever possible - a cheap “weight gainer”. What do you think?
See I don’t think fatty foods are necessarily a problem if you have the good stuff in place. The problem is if you replace good stuff w/ fatty food (ie instead of having a nice chicken breast, salmon, steak, whatever–you eat some McD’s or pizza). I doubt they are getting enough protein in general and a lot are probably not eating breakfast (or eating a granola bar or something like that)–so you are right on track with your emphasis on these.
Foam rolls and etc is very diffcult to do with a 100+ high school athletes. Just let them be athletes and have fun.
Mike Boyle does it alright. Plus, not everyone is going to take advantage of everything. Encourage a couple very simple modalities and let those who want to take advantage do it.
We will get on the contrast showers when possible. During my weights PE classes, time will be an issue.
Sorry if this is stupid, but is a half broomstick a poor man’s foam roller? I have never actually seen one a foam roller or seen one used, but I have tried rolling a broomstick over my quads and hamstrings before a sprinting workout and I think it helps.
Not really. If you want a poor man’s foam roller get a big hard glass bottle (some vinegar bottles are like this) and you can just empty the liquid if you are worried about it breaking. You can get foam rollers for <$15 so I would just get one and save myself the hassle. A broomstick would probably be more expensive.
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=475832
Demonstrates and explains. Only thing I personally do differently is I do 1 limb at a time normally and put my bodyweight on it because I feel it is more effective. Just go based on feel and let people figure it out on their own.
OK, I misunderstood the foam rollers. Thanks Davan. I am still curious about just using something hard and manually rolling it over the muscle tissue, like a baton or broomstick type piece of wood. Would this possibly have a similar effect?
I thought I read somewhere that by rolling over the muscle before a workout, you can prepare it for work and align the muscle fibers (this is a poor stab at layman’s terms).
Those are not thick enough. They do not work. I have tried various items. As I said, go with a big glass bottle or a soup can if you really cannot afford a foam roller. I also like tennis balls and lacrosse balls for certain spots.
I have one of those big rolls of saran warp from the trainers room that they use to wrap ice packs, it works pretty good.
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