In-Season Weights

[ollie]

@tb2010

I’m just wondering what people’s thoughts are about in-season weights during high school track seasons. meets start early december and go until late february for the indoor season, so its not a typical season length, so im not sure what to do. its a long enugh period of time that i cant just unload the whole season because id lose too much strength, but i know that weights should be de emphasized for speed work at the meets (sometimes multiple meets/week).

any thoughts/advice?

i’m thinking about unloading only cns heavy lifts (bench, squat, any other triple digit lifts…) during december, putting them back in for january then tapering for the big meets at the end of february. i am a hard gainer, so i will continue hypertrophy based lifts (8-12 reps, more isolated muscle lifts) all the way until i taper them for february. i plan on doing low intensity core work the whole season, and increased high intensty core work while i unload in december

Not an easy question to answer.

When dealing with high school kids, one needn’t overthink things. I would just make sure that they don’t have to deal with a lot of adaptive stiffness and, when it’s time to compete, their legs are relatively fresh.

As Charlie has said before, high intensity core work is addressed by the sprinting itself.

Are you’re talking 8-12 reps for squats? That’s a lot of eccentric damage which I wouldn’t want in-season.