As you know I have been working with some labrats and have noticed some huge improvements. With a CFTS GPP model we have taken girls and boys to extreme improvements
Girl breastroker 3 x 115 in the squat to 4 x 6 of 185 in 9 weeks…
Male sprinter / butterfly 185-225 4 x bench (non focus) 4 x 10 reps with a 45 pound plate with dips 9 weeks
Male sprinter / butterfly (sopphmore-junior) 225-309 squat
Male football player 245 3 x 4 to 330 4 x 5 bench --350 405 squat. 216 to 225 weight(12-6 percent bodyfat) tight end. (the 40 went from 4.89 to 4.51 FAT)
18 weeks training
My program wasn’t super amazing but my attitude was agressive like a D I strenght coach instead of a patient golf instructor…I am not going to try to reduce my mean streak and see what happends. I wasn’t lazy on planning but I had less time to prepare (one hour per group per day)…maybe motivation is more than I knew?
Clemson,
How do you deal with parents who don’t want their kids to do weight training because it will “stun their growth”? I have a 15 yo basketball player in desperate need of some strength training but his father doesn’t want him doing any squats even with very light weights?
Do the math…if they do pull-ups isn’t that weight training? show them the two human kinetics books are good such as Designing Resistance training programs and Wayne Wescotts book (his training sucks but parents like the research).
Clemson, sometimes we are too smart for our own good. Often times a good motivator is more important than knowing all the science. Do you think we may make our athletes think too much in their training and take the emotion out of the effort? I’m start a thread in the strength forum.
I agree with fast11 12 body weigth curcuits, plyos and med ball work (developing explosiveness) our some of the greatest sessions we have. Also lanky basketball players tend to have poor core strength and overall stability. All this with out touching a weight
I don’t think bodyweight strength exercises would do him nearly as much good as weights and I really want results with this kid.As for plyos we’ll do that but I don’t think that at this stage of his development he shouldn’t do too much apart from med balls,medium size hurdle hops and other light/medium intensity stuff.He has yet to learn to sprint properly.
If he’s never done any resistance training before. Bodyweight exercises would be perfect for him. Don’t under estimate their worth especially at such a young training age.
T-bone do you think that after being able to do about 40 push ups and 12 pull ups these kind of things give much results anymore.What kind of bodyweight exercises should I have him do?Any suggestions?I would like to take his performance to the next level (over a period of time,6 months maybe a year) not to be ‘just as good as the other guy’
First off if he’s a 15 year old basketball player, his main goal is to work on his skills.
Ian King wrote a good article on body weight exercises on t-mag (death by body weight). Sorry i don’t have the link.
Also rememebr Charlie started Ben and the others with medicine ball work. Will the kid’s father let him play with medicine balls?
Also sprinting obviously, medicine ball work, lots of core work.
-wheel barrows up stairs
max sets for pushup and pull ups
-plyometric push ups
-there are many types of pull ups and chin variations you can do.
Thanks t-bone.His skills are excellent already(he’ll be in the national finals of a 3 point shootout for kids his age) but of course those can always be improved.I completely forgot about wheel barrows.I’ll go and torture him right now.
Keep a close eye on his motor skills, and I am not referring to his performance (in a sense). Many times, although they are kids and can have what seems endless amounts of energy, you have to very critical about “how” well they are performing after putting them through so much “torture”, as you put it.
Pay attention to motor skills (balance), speech patters, etc these are indicators of overwork (overuse), even kids his age suffer from this.
Is that Elaine Goodlad in your avatar? I used to chill with her. Awesome lady. She and her husband used to live 3 doors down from my coaches place. That house was the epitomy of a low carb house (lots of fruit and veggies though).
I started lifting at 14 years old, I didn’t notice any negative effects but my performance went way up. I didn’t start to get decently strong til I was 16(for my body weight at the time- 155 lbs. at 5’9"- Now I’m 18, 5’10" 167 lbs.) I think you should introduce him to weight training at a gradual pace, just start with the basics. It took me a while to grasp all the concepts(I’m still learning!) but I know how to perform most lifts that I am familiar with correctly with good form. I was a 56.5/25.2 400m/200 runner in 8th grade with no weight training under my belt, and in 9th grade with some resistance training 53.31/24.40, 10th grade 51.79/23.65, 11th grade 50.3/22.6, senior year(this year) wasnt able to run due to injury. Point is, I give my progression in performance due to resistance training (not all of it, but it did help alot) and being smart about it. Hope that helped.
I’m 14 turning 15 and I want to be able to train for basketball. I have a bad strength base and basically I am weak. Would you suggest for me to stay on BW and medball work before getting into weights because I was going to just hit the weights hard, even though I have basically no experience.
Because I have heard that BW is a waste of time but when I looked at it more, people really underestimate it. So should i just dedicate a month or half a month just to BW and med ball work and sprinting. Then get into squatting deadlifts and a month after that into OL’s. And then a month after OL’s into Plyo’s?
