Jun 16, 2017Building Foundations
When student-athletes enter high school, they often have little to no experience in the weight room. Coaches have the important job of providing their athletes with a solid strength training foundation. By paying attention to safety and using a patient and balanced approach, coaches can help their athletes build muscle and enhance performance while reducing the risk of injuries.
Detric Smith, owner of Results Performance Training in Williamsburg, Va., and contributor to EliteFTS.com, outlines the keys to developing a strength and conditioning program for high school athletes. He uses his over 15 years of experience coaching and teaching physical education from elementary to high school to help other coaches understand the do’s and don’ts of strength development.
First and foremost, Smith insists on teaching technique. Before allowing athletes to start lifting weights or doing exercises, it’s critical that you teach proper technique and have them demonstrate that they can complete the movement with correct form. Athletes will naturally want to push themselves to lift more weight, but they must also be constantly held accountable for using proper technique if they are to progress without injury.
“Hours and hours must be spent on simple bodyweight movements until your kids are bored of them. We want them to be bored and to not have to think about it — that’s where unconscious competence comes in,” Smith writes. “Give athletes exercises as simple as a push-up, bodyweight squat, or simple jumping to start. Really focus on things like depth, knee tracking, hand placement, glute activation, scapular positioning, and pelvic control.”
Once athletes have mastered the basic movements at low weight or resistance, they are ready to move onto a progression. Again, technique continually needs to be stressed as the athletes start performing more advanced exercises and lifting more weight. Make sure they are using their mastery of the basics to safely do the more demanding progressions.
“Focused, deliberate progression rather than skipping the steps pays dividends down the line,” writes Smith. “You can do all the agility drills, ladders, and cool exercises you want, but if you don’t spend the majority of your time getting stronger on the basics, you are wasting your time. Exercises like box jumps and Olympics lifts can be great for some people, but only once they are ready for them.”
Working with your athletes in the weight room requires constant attention to detail, and you will have to stress patience because they are likely to be anxious to do more advanced exercises before they are ready. It can help to explain to athletes how these basic exercises will go a long way in improving their athletic performance. Athletes often over train certain muscles because of the specific demands of their sport. But work in the weight room can help counteract this overtraining and put athletes in the position to succeed.
This requires a balance between sports practice and strength and conditioning. It’s important that you take your athletes’ total athletic activity into account when designing a strength program. Remember that many athletes play multiple sports and compete on club teams during the off-season, so oftentimes less is more.
“Common weaknesses are overuse of the upper traps, thoracic immobility, glute inactivity, lack of hip/hamstring range of motion, quad dominance, and ankle instability,” Smith writes. “Program mobility into every warm up — soft tissue work, foam rolling, and dynamic range of motion stuff that match the exercises you plan to train. Add in two to three sets of low rep, low-intensity plyometrics before the strength work with a huge focus on execution.”
