Over the last month I’ve been working with the local high school to develop a program to physically prepare the athletes for their given sport. The significance of this school is that it is particularly small. This makes athletics dependent on athletes participating in multiple sporting competitions. So the most important consideration is the induced fatigue almost year round from sport practice and competition. This made frequency and recovery highly important when designing a program for athletes that are exerting such high efforts throughout the year.
All that being said, the focus was on a program that didn’t require high frequency of training but was still able to develop advancement in the preparedness of the athletes. This meant that proper alternation in workouts was needed. Exercises in consecutive training sessions should minimally involve the same muscle groups and thus repeat the same pattern of muscle coordination (Zatsiorsky 1995). Also, when large muscle groups are worked, rest periods of 48 hours are optimal. For optimal recovery from training and competition, a three-day per week program was implemented. The lower body was worked on day one, the upper body was worked on day two, and the full body was worked on day three. This allowed for optimal recovery between large muscle groups, and muscle groups were worked twice a week.
With athletes of this age range (14–18), certain qualities need to be prioritized for further development. Enough power related work must be done during the early years to maintain the genetically determined levels of white muscle fibers. However, until the desired somatotype is developed, methods to increase cross sections of muscles must be emphasized. After this, the reverse is true (Francis 1987).
The choice for power exercises ranges from a snatch/clean variation to a plyometric/medicine ball progression. To promote maximal strength, sets are held at five reps and will sometimes drop to three. Using more than five reps per set during the learning phase of a new exercise will usually make correct technique harder to reproduce. Enough weight should be used so that force production increases but not so heavy that the cardiovascular component is completely absent from the exercise (Rippetoe 1997). Single repetitions could potentially be dangerous for some younger athletes because the high percentage requires a lot of coordination to perform the movement.
With so many athletes participating in multiple sports, exercise variation can have a heavy influence on adaptation and thus lead to soreness. If you have played a basketball game with fatigued legs due to training, you know what I’m talking about. In the end, performance in competition and injury prevention are the main goals. So exercise selection of “core” lifts will remain the same while supplementary ones will change. This will induce as little soreness as possible when transitioning to a new mesocycle. Example of core lifts include the front squat, Romanian deadlift, bench press, and rear foot elevated split squat (RFESS).
Some may think that not alternating core exercises will ultimately lead to stagnation or plateau. However, every time you complete a performance goal that passes previous results, your body is introduced to a new stimulation and will be forced to adapt. The avoidance of stagnation is how intensity is set. The training principle known as progressive overload is key. As Mike Boyle once stated, if you take an athlete and have him front squat 135 lbs for ten reps while only adding two and a half pound weights to each side each proceeding week, by the end of the year, he could potentially be at 395 lbs. Many problems with programs fail because athletes miss reps. So in selecting weight, the athletes started at a moderate load and used progressive overload at small increments throughout the training cycles. The athletes have shown improvement each week and PRs are already being set.
Example:
Freshman: Football, basketball, track, and baseball
Weeks 1–4 (last set recorded each week)
Front squat X 5: 165, 170, 175, 180 (PR)
Romanian deadlift X 5: 155, 160, 165, 165
Hang clean X 3: 170, 175, 185 (PR)
RFESS X 10: 100, 105, 110, 115
Bench press X 5: 145, 150, 155, 160
Warm up/activation should address coordination, preparation for training, and the undoing of the poor postural habits throughout the day. Taking into account that students are sitting for almost the entire day while at school, a build up of stiffness and tissue creep may occur. When students are sitting for upwards of an hour and a half at a time only to get up to go to another class, stiffness issues will undoubtedly follow. When sitting, hip flexors stiffen, which inhibits gluteal function. This should be taken into consideration when developing a quality warm-up program.
Warm up (10–12 minutes)
· 4 hurdle/dynamic routine continuous (twice each way or one time right and left)
· Right/left step over/inch worm
· Lateral over/high knee pull
· Backward over/lunge elbow to instep with knee extended
· Alternating over–single leg Romanian deadlift
· Lateral under–crossover walk
· Leg kick/quad pull
· Activation (1 X 10 each)
· T-spine mobility
· Glute bridge
· Lateral band
· Front/back monster band walk
· Shoulder PNF
· Band pull apart
Phase 1,Day 2
· Linear unilateral, lateral bilateral
· Short box single leg jump (2 X 3 each)
· Medicine ball, side tosses (2 X 15 each–kneel)
· Lateral jumps over short hurdles (3 X 6 each–stick landing)
All in all, the entire workout never takes more than an hour, which works perfectly for those who do this during physical education class and prior to school. The key to a successful youth training program is supervision. Fortunately, the athletes have set times and sometimes multiple coaches to observe technique, motivate, and ensure safety practices. A well-designed program can go a long way in terms of youth athletes having a good experience in sport competition. Seeing improvements is not only motivating but also goes a long way in building character and confidence, which are beneficial far beyond the spectrum of sports.
References
1. Zatsiorsky VM (1995) Science and Practice of Strength Training. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics.
2. Francis Charlie (1987) The Charlie Francis Training System.
3. Rippetoe Mark (1997) Starting Strength. 2nd Edition. The Aasgaard Company.
TJ Lensch is the head strength and conditioning coach for football at Northwestern College (IA) located in Orange City, Iowa. Feel free to contact him at tlensch34@gmail.com or visit tjlensch.blogspot.com.
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