I have done a phenomenal job of not watching the news, reading the news and generally ignoring the morons out there.  You have the zealots on both sides...  "You're infringing on my rights, blah, blah, blah (which I tend to agree with)" and the sheep that seem to love the fact that the government is telling us what we can and can't do.  You know, the ones who tattle tale on their neighbors (like the East German government had people do during the Cold War)?

So, I get my information from our AD, my mom and my sister.

It seems as though we're moving towards a reopening of some things.  I'm guessing that gyms (depending on the state) will be open and available long before the kids are allowed back on campus.

Which brings me (finally) to the purpose of my ramblings.  Chances are better than great that the athletes will not restart training under close supervision.  Instead, they'll be on their own running roughshod in gyms across the country trying to make up for lost time.  Anyone with half of a functioning brain, with a hangover on top of it, knows that you can't make up for lost time.  It's simply gone.

Obviously (at least it should be), I want gyms to reopen and life to get back to normal.  Any steps in that direction are awesome and should be celebrated.

In an article last week I put some thoughts down on that had been going through my head.  This week I'm becoming more focused into what exactly I'll put in their workouts that will be sent home.

In talking with my assistants one thing that came up was "sport-specific".  If you've read anything I've written you know this is the dumbest idea ever.

I was running through things in my head and we started talking about the things we need to include in a take home workout that most of the kids will follow, on some level.  If we know athletes that actually care about their sport we know that it's the extra crap that they're going to do that could get them in trouble.

The good (bad) thing is that they won't do extra work using things that are actually useful.  The chances of extra Squat, Clean, Deadlift sets are pretty much non-existent.  This is definitely a good thing.

You "wish" they would understand that curls and pushdowns and that crap doesn't help, but try explaining that to a kid who thinks big arms and a big chest matter.

The chances of an absolutely STUPID amount of Benching are more than 100%.  To compound this, they won't even come close to doing the amount of pulling to offset this.

Chances are, that this won't last so long that it will cause lasting problems, but this does go through my mind.  So, in my effort to combat this plague of training I'll include an insane amount of back work.  My hope is that the kids will follow the program before they go rogue.

I know there are a core of athletes (all sports) that will just follow the program as they should, do a few sets of curls and pushdowns and be done.

There are also the kids who will go to the gym 6 days a week and completely do the dumbest stuff you could ever imagine.  How do I know how dumb this stuff is?  There are some that tell me what they do.  Obviously, these aren't the kids who are being groomed to join Mensa.

As I mentioned in my previous article, I'm not worried about the weight room.  As long as we get in and get some work done they'll be fine.  It's the lack of conditioning that worries me.

As I've mentioned, I think this is the most important thing that we need to rebuild once they start training again.  ANY kind of running at home will be great.  Hopefully, they'll follow the program that is laid out for them, but...  You can hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.

I may sound negative.  I'm basing this off of what I would've done and what I hear every time these guys come back from extended time off campus.

The one crowd that I really never need to worry about much are the female athletes.  The soccer team will be running and not lifting.  This is normal for most of them anyway.  They'll be fine.

If anything, the women will do the program as it's written and not one rep extra.  In this situation, if I'm right, this is awesome.

 

Remember earlier when I mentioned "sport-specific"?  I bet you thought I forgot after going off on this tangent.

In putting together these programs it will be a cookie-cutter approach.  At least for 4 weeks.  EVERYONE is detrained.  EVERYONE is out of shape.  There is absolutely no need to cater to the different sports in the initial restart phase.  We just need to get them moving and reintroduce the basic body movements.

This, is what I'm about to do once I click off this log.