As we near the end of our summer workouts I'm looking back at the success and failures of my program.  Not just the sets and reps, but the mental side, as well.  Anyone that knows anything about training knows that the program really doesn't matter.  What matters is if the kids buy in to what you're preaching.  Given my location in the South, I should open my own church.  After three summers of breaking old habits, overcoming the fact that there had been three new strength coaches in three years before me and slightly changing my approach I finally have what I'm looking for.  Not too bad.  By no means am I "done", but I have a group that truly understands what I want from them.

As far as the X's and O's of the program, I'm up in the air.  We seem to have more hamstring issues this summer.  This is odd because I spent a lot of time looking at last summer's program to make sure I kept the hamstring work very similar.  And, very little changed as far as the main work goes, either.

As I looked at the conditioning portion I realized a few things.

  1. These kids are just in great shape.  I had 26 vets stay here this summer.  Every single one of them passed the conditioning test on the first day of training.
  2. The vets that came back in June or July did their work at home.  On their first day running 110's they all passed.
  3. My brainwashing of these kids has led to them staying in better shape when they're not in my clutches.

When I retool my conditioning each summer I'm always paranoid that they won't be in good shape.  In the winter I don't worry much about it.  We lift our butts off and stay in shape.  In the first part of the summer we do the same, but with a little more conditioning.  In the second half the focus goes more to conditioning in preparation for camp.

As I look at my hamstring issues I think I just ran them too hard.  The trainer said injuries come in waves and this is something I've seen, as well.  But, I can't accept that answer when it comes to pulling hamstrings.  Of the 67 guys we have here, now (35 freshmen and 32 vets) we have one OL who had a hamstring issue during spring ball.  He decided to gain 30lbs in the month he had "off after spring ball and before summer workouts started.  That didn't help.  We had two other guys tweak, but not pull on a day that everyone seemed to forget to show up mentally and I freaked out and ran them into the ground.  On a positive, we haven't had focus issues since that workout back in week two.  There is one other kid who pulled on his first day back.  Clearly he hadn't been doing his running at the correct pace for the six weeks he was home.  Nonetheless, I don't like this trend.  I'll be doing some extra research on hamstring prevention/rehabilitation as we go into summer camp and into the season.

All in all, it's been a productive summer.  I'm curious to see how weight room testing goes starting the week of the 25th.