Well, Spring Football is upon us.  This means I have much more free time (Football lifts 2 days a week, Volleyball 2-3, Softball 1-2 and Baseball 2 at this time of year).  I am not one who likes to "work" during the dead week and Finals week, so I start my summer programs now.  I always start with football and then modify that for the other teams.  I've always done this and it seems to work for me.

Anyway, I looked at the calendar and we have 11 weeks once Finals end until we report for camp.  The guys going home for the summer will start the Monday after Finals.  The guys staying on campus (not many) will officially start the Wednesday after Memorial Day.  However, I'll have some stuff for them to do before then.  This is my time to take vacation and recharge and I take that very seriously.

As I'm looking at what we did this winter, what we're doing during spring ball I'm piecing summer together.  We'll be training 3 days per week all summer.  In June we'll be lifting and conditioning 3 days per week (everything on the same day).  I'm doing this for a few reasons.  1.  Our guys have to work over the summer so I want them to be able to get hours at work and also be college kids in the summer.  2.  I want them to be uncomfortable and tired when we condition.  Any way to make it harder without being the guy who just does hard stuff for the sake of it.

Lifting will be a mix of hypertrophy and strength (all compound movements).  Conditioning will be done with a time limit.  They'll have 20 minutes to complete their work once we finish lifting.  Instead of running them on the clock I'm going to give them a target number of reps to be completed each workout.  Each week the target number will increase.

This worked really well last year with our big hill we run so I'm going to use it for everything.  I believe this puts more responsibility on the individual.  Here's the goal.  Here's the time.  Get it done.  I don't care about rest periods.  If they get the work done with time left they can do more (the kids that choose to stay in the summer are usually the kids that WILL do more - that's part of why this works).  If they don't get it done they're in terrible shape and all of their teammates will know.  Also, if they're not in good shape I don't want to injure them early because they're doing more work than they can handle.  After all, we have 11 weeks.  If they're in bad shape early they have time to bring that up.

I've noticed our hamstring strains/pulls always happen early.  Once we're 3-4 weeks in we never have new issues.  So, why deal with it in the first place?

Once I finish the June portion I'll post it with the conditioning.  As always, it's subject to change, but it never changes that much.