The program I am currently running features the CARE program in a new format that I feel better allows the player to get a workout in without going too deep in the RPE continuum, especially if he or she is coming from a unit or a team session.
We as strength coaches have a way of screwing training up even with this ancient, written-in-stone principle.
If an athlete is training on heavy squats but is unable to get into a good technique, he is risking injury, plus he is not getting the most of his training because he is in bad positions. First things first, let’s start with an assessment.
A lot of individuals take what’s arguably the most highly coordinated regimen you can perform in the weight room and start individuals doing it day 1. At the collegiate level, these are the movements I make sure that my athletes can do before they are allowed to perform a proper clean motion.
If the majority of leadership has to come from coaches, that’s usually a sign of a rough season ahead. In my experience, I’ve found this to be 100% true.
Most historical figures aren’t single-faceted, and if your athletes truly connect with them, you can bring other aspects of them to light to aid them in their journeys. General George S. Patton leads by example and James J. Braddock overcomes opponents using visualization.
When the dust settles and I turn the lights off in that weight room for that final time, what legacy will I leave, how many lives did I touch?
Beyond a rack, bar, and plates, here are the smaller pieces of equipment I feel have added the most value to my strength and conditioning program.
For this month’s article, I want to write about something that I’ve been doing a lot of recently with some success: interviewing. Consider these eleven rules for your next job opportunity.
After meeting Nate Harvey and reading his ebook, I decided to try out a conjugate-based system with two of my teams, men’s soccer and women’s volleyball, during the spring semester. Here’s what we did, how it worked, and changes I’m making moving forward.
High school did a terrible job of preparing you for the real world. The only way you will make it is by trial by fire and by implementing the following habits immediately.
Inspired by Joe Kenn, this is how Pace programs the conjugate method (the use of variations) over an eight-week off-season for our athletes.
To an outsider, things may seem easy during camp as far as being a strength coach goes. You have them maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes a day if you’re lucky. Easy peasy, right? Wrong!
What I outline in this article is the third generation of this style of programming, taken through the furnace of professional rugby and modified accordingly to fit specific needs of the playing group I now work with.
In layman’s terms, dynamic effort can be described as fast, explosive movement. This seems simple, but many people get lost between “fast and explosive” and “movement.”
Here are some rarely discussed things to keep in mind when asking yourself if you really want to become a collegiate strength and conditioning coach.
Last week I went into a meeting with my direct supervisor and came out jobless. Here are the things I’ve learned and the mistakes I’ve made that led me to this point.
What each athlete must remember is that it’s not the mistake that defines you as an athlete; it’s how you respond to the mistake that defines you.
This fourth article helps set us up to be able to put together our macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles.
These are the five ingredients you need to put together the summer plans for your athletes: core exercises and runs, team goals, position plans, individual goals, and correct grouping.
Range of motion should be limited by the hamstrings for this exercise, which means the bottom position may vary between athletes. That’s not a problem if they follow these rules.
There’s more to it than lying down and busting out reps. Focus on these points for stronger and more injury-resistant athletes.
Doing an extraordinary job in your present position does not guarantee you immunity to the inevitable changes that take place with funding cuts, administration changes, or coaches moving on. Are you prepared to find a new position?
If you aren’t willing to change and grow, you won’t survive. Here are the ways my perspective on strength coaching rules has changed since my previous article on the topic.
Missouri State University Director of Strength and Conditioning Jeremy Frey has a few ways to make front squatting easier to learn and more effective for your athletes. Here are the things that are most important to focus on.
What we all want is to set our freshmen up for success for the future. How we go about it isn’t about ego and “our system” or anything like that; it’s about taking the time to put thought into what you’re doing and what will be the best for them.
All of the athletes at this high-level volleyball academy are from overseas and come to the United States to get a better chance at receiving a collegiate scholarship. Working with head coach and founder Caitlyn Vann, this is what we did in our five short weeks.
Understanding this tool for manipulating training intensities is key for athlete programming at every part of pre-season, in-season, post-season and off-season phases.
There are moments in life that shape your mind and determine the way you choose to think and live. I have experienced two such moments that have shaped my coaching and life philosophies.
Making 200 protein shakes per day and cleaning up the weight room isn’t going to make anyone a better coach, so you’d better hope there’s more than grunt work for you to do.
This is where you need to start if you want to get one of the strength coaching jobs you’re dreaming about. It’s simple but not easy, so swallow your pride and ego before you move forward.
In the first article of this series we covered the basic principles of programming and periodization. Now let’s discuss strategies to manipulate volume and intensity, and start examining the training units used to structure training.
If you aren’t open to the knowledge and expertise of those around you, you’re only holding yourself back. These are some of the most influential things I’ve learned from others in this industry.
I had a conversation with Coach Jeff Ward that not only humbled me, but shook me to my core. I thought I had been focused on convictions, but ego had slipped into the driver’s seat.
Four years ago I got a phone call about training a local kid who had just been cut by the Atlanta Falcons and wanted to make his move back to the NFL. Here are my four rules of training professional athletes and what I did with Roosevelt Nix.
Making it to the NFL isn’t easy. It’s even harder when you’re changing positions from the one that made you so successful in college.
Neck training can be done with isometric or range of motion exercises, performed self-administered, working with a partner, or with equipment. I’ve recently begun to trial a new device to take this training even further.
Because an athlete’s focus is sports performance, they may be less concerned with consistency in strength training, or they may harbor a false belief that having great technique during weight training is relatively unimportant. Change this.
Turn into the head coach of the weight room. Come up with a plan to cover everything down to the finest detail.
Of the many things in your life that you care about, there are some you can control and some you cannot. Being aware of the difference will not only make you more successful but also happier.
When the Gateway Lions Academy approached me a few months ago to train their soccer athletes, I was excited. Almost 100% of them are just pure raw talent, and their skillset and work ethic are unreal.
Many of us would like there to be a simple answer or a go-to method to reach our goals in the shortest possible time, but in reality we have to spend time under the bar, do our homework, educate ourselves, and learn what makes our unique profile tick.
As Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning for The Ohio State University football team, Matusz knows what it’s like to be in a high-pressure environment. And that’s when your leadership really counts.
These exercises are not commonly used but they deserve a place in your strength and conditioning program. We’ve tested them on our athletes and on ourselves and we believe in them.
We can’t simply throw random exercises and set and rep schemes on a piece of paper haphazardly and then hope for the best. In this series I will teach you how to write programs, including a coach’s assignment for each article.
To close his presentation, Wendler discusses exercise selection, indicators of athlete readiness, and the importance of knowing the trapdoors of your training program.
This method has worked well in the past and could help you with your starting point in the programming for your athletes.
According to Bandura, there are four major sources contributing to a person’s individual self-efficacy. This is what coaches need to be building in their athletes.
Many programs account for energy system considerations and athlete deficiencies, but there are a number of other factors I believe are incredibly important for transitioning from off-season to in-season training.
In the previous videos, Wendler discussed his general mindset and approach to strength and conditioning for a high school football team. In this segment, he goes into detail about how he has designed the training sessions.
Everyone loses sometimes, but that isn’t the mentality you should mold your life around.
When I interview someone and consider letting them join my team, these are the things I consider.
In one of his most detailed podcast discussions yet, Dr. Bryan Mann shares a number of discoveries he’s made about athlete training and the use of velocity based training.
While putting together a training presentation for a local high school, I gave some thought to the things I wish someone would have told me in high school. I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway, but here they are.
When Jim took over the training, the team had no identity and had no idea what they were going to be as they entered the 2017 season. What they became was the strongest team on the field every night they played.
If you want to be relevant in the sport for years to come, you need to know how to tell the difference between the coaches and the players.
The longer the season goes on, the more important it is to maintain performance. Don’t spend the season losing the physical abilities built during the off-season.
The starting point with youth athletes today is drastically different than it was 30 years ago. This means the training plan needs to be different too.