The great coaches have goals for their teams/athletes and devise a plan that will accomplish those goals. For example if the goal for a basketball team is to win a championship the coach will put together a strategy for each opponent, teach technical and tactical skills, create a season long practice schedule, and motivate/inspire his athletes. This leads me to my main topic…This same approach (guiding athletes to success) should be taken by strength and conditioning coaches as well. A game plan needs to be in place if the athletes are going to consistently improve throughout the training program. I see too many coaches (many times it’s the head coach because the team doesn’t have a qualified strength and conditioning coach on staff) take the approach “no pain, no gain” or “100% intensity every time”. Of course you want your athletes to work hard, but it should be a planned routine consisting of high, medium, and low intensity days. There should be days were you teach your athletes (low intensity) and days where you condition the heck out of your athletes (high intensity).
Going along the same lines…Soreness is not necessarily a sign of great workout. Anyone can make an athlete sore (literally anyone that knows how to talk – just say “run 100 sprints uphill” or “do 500 push ups and sit ups”). I love to hear athletes say things like “my coach has the hardest workouts” or the “the training sessions are so intense”. I ask the athlete what they did during the training session and usually their response is something like this “first we did a mile run, 100 sit ups, bench press and lat pull downs and finished with the leg press/leg extensions/leg curl for 5 sets. I couldn’t move my legs for 3 days”. There are definitely ways to make the training routine more sport specific. If an athlete only has only X number of training sessions before the season starts, the coach should make the workouts as sport specific as possible. There are times to work on general fitness and conditioning, but make sure it follows your yearly plan. Every training session should follow the game plan and help the team/athletes accomplish their ultimate goals.
Remember “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
Train Hard-Train Smart
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