Maximizing high school workouts.

At a time when our high schools are running over with multi-sport athletes, dwindling workout space, and shorter strength and conditioning workouts, it has become essential to assure efficiency in the workout time and design of our high school programs.

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At Bethpage H.S. we have all kinds of problems that work against us in preparing our kids for competition. This particularly applies to the multi-athletes who move from one sport to another with no break in between.

Our student-athletes are given little or no time to participate in workouts for the upcoming season, and little opportunity to rehabilitate the injuries that occurred in the previous sport season.

Another issue is the amount of space we have to utilize for strength training. Since our workout area consists of converted space from other areas within the school, our coaches are faced with the problem of prioritizing both time and space to create workouts.

The first question we needed to address was the philosophy of our coaching staff, specifically the type of training they were comfortable with.

We were concerned with prioritizing the kids' lifting and conditioning sessions so that everyone got the requisite exercises to improve their levels of strength as well as their areas of power, speed, agility, and mobility (flexibility); basically, their levels of athleticism.

Our weight room presented problems because it is a converted auto shop room, with roughly 2,000 square feet of usable space. With a half dozen leg stations (racks, press machines) and a few free-weight benches, it set up a situation where program creativity was a priority in insuring our kids' opportunity to work on their presses, pulls, squats, and supplemental strength movements.

All of our coaches focused on selling the idea that multi-jointed movements were more useful from a sport-training viewpoint, and that the building of strength, speed, and agility were the cornerstones of improvements in athleticism.

Another important concern for us was packaging these workouts in a manner that would not keep our kids in the weight room for more than one hour. We asked our coaches to prioritize the components of fitness that they wanted their athletes to work on both on the field and off.

Our coaches overwhelmingly selected the components of speed, strength, and footwork to improve athleticism, and a free-weight-based lifting program. To teach training movements rather than muscles, we had the athletes weight-train with their feet on the ground.

We also decided to keep our conditioning drills as short and specific to the sport as we could, focusing on the improvement of footwork and lateral agility movements.

COMPONENTS OF TRAINING PLANS

Because our physical education program is built on movement science, our coaches decided to focus on the characteristic of each sport (squatting, jumping, twisting, etc.).

We knew it would be of greater value to train on complex rather than single jointed ones. We also felt that developing quick, accelerated movements rather than slow, controlled ones (when appropriate) were important as well.

We decided to break our training year into three parts, each representing a sport season (fall, winter, and spring.) This gave us the opportunity to design our strength-training programs around their sport schedules.

The foundation of our strength workouts consisted of free weight movements. We were concerned with teaching proper exercise technique, keeping the workout time between 40-50 minutes, and giving the group enough work to improve on their athleticism, without overtraining them. Set and repetition schemes were determined, based on the goals we wished to reach.

If strength development was our goal, our set and repetition schemes would reflect it. If speed-strength was the priority, our set and repetition schemes reflected those movements.

The same held true for building muscular endurance. This gave us the flexibility to revolve our workouts around increasing or decreasing our training volume and/or intensity based on our athletes' present training goals, practice loads, or competitive schedules.

If one sport team had 3-4 games during the week, their workout volume and intensity would be backed off to help aid in the recovery process from the games and workouts of that week.

If we were just starting a new sport season, our volume and intensity goals for that week would reflect the newness of the program.

The foundation of our conditioning workouts would also be based upon improving agility and footwork. The skills and drills would be as sport-specific as we could make them. Many of those drills consisted of short-distance running, sprint training, or drills related to improving on their footwork or lateral agility.

Here is an example of the pool of exercises our athletes worked on during the course of their strength-training year:

* Squats (Back, Front)

* Pulls/Cleans

* Pressing/Jerking movements

* One-Leg movements (Step-Ups, Lunges)

* Abdominal/Low Back Movements

* Medicine Ball Work

* Agility/Mobility/Flexibility Training

We then classified this pool of exercises into 5-7 upper and lower body movements, which our students could do either in a pre-practice or post-practice situation.

We tried the best we could to equalize the movements that focused on the upper, lower, and core regions of the body, as well as incorporating movements that were variations of Olympic lifts.

If we considered back squats to be more of a priority than other types of squatting, we'd perform the squats during that part of the training cycle.

If we considered push pressing more of a priority than other pressing movements, we'd incorporate it within its training plans for that period of time.

The same philosophy was adopted for the other movements within our athlete's plans. Using 5-7 movements within their routines assured us of keeping a time frame of less than an hour--one of the goals we had set in our original design plan.

Resistance was determined based on the student-athlete's three repetition maximum (RM) or extrapolated off those RM. For example, resistance for a lunge was determined by taking a percentage differential off that athlete's 3RM Back Squat, which was tested in the beginning of the academic year.

Each athlete on a given team participated in the same workout. The only difference was the individual resistance each athlete pushed or pulled, or if they took extra exercises due to an injury rehab situation.

This gave our athletes the opportunity to pair or triple up with one another during their workouts in an effort to reinforce team-building and the team work ethic.

If you have concerns with space and time limitations or have dual-sport athletes, you should give prioritizing movements and time efficiency a huge consideration.

When the fall sport season ended, we reformulated our plans and changed our workouts based on the above criteria for the winter and spring sports. This gave our athletes a constant flux of exercises and challenges within their programs, decreased boredom, and improved on the levels of athleticism we originally sought to achieve.

Once we put it all together, this is how it looked. (Example of a basketball athlete's workouts in a given week during the competitive season.)

* Hang Clean 6x2 @70% of 3RM

* Back Squat 4x3 @79% of 3RM

* DB Press (choice of standing or incline) 3x6

* DB Romanian Deadlift (RDL) 3x5

* 45-degree angle Lunge 2x6

* Medicine ball Abdominal Wood chop 50 repetitions maximum

* Low back bodyweight reverse hyperextension 50 reps maximum

* Agility quick feet drills: 5 repetitions of Star Drill, T-drill, and Ladder drill

* Upper and Lower body stretches

By Adam Miller, C.S.C.S., Bethpage (NY) High School