Long time follower and customer here. Over the past year I have had the privilege of guiding an untrained and underweight (6’0 - 145#) high school golfer through the Beginner Template. With an impressive amount of consistency and discipline he has ran the full 16 weeks or Blocks 1 and 2 and is about halfway through Block 3. He has gained an average of 0.6 lbs per week over 46 weeks, is now 173 lbs, and is swinging faster and hitting it further than most on the PGA Tour!
He is heading off to play at University of West Florida in a month and will begin a relatively demanding Fall Season in September. Given that it is imperative he is primed for as optimal physical performance as possible during this time, what are some of the most important considerations to make in regards to his programming to best ensure that 1) he at least maintains the strength gains he has made, and 2) trains in such a way that systemic fatigue is minimized and he is able to quickly recover in order to be “fresh” when it comes time to play; that is, a period, as it were, where his strength is best able to realized and demonstrated, rather than fatigue being accumulated? Would the General Strength and Conditioning Template be good for this? Low Fatigue Strength? Is a matter of reducing/managing RPE on whatever he does? Relatively high intensity with reduced volume and/or frequency? Any insight/direction would be much appreciated.
As far as the most important considerations for programming, to me it would be generating the desired fitness adaptations with the lowest risk for injury while ensuring adherence.
With respect to fitness adaptations, it is likely that any RT program that trains the major muscle groups multiple times per week at an intensity somewhere near failure is likely to preserve the majority of the strength adaptations he’s amassed so far. The tip of the spear, e.g. the ability to match previous performance of a 1RM on a specific exercise, may dull- but that’s more of a skill thing vs. a general strength thing IMO.
For injury risk, I think having some sense of what the practice and competitive schedules look like would be helpful to try and predict the training load from golf. Basically, comparing what he will be doing as far as range sessions, practice rounds, “golf-specific training” off the course, competitive events, etc. and what he’s doing now will help you determine what RT-dose he’s likely able to tolerate.
Wrapping this together with adherence, we’d like to pick a program the individual likes, that builds strength in a variety of different movement patterns, ROMs, velocities, etc., that’s also dosed appropriately in the context of their other activity.
I think the Gen S/C program is a reasonable choice, though I may start at 2x/wk lifting and leave the 3rd session out for either periods of reduced “golf stuff” or for when he becomes acclimated to the dose of golf, college, and extracurriculars. At that point, he’ll have more resources to thrive on additional training. I’d also keep the conditioning in there, as it’s lower stakes and likely improves recovery capacity.
Thanks, Jordan. This is helpful. Think I’ll send him off with GS&C; the 9 weeks will be a good fit for the range of time he will have tournaments in the Fall season. If we were to back it down to 2x/week lifting, would you recommend just rolling through all 3 “days” in order, but over the course of basically a week and a half? Like below, so essentially making it through 6 weeks of the template in 9 weeks of the calendar. I suppose in this case, it would be ran for 12 weeks to make it through the full 9 weeks of the template.
W1 - Day 1 & 2
W2 - Day 3 & 1
W3 - Day 2 & 3
W4 - Day 1 & 2
W5 - Day 3 & 1
W6 - Day 2 & 3
W7 - Day 1 & 2
W8 - Day 3 & 1
W9 - Day 2 & 3
You could do that, sure. You’ll be able to get some feedback after the first ~3 weeks and see if he’s digging it or not and adjust from there. My go-to would be to modify the days to have the same training days 2x/wk, but that’s more of a personal preference.