I recently took a job as a high school S&C coach and will be coaching athletes of all sports. I will begin June 3rd. Below is a general idea of what I will be doing. What I struggle with is finding a way to communicate with my athletes what intensity level I want them training at. I would like to incorporate the use of RPE but I do not want to overly complicate things for a high school kid. I will be training approximately 100 athletes, most of them boys (14-18 years old) and most of them football players. My plan right now is to put each exercise on a clock, tell the athletes the number of reps for each set, tell them to gradually work up to a weight that feels somewhat heavy for those reps, and keep going until time expires. I would place them in groups of 4-5 to control the rest periods.
Please feel free to give advice. Thanks!
Monday and Thursday:
Cleans, sets of 2-4 reps
Snatches, sets of 2-4 reps
Box Jumps
Sprint drills
Tuesday and Friday:
Squats, sets of 5-10 reps
Presses, sets of 5-10 reps
Pulls, sets of 5-10 reps
Assistance/isolation exercises
Agility drills
What level of strength and training experience do these athletes have coming into your program? If they already know how to proficiently do the Cleans/Snatch then maybe you are ok to start there, if not that’s a lot of teaching time taking away from basic strength gains.
If these athletes are like most HS kids, they are under trained, so why not just focus on the big 3-4 lifts and get them as strong as you can while building some mass?
Because reading Chris Beardsley’s book “Strength is Specific” has screwed with my head and got me questioning everything I thought I ever knew!
I get what your saying about cleans/snatches. I actually think there’s a strong case to not even use these lifts unless someone is training to be an olympic lifter. The amount of teaching they require make them almost more trouble than they’re worth. I like the idea of using the trap bar to perform loaded jumps. However, some sport coaches are infatuated with olympic lifts so I may have to throw them in.
At least for the summer I am forced to use a 4-day training week (m,t,th,f). I’ve considered just using the basic exercises (squat, DL, bench, press, chins, rows). A lot of people use the upper/lower split but I’m not sure that it provides enough volume and practice with the movements. These are high school kids so most of them will likely be very sensitive to training. What do you think of layout below? The main goal is to have the athletes practice the movements in a slightly different way on all 4 days. The variants used on Monday and Thursday require a lighter load to be used but the motor pattern is generally the same.
Also, as a method to prescribe load I’ve thought about having them work up to a “heavy/hard” set of an assigned # of reps and then perform back-offs at a 10-20% reduction. As useful as I think RPE is I’m not sure how easily it can be taught to a large group of high school kids.
First thing, if no one has ever coached a high school weight room full of the variety of “athletes” you get in that setting, please don’t judge what you see here. It is a hard thing to get going/started, however once you get the basics down for everyone it does get easier. But the challenge of today’s high school kid as opposed to as little as 6-8 years ago is real! Also, hope I am not to late with my response.
How about something along these lines:
Monday
Squat heavy (work up to a heavy double back off 10% and do 4x4)
Press heavy ^^^^^^^
Rows 3x8-10
Box jumps sets of 8-10 between each set of warm ups and even work sets of squats
Tuesday
Incline DB
Some tricep work
Bench heavy (4x4 or 5x5)
TB Jumps
Thursday
Light squat 2-3x6-8 (85% of Mon)
Press heavy
Deadlift heavy 3x5
Jumps again (box/wall/trap bar etc)
Friday
Squat heavy
BB Curl
Bench heavy
Rows
TB deadlifts (optional if time)
You could sub in some supplemental stuff if needed, but this would still give you volume and tonnage over the course of the week to get the desired results. You would still be working “explosive” with box jumps and TB jumps, and not losing training time with sub maximal lifting and the time investment of the oly lifts. If you are not good and proficient at coaching those lifts…don’t do them.
Thanks for the response. Is this a program you’ve used? If I remember from reading other posts you are also a high school strength coach, correct?
I really like the idea of working in box jumps in between sets, when appropriate. That’s an efficient way of doing things. I start working with the athletes in June. I think many of the sport coaches want to see the olympic lifts used because that’s what they’ve seen other people use. It may take a while to convince them that there are other ways to train high-speed strength.
Im on the side of not using cleans/snatches. I believe Chris Beardsley even shared a study before showing that you can get this same effect of cleans by doing squats and box jumps. The amount of time and effort to get efficient technique at those lifts just isn’t worth it in my opinion, especially considering the amount of time you get with them. It might be hard to convince the people around you with this ideology.
I would utilize RPE, but just very simply put. “stop two reps before failure” is effective even for younger people.
When programming box jumps I wouldn’t really prescribe more than about 3 reps per set. You don’t want the velocity to change from rep to rep so fatigue should be managed here.
I would probably agree on reducing the reps on box jumps to a point, and when I have someone work to a heavy double, that is what I use “two left in the tank”. The thing I would never do is use them as a conditioning tool, as I feel that is where degradation of form-technique becomes a point of potential injury. I have yet to see 8 reps cause form breakdown in my situation. Also, I have them focus on landing off of a box as well, not just stepping down or stepping back off. Jump on the box, walk across and practice a smooth landing.
How do you guys coach landing on top of the box? I prefer landing on the box with as little knee bend as possible. I see lots of athletes using really high boxes and tucking their knees. To me this unnecessarily introduces a complex skill to what should be a simple exercise. Granted, jumping up to a 48" box looks better on social media than jumping to a 24" box.
What are your thoughts on using RPE for box jumps? I’ve seen John Hanley and Jordan discuss the difference between perceived exertion and perceived effort. In my view, perceived exertion is useful for hypertrophy and strength exercises where movement speed is not a concern except for estimating how many reps were left. Perceived effort is useful for power/speed exercises where movement speed is the primary concern. Perhaps managing effort in power exercises (e.g., box jumps) would allow for a greater amount of volume while keeping overall fatigue lower.
Here’s a specific example. Say an athlete has a 40" vertical. Rather than have the athlete perform multiple max effort jumps you have him jump at 80% of this, i.e., 32 inches. Logistically, this may be easier if you just use a 30 inch box and coach the athlete to land with their hips as high as possible.
I may be wrong in my thinking, but I am really not training someone to be great at box jumps. The jumps are a way to display and work on improving explosive, athletic movement and power. So if they have a 40" vert, I would have them jump to something they can get over top of and have a soft landing on the box. I want the person to think of landing in a position that won’t “break the box”, so softer on the landing. Probably gonna look about like a 1/4 squat or more along what their form was with the jump. Now that doesn’t mean to put them jumping onto a 12" box, unless they have a 15" vert (lol).
Also, I don’t have them just step off. I want them to practice a landing also, again to land softly. A lot of female athletes struggle with change of direction and leg control during running and moving. I want them to be able to land, jump, change direction with a good knee position. The landing part seems to help with this. There is a lot of research and video on the athletes and landing training where the jumper is moved physically on their landing by someone to simulate game situations. I don’t feel comfortable doing that but I like the idea.