- First, your job is to make them physically better; not for football necessarily (or whatever sport your athletes are playing). Most of the kids that show up in our weight room are a long way off any kind of specialized sport training. They first need a physical base.
- Training HS athletes is not that hard provided you don’t cloud your mind with bullshit encrusted baloney.
- Coaches: you don’t need a physics background and PHD in exercise science. All you need is to be a great communicator, an amazing leader, have experience and embrace common sense. Coaching isn’t just “X’s and O’s” and programming; this isn’t Fantasy land or the internet. If you aren’t fit to lead yourself, you certainly can’t lead others. If you can’t communicate efficiently and be understood by your athletes about what is expected, it doesn’t matter how good your program is.
- Parents: beware of any coach, school or club system that does not have a systematic general physical preparedness (GPP) program. In other words, if all they do is skill work, especially if your child plays year-round, you have invested your time and money in a sub-optimal system. Even simpler: they suck. Time must be spent on developing the athlete. Any reasonably good coach can spend 2 days/week on GPP work (this is for the entire year).
If a kid cannot perform the following with aptitude, he doesn’t need a unique, specialized program from the nearest university or to attend a “Speed School” or replicate the training program supposedly done by the latest trending athlete:
- Run (not jog) a mile
- Perform basic gymnastics
- Perform basic calisthenics
- Jump on a box with coordination/can’t land
- Bodyweight squat/DB squat
- Chin-ups and push-ups
Understand that there are many different ways to train an athlete; there are many different coaches that use varying training programs to train their athletes. Not acknowledging this violates Jim Wendler's Coaching Rule #1 - Coach what you know. This blog post isn't about what to do; I'm not so ego driven that I believe there is only MY WAY. However you choose to train your athletes, I think most of us can agree on what NOT to do and/or what to look out for.
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