High School Weights: For football, Throwers, and General Population students

[Travis Greer]

I am a PE teacher/ Weights teacher/ Football coach/ Throwers coach @ a HS in Kansas. I teach the big 4 lifts (SQ,DL,BP,OP) and two Olympic Lifts (Clean, Hang Snatch). I teach the lifts in the manner you teach them in SS, and for 95% of the kids I coach I can get them to perform very good technique. The way you have laid out coaching technique and using simple cues makes it very easy for coaches to teach their own kids, and I thank you for that.


Technique is not an issue or a question. My question is about programming. What is the best way to implement the SS novice progression method to my kids in the setting of summer morning weights, winter after school weights, and strength and conditioning class for school? Does anyone have any experience with this? suggestions? recommendations? ideas? horror stories? How do you marry the SS method with the discipline/ structure needed for a HS weights program?

thanks

[Mark Rippetoe]

It's a bad problem. Some school schedules do not permit the effective implementation of the program. If Coach Janacek can respond, we can learn from him.

[John Janecek]

My Philosophy on training in a school setting:

Lifts I like and believe in are cleans, snatches, CJ's, back squats and front squats, deadlifts and pressing....Everything else to me is aux stuff...These are the lifts that make athletes run faster and jump higher because they make them stronger..We have a postseason period after playoffs where we lift weights 4xwk and do VERY LITTLE RUNNING (wed only), we have seen big increases in kids bodyweights, max attempts on all lifts, VJ and 40 times....You have to have a period where you don’t run them to death and "condition them". They need some time to heal and build a strength base for the next season...

How many sets/reps/max wt for the day? I don’t have a set number of reps/sets they do and my kids have never seen a chart...I do everything on the clock. Example, I might have them start with snatches and yell out "snatches, sets of 3, go" they know to start light and work up to a top set of 3 in the snatch, if I haven’t stopped them yet and they get to a top set they have three choices 1-do another set at the same weight 2-add a little if they got their last set 3-drop a little if they didn’t get their reps on the last set...I have coaches helping me monitor the kids and keep them moving up in weight...Whatever the kid can do for a max that day is their "daily max"...Its different for different kids, some have great days while others have not so good days and that could change completely the next time they come in...Some kids take the entire time to work up to a heavy max (stronger kids) and the younger ones might be topped out in just a few sets (weaker kids). The weaker kids keep doing whatever they can do for the reps I said over and over when it’s their turn. I tell the kids this is just like a drill at practice, your practicing it over and over and the more you do it the better you get....Although I didn’t intend to do this coaches like that everyone is working the entire time, no one gets done and sits and waits for the others..

This isn’t exactly a classic 5x5 type system but as a HS coach you have time limits along with equipment and room size VS amount of kids you need to get through that has to be taken in to consideration. After that you have to think “what’s the best way to get these kids stronger with what I have?”

I usually take my kids through an hour long workout which is enough in my opinion. I set up programs like this:

"Platform Day"
20 min - olift (usually snatch)
20 min - olift (clean or CJ)
10 min - Front Squat
10 min - Pulls or DL

"Rack Day"
20 min – Bench press
20 min – Back Squat
10 min - overhead pressing
10 min - Rowing

Thats it...I rotate these workouts four times per week on mon-tu-thur-fri during posteason, when we get into spring football we drop to 3xwk lifting and I keep on the same rotation but it just takes eight days instead of five to get through all four workouts (mon to mon instead of mon to fri).

If the head coach comes in and says they need to cut a workout short (which rarely happens here) I just adjust times and make it work..

I have started having kids bench first on Rack day. That way if they are late or time needs to be cut for some reason I cut it out of bench, never out of squats...

When summer hits and we start running I take out the last station and drop a few min of the first two so we are lifting for about 45 then doing speed/agility work....

Some people wonder "why" I just give out the basic parts of a program I’ve spent a long time developing, well first I have no problem giving back and helping out so I have never been one to keep things a "secret" when so many strength coaches before me have sat and shared many things with me (Boyd Epley, Al Miller, Mark Rippetoe, Leo Totten, Mike Arthur...), second I agree %100 you can’t just "get a copy" of someone’s program and plug it in and all the sudden your kicking butt...I'm a strength coach, dedicated my entire adult life to learning about how these things affect the body and what works and doesn’t work. When coaches ask me for a "copy of my program" and then ask how do I run it it’s not that simple, a lot of times I tell them "I just know" what and when to do things...I've learned that from 26 years of strength coaching and working in weight rooms all over...I also compete at Olympic lifting and while I'm not some world champion I've snatched 248lb and CJ 315 in High school wtrooms in front of kids so they know I practice what I preach-this also helps me coach them since I'm doing what they are doing...

Thats enough for now, here is a link to my page on strength performance network with our Ironman lifting hightlights video.

John Janecek's Page - Strength Performance Network

Be glad to answer questions when I can.

John Janecek
Head Strength Coach
Longview High School / 903-663-7197 / jjanecek@lisd.org

[Jeff Leonard]

Coach,

I am very interested in this topic as I am a football coach and I have just taken over the weight room. Our issue, and I am sure I am not the only one, is what do you do with programming when you don't have the kids for the entire year. We are a small school that shares athletes. So my off season lifting may consist of 6-10 kids who are not playing basketball or wrestling. As soon as the spring sports start, I will lose most of those kids to a sport, and pick up some of the kids who were playing a winter sport and so on.

We started to put together a program of varied intensity and volume, working up over 5 week blocks leading into the spring and on into summer and pre-season. The reality is this just wouldn't work with the turnover in who can be in the weight room. So what we went to is a 3 day a week program. I run a 7 workout program, and I lay it out in a spreadsheet telling them their warm up sets and percentages of 5 rm max to use for their lifts. At the end of the 7th workout, we will re-adjust their numbers and start another block. We will have during each workout, no matter the day the following:
-Start with an Oly lift or variant of an Oly lift (we will work up to after a few sessions to cleans)
-3 strength lifts. We will vary these over the course of a 3 workout time period between bench/DL/RDL/press/BB rows and a few others.
-2 to 3 finishers (kettle bell, planks or something similar)

We are basically running these kids on a novice program as far as load increase, and mainly because about every 6-8 weeks we lose most of the kids and bring in new ones. If we had the same kids over a 12 month time frame we could get more specific and "scientific" with it. As it is now, I am just trying to get them some strength built in the small amount of time I have them over a 12 month period.

Not perfect, but it seems to work for us.

[Mark Rippetoe]

So what we went to is a 3 day a week program. I run a 7 workout program, and I lay it out in a spreadsheet telling them their warm up sets and percentages of 5 rm max to use for their lifts. At the end of the 7th workout, we will re-adjust their numbers and start another block. We will have during each workout, no matter the day the following:
-Start with an Oly lift or variant of an Oly lift (we will work up to after a few sessions to cleans)
-3 strength lifts. We will vary these over the course of a 3 workout time period between bench/DL/RDL/press/BB rows and a few others.
-2 to 3 finishers (kettle bell, planks or something similar)

We are basically running these kids on a novice program as far as load increase, and mainly because about every 6-8 weeks we lose most of the kids and bring in new ones. If we had the same kids over a 12 month time frame we could get more specific and "scientific" with it. As it is now, I am just trying to get them some strength built in the small amount of time I have them over a 12 month period.

Not perfect, but it seems to work for us.

Sure, anything seems to work for novices. Starting Strength: Article

But you really ought to just run the novice program as detailed in PPST3. Each kid keeps his own journal, each kid goes up every workout, there are no BB rows/KB bullshit/planks, and everybody gets stronger.

[Jeff Leonard]

[QUOTE=Each kid keeps his own journal, each kid goes up every workout, there are no BB rows/KB bullshit/planks, and everybody gets stronger.[/QUOTE]

We do keep a journal of sorts, it is a set of sheets that they keep that tells them what they are to be lifting for the warm ups, with the workouts following a novice progression. The lifts at the core of what we do are the 5 lifts in the SS program. Any Planks or KB "bullshit" or any other lift or exercise is done not for muscle strength but for fitness and mental strength.

My thought is if a kid wont push through the temptation to drop out of a 60 second side plank after a few sets, then he isn't going to be much help come football season. So we have a whole slew of things we can do at the end of our workouts, as a team, that will begin to develop some mental strength to not give up. We also see some kids begin to step up and lead during these times as well.

[Pierce Brennan]

I have been running a high school weight room for almost 10 years using some form of the novice program/linear progression. I spoke with Coach Janecek a few years back, as he was the Strength coach at my college alma mater before I got there, about his program. I ran his program for a few years with great results. I took a new job a few years ago and had to adjust based on the equipment in the facility and time restraints. This year we have been running a novice progression for all of our athletes, exactly as written. MWF training with alternating A/B workouts. Within the first week of training, we found appropriate starting weights for each athlete, for each lift. From there I created sheets for each athlete with the predetermined weight written in with 5 and 10lb increases per workout depending on the exercise and individual kid. It takes away all of the guesswork for them. I gave them sheets 3 weeks at a time. If at the end of the 3 weeks they were struggling with the prescribed weight and were struggling to grind out their sets, I simply deloaded them 10-15% and started the process over again from there. Just like Coach Janecek said, focus on getting these kids strong and everything else will fall into place. The only numbers I take on the kids at the start of a season are their body weight, 10yd dash, 40yd dash, and pro agility times. We don’t practice them at all from there on out. Two weeks out from the next season, the kids perform each test again and the results are consistent. Their body weight is up and their running times are down. I start to implement running about 2 weeks out to get them ready for their season. The running sessions do not take more than 20 minutes and are comprised of a handful of max effort sprints of varying length. I will decrease the volume in the weight room as the running volume increases (usually 3x3). When the kids get into their season they each perform one A and one B workout each week. Our game days are Wednesdays and Saturdays, so the kids lift on Monday and Thursday. They continue to add weight each week, just at smaller increments. In the end, I work with males ages 14-19, so for the most part, no matter what they do they will get stronger. We just happen to do it very efficiently. For the spring, I have decided to eliminate giving kids cards, they will each spend the $4.99 and download the app to track their progress (Rip, this should be about 30-50 new downloads.)

Lastly, if you haven’t done so, get yourself to a seminar to learn how to coach the lifts better than how you are already doing it. Invaluable experience.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about what we are doing here.

Pierce Brennan
Strength and Conditioning Coordinator
Avon Old Farms School
brennanp@avonoldfarms.com

[crookedfinger]

But you really ought to just run the novice program as detailed in PPST3. Each kid keeps his own journal, each kid goes up every workout, there are no BB rows/KB bullshit/planks, and everybody gets stronger.

This! I am excited for the PL season to be over and I will get to run a pure Novice LP with my kids. We will milk that as long as we can and then to intermediate programming. Probably 4 day a week TM.

[John Janecek]

Coach,

I am very interested in this topic as I am a football coach and I have just taken over the weight room. Our issue, and I am sure I am not the only one, is what do you do with programming when you don't have the kids for the entire year. We are a small school that shares athletes. So my off season lifting may consist of 6-10 kids who are not playing basketball or wrestling. As soon as the spring sports start, I will lose most of those kids to a sport, and pick up some of the kids who were playing a winter sport and so on.

We started to put together a program of varied intensity and volume, working up over 5 week blocks leading into the spring and on into summer and pre-season. The reality is this just wouldn't work with the turnover in who can be in the weight room. So what we went to is a 3 day a week program. I run a 7 workout program, and I lay it out in a spreadsheet telling them their warm up sets and percentages of 5 rm max to use for their lifts. At the end of the 7th workout, we will re-adjust their numbers and start another block. We will have during each workout, no matter the day the following:
-Start with an Oly lift or variant of an Oly lift (we will work up to after a few sessions to cleans)
-3 strength lifts. We will vary these over the course of a 3 workout time period between bench/DL/RDL/press/BB rows and a few others.
-2 to 3 finishers (kettle bell, planks or something similar)

We are basically running these kids on a novice program as far as load increase, and mainly because about every 6-8 weeks we lose most of the kids and bring in new ones. If we had the same kids over a 12 month time frame we could get more specific and "scientific" with it. As it is now, I am just trying to get them some strength built in the small amount of time I have them over a 12 month period.

Not perfect, but it seems to work for us.

Losing kids to other sports and not lifting:

This is a concern at any school I've been at, big thing for me is getting ALL coaches of all the sports on the same page then doing a workout 3-4xwk that everyone participates in. If you have a game on a certain lifting day you dont lift that day. This way atleast kids keep doing the lifts all the offseason kids are doing and can keep consistent.

I just came back today from doing a clinic at a smaller HS in East Texas and this came up. This is what they told me they want to try but are not sure if it would work. I told them I thought it was a great idea and its the only way your going to get the multi sport athlete in the wtroom atleast part of the time. Also, its coming from the AD down to all coaches that "this is the way we are going to do it" so theres no confusion..That has to happen too..

Example from here: my basketball kids just finished their season and the BB kids that played FB are coming back to FB offseason. while they only came in 2xwk the past few months of BB VS 4xwk for FB they have been doing bench,press, DL, cleans.. They are a little beat going back to 4xwk but they arent too far behind on strength and their technique is good (and doesnt need to be retaught)..

You guys with the spreadsheets, journals and apps impress me. I guess if my kids went home and filled out a journal (or during lunch or class or??) I'd be ok with it but I have 60 min and sometimes as many as 160 kids lifting at once so my goal is getting weight on the bar, picking it up, and then trying to add a little the next time you show up (sounds familiar doesnt it?)...

Interesting thing I want to add that has nothing to do with the above...

I have been using the glute ham raise less and less and keeping the kids in the racks (squatting and pressing) or on the platforms (snatching, cleaning, front squatting, DL) more and I see our numbers getting better and better and we RARELY have a kid with any hamstring problems. I worried about this when I first got here as I've always liked using them for athletes. About three years ago we had the pads taken off to get redone and it took a very long time in the postseason to get them back. It was right before spring ball so there was no way I was going to add them back in (and make them sore) before we went to FB practice so I left them out. Next was summer strength/speed camp and I thought now isnt the time to add them as we are running more. The fall season starts and I'm not going to add them before our first game..

After all this it dawned on me we havent used glute hams for over a year and we are stronger now then ever and like I said hamstring issues just dont happen here...

Things that make you go hmmmm...

[Sean Berry]

Example from here: my basketball kids just finished their season and the BB kids that played FB are coming back to FB offseason. while they only came in 2xwk the past few months of BB VS 4xwk for FB they have been doing bench,press, DL, cleans.. They are a little beat going back to 4xwk but they arent too far behind on strength and their technique is good (and doesnt need to be retaught).

So, basketball kids were not squatting? Just asking because this has been big deal at my school.

sb