Rack plans are in the blue book.
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Give the more skilled kids in the shop class a welding project?Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
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Rack plans are in the blue book.
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Hadn't thought of that. We do have at least one welder; I will check with him.
No shop classes. Not that kind of school.
I did get word that one of our parents used to volunteer to keep stats for one of the local public high school football teams and has maintained his friendship with the coaching staff. Now, the schools in the area have all switched to functional fitness because they hate winning games and having a healthy roster apparently. Hopefully, we can convince them to donate or sell cheaply their icky old racks to us. They probably still use the bars since they have switched to a CrossFit-style program. They gotta have their bars for hanging cleans and for the one day a month that they do overhead squats.
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Another update. Roof is currently being replaced on our weight room, don't know how long it will take them but the space is probably about 600 sqft. Can't really rush them because it is volunteer labor.
I have managed to cobble together 3 rogue racks of different types that ought to be adequate for our little 12 man team. One squat stand, one actual four post rack and one "rig" that mounts to the floor and has crossmembers to the walls. We have gotten pretty good flat benches as well and about 600 lbs of iron plates. Need more plates and as of right now we only have one bar, a rogue ohio. Good bar but no center knurl
Does anybody have a good source for decent bars? Having real trouble finding anything but extremely cheap chinese ones locally. I'm afraid we are going to have to go with new ones, maybe we can find some blemished ones.
The boys are making progress in spite of our sub-optimal situation. We have them perfecting the movements on the press and bench press with extremely light weights. We don't have our racks set up so we are benching and pressing the bar as a preliminary during our strength sessions to get the movement right. We are adding weight to the press with two man volunteer "racks" to help get into the right position (no weight on the bench press bar though). They are actually getting to deadlift pretty heavy weekly. Many of them are lifting intensely for the first time and they are learning how to dig down deep. They are attentive about diet and sleep but are still so new that I don't really know how they are doing with that. Nobody is stuck yet, though.
Making the best of this preliminary period without adequate equipment. Lots of chalk board talks about the program and questions and answers. Team still enthusiastic, coach still totally on board.
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Kind of a cool update for today. A grandparent in the school has heard of our goals and turns out that he has a side gig as a gym equipment retailer for Fray Fitness, which as far as I can tell seems to be ok but not awesome stuff. He is adding a new line of products (Arch Fitness? ) and needs to clear some space out. He is giving us plates, bumper plates, bars, plate storage, and a power rack for free. So that would give us 9 barbells, about 2000 lbs of iron, we'll see how much bumper we get and 4 misc. racks with 3 flat benches and little money left to spend on micro change plates, rubber flooring from the tractor supply store, some Starting Strength wall posters, and a few other odds and ends.
The weight room roof is still under repair; the estimated completion time is the last week of May.
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This is all great stuff to hear!
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I'm attempting to attach a before and after in our little gym. First time post a pic so hopefully works as intended. The roof panels are still off where we are confirming that the leaks are all plugged. Pretty spartan, but frankly I think it's perfect. We need a few things, but it's functional. No distractions.
We had our first formal instruction on the squat yesterday with only about half the team present for our "optional workouts." At the end of June the team is required to be there. I have challenged the guys who are coming on optional days to get as strong as possible in the next few weeks to shame their buddies that aren't lifting into working to catch up later.
Boys are learning quickly. Lots of complaints about shoulder flexibility after this initial squat session, they've never done low bar before. Several began to get the hang of it and discovered if they were properly bent over, with knees properly out, the shoulders were relieved quite a bit. They are getting personal attention and have already been warned that we are going to be very picky about form, especially on squat. They're getting the feel of what a below parallel squat feels like.
Also did our first official bench press instruction. That went very smoothly. A few strength imbalances were discovered. Looking forward to ironing those out in the next few weeks with continuing bilateral training.
My most troublesome case is my youngest, 13 y/o, may not be at tanner 4 yet, but probably close. Not really worrying about significant gains with him at first, focusing on body awareness and control, and smooth motion through the eccentric part of the lifts. He keeps shooting his hips up on dead lifts and rounding his back, also.
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We've been at it 3 weeks now. 4 of my guys have not missed a workout but the school has insisted on the month of June being an optional period for the sports that want to do summer training. A sample of the boys success so far has been that the guys who have not missed all started roughly at similar weights around 150 on squat. That same group is all well over 200 by now and other lifts are going up at similar weights as well. They seem to be eating and resting sufficiently so far. We will see how they continue to progress.
Coaching is genuinely enjoyable. I like problem solving and the unique nature of each athlete is making me very glad I am a regular podcast listener as many of the issues I am seeing are things that I recall being covered q&a's and other places (lanky kid's knees are prone to caving in on the concentric, my youngest guy is borderline out of control on the eccentric, etc.). Having to hold the boys back from making too big of jumps now, they are at the stage where they have had enough gains that they are getting greedy and they are trying to creep up in the squat.
All of them but one have started power clean and the problem I am having with that is that the boys are not attacking the PC with enough aggression. Not enough explosion coming up past the knee. Their weights on it are still low at this point so they are getting away with it, but I want to correct it now. Continuing to work with them on it.
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This is great news - I for one appreciate reading encouraging things like this, so thank you. It should be fun as the dedicated trainees become your walking testimonials for the program.
Sounds like there's some aggression (I want bigger jumps on the squat!) in one area, so that's encouraging. Sounds like a challenge to solve is channeling that into aggression on the PC. You already have boys willing to be competitive by training when peers are not...maybe some friendly competition could unlock it in the PC? Just a thought...
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