The BIG P WORD, LP in the hs sports world..

Hey rip, just thought I'd drop some food for thought from SS in action at the high school ranks.

Nobody and I truly mean just about nobody understands that the average person especially a teenage male IS able to simply add weight to the bar over a decent amount of time.
What we do is very very similar to what John did a Longview. After quick daily speech about why being strong is badass ;), We set a clock, tell them the reps, and let em go!
At the beginning of offseason we treat the kids as novices and allow them to add weight a couple times a week as long as they are technically sound, solid reps. No percentages or any of that bs, all the kids have to do is lift!

When they slow down a bit, (which takes longer than most coaches would assume) we switch them to an intermediate-esq program. With our group setting we can control 3 variables, 1 the amount of time they do a particular lift (volume), the number of Reps in a set they do, or the variation of the lifts they are doing (power clean instead of dead, FS instead of squat etc). They now add weight to the the given variables on a weekly basis just as an intermediate does. It essentially becomes HLM but in a group setting.

Coaches love to collaborate and ask what we do and how it's working, as well as shoot the idea of an LP down! the BIGGEST fallacy we hear is "how do you do that? I just don't see how your kids don't PLATEAU?... You guys have done this for 1 year now.. They're gonna PLATEAU.. We do this to keep our kids from hitting a PLATEAU.. or hit me with their bullshit NSCA lingo, about how this just wont work..

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this exact statement. I was in the office with a coach on Monday who made these claims, Ironically after I'd just got done coaching a group of about 70 kids of whom about 65 had added weight to the bar and made progress.

Why do people have to make something so easy seem so complicated?

Why in the hell does everyone think it's so easy to just PLATEAU??

Why is everyone so scared of the big P word when very rarely have I heard you talk of it?

I Honestly don't think I've ever heard or read that word come out of your mouth on any amount of information I've gathered from you, stall maybe... plateau no..
Everyone who thinks they're someone seems to drop that word immediately upon seeing an LP in action..

These kids will never, with just a few years of training, at the age of 17 be elite level lifters who can't make weekly progress.

Again Just a rant, and possibly some food for thought.

Well, okay.

I find this interesting.

The "plateau" is talked about a lot in skiing. Beginners can usually get around in about a week. After that thy are supposed to improve so that they can around on harder terrain efficiently, but they often don't.

The state between completely useless and competent skiing is often (wrongly) deemed "intermediate".

There are specialist courses to help people off the "plateau" and into the world of skiing like a person who can actually do it well. Some make an improvement during the class and then lose it again, and keep harking back to the days when their technique was better and how their current instructor is contradicting what they were previously told.

The truth is that their problem is two fold.

First: They don't bother to train, somehow the instructing session is supposed to infuse them with skill by osmosis as the coaches words permeate their nervous systems. They might spend a few minutes on drills in the morning and then go off trundling from café to café like a sack of spuds on a pair of fence planks.

Second: They are too damn weak. Hoping that a sport will get you fit is okay for a beginner, but if you want to progress in something that requires you to handle G forces, you either need to do it a lot or find an exercise that enables you to support more than your body weight while bending and straightening your legs as you balance over your mid foot, preferably one that allows you to progressively bear more weight as you progress.

I occasionally get asked how I got so good. I'm not, I'm an instructor and a middle intermediate at best. I'm still better at what I do than most of those I teach. Its simple. I got a lot of coaching and still do. Skills are practiced slowly on easy terrain with correct technique and then gradually quicker and on harder terrain.

The "plateau" just means it got difficult. You can either go and do something less difficult and more fun, or keep grinding away at the same old thing and accept that progress takes time.

Yes, but weights are heavy, and lifting them is hard. Until they solve that problem, we are probably doomed.

I think it is awesome that you are doing the program in a high school. That's got to be a huge advantage and I bet after a couple of years of doing it the other coaches won't be using the P word. They'll just be asking you how you did it and how they can replicate your success.

I'm a high school coach myself in a sport (rowing) where many "elite" programs do NO weight training even at the collegiate level. The governing body of the sport includes some advice to do functional training in their coaching certification which manifests itself as a bizarre circuit of body weight "core" exercises. A few really progressive coaches just send their kids to a cross fit box once or twice a week.

I'm in the process of doing a novice linear progression myself and very slowly introducing the team to the press, squat, and deadlift. Trouble is we are a coed team that spans 8th-12th grades and has 24 kids sharing a single squat rack. Where there's a will there's a way. I'll figure it out eventually and we'll be the strongest kids around (which I don't think will take a lot of effort).

I guess I should be happy no one is standing in my gym telling me my kids will plateau or that they are headed to snap city lifting heavy weights.

The fact that you haven't heard Rip talking about it may be an issue of terminology. If you read old school training articles (60s or older), then you'll learn about lifters "getting stale" rather than stalling or plateauing.

Eating enough will wreck my abs.
Sleeping enough is lame.
I don't have time to rest between sets. I'm really busy.

Can't I just take a pill?

Yep, Rip's first three questions in objection form. I think the "take a pill" thing is from Sully's "Health will never come in pill form". Although the desire for this is great.

It takes time to instill the right mindset. And even then it is fragile. The group think of this age group is challenging.
But the up side is atomic.

I tell you, it would be a real tragedy if a bunch of high school football players went and plateaued themselves with heavy deadlifts. They might fall behind on their bosu ball mobility curls.

I asked my kid's 14U water polo coach what the high schoolers were doing for S&C. What a shitshow he described.

I'll have to work on her sandbagging-in-the-weight-room drills.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CoachRod

Hey rip, just thought I'd drop some food for thought from SS in action at the high school ranks.

Nobody and I truly mean just about nobody understands that the average person especially a teenage male IS able to simply add weight to the bar over a decent amount of time.
What we do is very very similar to what John did a Longview. After quick daily speech about why being strong is badass ;), We set a clock, tell them the reps, and let em go!
At the beginning of offseason we treat the kids as novices and allow them to add weight a couple times a week as long as they are technically sound, solid reps. No percentages or any of that bs, all the kids have to do is lift!

When they slow down a bit, (which takes longer than most coaches would assume) we switch them to an intermediate-esq program. With our group setting we can control 3 variables, 1 the amount of time they do a particular lift (volume), the number of Reps in a set they do, or the variation of the lifts they are doing (power clean instead of dead, FS instead of squat etc). They now add weight to the the given variables on a weekly basis just as an intermediate does. It essentially becomes HLM but in a group setting.

Coaches love to collaborate and ask what we do and how it's working, as well as shoot the idea of an LP down! the BIGGEST fallacy we hear is "how do you do that? I just don't see how your kids don't PLATEAU?... You guys have done this for 1 year now.. They're gonna PLATEAU.. We do this to keep our kids from hitting a PLATEAU.. or hit me with their bullshit NSCA lingo, about how this just wont work..

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this exact statement. I was in the office with a coach on Monday who made these claims, Ironically after I'd just got done coaching a group of about 70 kids of whom about 65 had added weight to the bar and made progress.

Why do people have to make something so easy seem so complicated?

Why in the hell does everyone think it's so easy to just PLATEAU??

Why is everyone so scared of the big P word when very rarely have I heard you talk of it?

I Honestly don't think I've ever heard or read that word come out of your mouth on any amount of information I've gathered from you, stall maybe... plateau no..
Everyone who thinks they're someone seems to drop that word immediately upon seeing an LP in action..

These kids will never, with just a few years of training, at the age of 17 be elite level lifters who can't make weekly progress.

Again Just a rant, and possibly some food for thought.

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Your on the right track coach making this work in a school setting. Keep it up!!

I'm probably underestimating this but I'd say about %99.9 of the sports coaches I've worked with just don't have a clue when it comes to getting kids strong. I've heard some pretty silly bullshit in the last 27 years. It's not even fun to debate/correct them as they can't even back up the stupid comment they just made.