9th Grade Weight Lifting Class
I am a PE Teacher at a Junior High(7th-9th). We offer a weights class for our 9th graders, and over the past 3 years I've been attempting to run a Starting Strength Model for our program. We've run into a few issues along the way, but I've gradually got it to a point where I'm feeling good about the program. The major issue is time, which is made worse by space. We have 45 minute period, which sounds like a perfect time range for SS workout, however once you factor in getting dressed, and changing, as well as 20-24 kids divided between 6 platforms it can get tricky. 4 kids per rack with different working set weights changing in and out takes more time than you'd think. Once you factor in changing time, we really have about 35 minutes. We tried the basic program of 3 core lifts a day and it was train wreck with time. Next we went to "Double Days" (Squat/Bench Day, Squat/Press Day) but still weren't quite finishing up the second movement especially as working sets started becoming more challenging. Kids were just doing everything as fast they could, and not really having the time to really focus in on the lifts and often times not finishing their sets before class was over. At this point we are on one lift a day:
Monday - Squat
Tuesday - Bench
Wednesday - DL
Thursday - Press
Friday - Clean
I like this the best because the kids have enough time to finish their set correctly and the days are easy to manage. At the beginning of class I'll do a quick technique overview for the given lift, and then they go through their core lift and really get to focus in on it, then we fill the remainder of class with auxiliaries. The main objective of the class is that they have mastered the technique more-so than actually getting stronger, but the kids still improve as-per the Novice Effect.
Any ideas or experiences anyone has running weights classes with small time parameters and limited space would be appreciated.