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OFF SEASON PLAYER DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION: THE KEY TO SUCCESS

THE MADERA WEIGHTROOM
by: Randy Blankenship
Madera High School, Consultant, Clinician, and Football Camp Director
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The off-season is key for our program and is my favorite time of the year. It is when we try to develop our team mentally, physically and build our relationships with each other. In the public school arena, we are dealt a group of players. We must develop them if we want to be able to compete in the fall. Player development and consistent evaluation is essential for a program. We believe you can change a player's ability through the weight room and competitive games throughout the spring. You can take a "C" player and improve him to a "B" player or a "B" player can improve to an "A-" player. We all would love to have a bunch of "A" players but in reality we get what we get. Those who develop their players in the off-season experience much more success. The evaluation process is to make sure we get each player in the position that fits his abilities, his personality and our system. The evaluation process is done everyday no matter what we are doing. I believe you need to squeeze as much as you can out of a grape (player).

Our off-season begins a couple of weeks after the season unless we win the championship. We check our max on squat, bench, clean, vertical jump, standing long jump and the 20 and 40 times if weather permits the week following the season. Testing is the sure way to see if you are progressing throughout the year. Testing shows strength gains or lost speed and strength during the course of the year. I then can evaluate our lifting and speed program and make changes for the next season. We lift Monday-Wednesday-Friday during the season to insure we maintain our bodies and can make a stretch run in November and December. We play our games on Friday nights and lifting on game days helps to relax our team.

In the off-season we lift, work on running skills, play combative and competitive games. We don't work on football skills until we have our team identified and in the right frame of mind to play the game. I will discuss our team-building activities in a later article. Our weight room is a key instrument in our player development. If a player continues to improve throughout the year and he is consistent and competitive in our weight room I believe we can win with him and we need to find a place for him on our team. I realize some players will be at their best after high school but continual growth as a person and player is huge for his self-esteem.

Our weight room is designed to be a functional room to be used by all of our teams. I encourage our players to participate in more than one sport and therefore they need to be able to lift year-round and be able to compete well in their other sports. The room has sixteen lifting stations, which can be used independently or in a four-station cycle. I have changed my approach to lifting a great deal in the past several years. I stay with our offensive and defensive systems every year, but I am always trying to be on the cutting edge of training an athlete. It also helps me keep with the same football systems, which I believe has helped us stay competitive every year. I am fortunate to have an outstanding training facility thanks to our principal convincing our superintendent and school board that our athletes deserved a place to develop their bodies so they can be highly competitive and safe.

In our weight room we have sixteen half racks with an in floor platform at each rack. We use many items to help us develop our athletes. This set up saves space and utilizes every inch of our 2,400-foot room. I know there are much bigger weight rooms with nicer equipment out there, but this room is cost-effective and we can train 64 athletes at a time in our room. We use the following equipment in our room: dumb bells, kettle bells, medicine balls, D-Balls, physio balls, slant boards, balance pods, speed hurdles, plyometric boxes, row machines, glute-ham stations, heavy rubber bands, heavy jump ropes, dynamax balls and a leg drive machine. It has taken a few years to build our inventory and we continue to purchase more each year. I believe you need to be able to work with the minimum and build your room from there.

After we max at the end of our season, we will use the time before Christmas to hit a weak area of our team hard until Christmas break (i.e. legs, chest, core, cleans). We will lift three days a week until the winter break. In January we will lift four days a week--Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday--and play some sort of game the other day. If we have a holiday during the week, we will only lift three days so we can always have a play day. Our play days are key for keeping a fresh attitude. Games can furthermore be beneficial in evaluating your players in many ways. We do not work on football skills on the field until we have identified our team and improve their mind and relationships with each other. We spend our days as follows: Leg Day, Chest and Arms, Explosive Lifts and Core and Back. Variety is key to make sure you do not grow stagnant during the off-season.

The players will not do the same workout for several weeks, but we will work more on the areas that the group shows weakness. We use cycles that consist of 8's, 6's, 5's and 3's. I am sure many teams will lift heavier than us, but my goal is to develop athletes that can move, be explosive with good balance and who can hold together for the season. We rarely have players on our sideline because of injury and I believe our training has a lot to do with this success. We have to check our ego at the door because our lift totals are not close to some of our competitors but our philosophy has changed. Speed kills and we play extremely quick and fast. Our track team rarely wins many of the speed races in track but can win the cross-country races anytime. The evaluation process continues throughout the year. If a player is inconsistent throughout the year, he will follow the same path during the season. I look for those players who continue to grow in all areas throughout the years and put faith into those who make a commitment. Players who are highly competitive and show continual improvement are high on our list when we make up our depth chart. I don't want players who look like Tarzan and play like Jane. The players who put their bodies through tough times and always fight for that extra rep will win games for you in the fall. I expect their best effort each and every day. I give them plenty of time off and watch them carefully to see if their bodies are wearing down. In short, I believe "more is not better."

If a player competes in the weight room, coaches his teammates and improves his totals, he will be a player who will get better as a player. It is a tough sale job throughout the spring to get all of our team on board. It is a daily struggle and one you must win or suffer the consequences. If a player begins to affect our team in a negative way, it is time to let him go, especially if he is going to be a senior. A coach needs to push his team, encourage them, direct them and help set their sights on greatness. Being in the room is not enough. A coach must coach - develop his players every day.

We test every six weeks or so, depending on our school vacations. The usual strength maxes help to chart progress, including the standing long jump (over 100 is a good mark), vertical jump and then we do a couple of other tests that will tell me if they have explosive strength and who can control their own body weight. In these tests, we use sixty percent of their body weight to test their bench and squat for explosive strength. We use a stopwatch to time them for 5 reps as fast as they can lift sixty percent of their body weight. The times that indicate good strength are under 5 seconds for the squat and under 4 seconds for the bench. If we have 15-20 athletes in the 4-second range in the squats, we will be a fast team on the football field. I have done this test over the past twenty years and those times have proven best for the players and teams that I have coached.

We also lift "until failure" as a competition to change the routine or test our team's mental make-up. The amount they lift isn't the key but going past the point of pain is huge for me. We use 185 for the squat and 135 for the bench so we include most all of our players' abilities. They go until they fail and we could split the team in two or three groups and add the total number of reps. We have found that a player that can do 40, 50 or 60 reps is a tough competitor. I have had really strong players get only 20 or so because they do not like pain. The player described, can only play on one side of the ball and is pulled as soon as he looks tired. He may play only four plays at a time, then he is pulled to rest and then re-enters the games. You need to find out what type of gas tank a player has in the off-season with tests that challenge their mind. We will leave the weight room on some days and run "get up" sprints to get faster and see who will run hard when they are tired. The games we play in the off-season on our off days are a huge part of our player development. I will discuss some of our ideas in a later article.

In conclusion, we utilize our weight room to evaluate and develop our athlete's strength, explosiveness, balance, competitiveness and our team's relationship with each other. A player's work ethic, consistency, commitment and desire to improve are huge. Evaluating a player throughout the year whether it is in the weight room, during our games or when he competes in other sports is essential for us to place him in a position that best fits his abilities and traits. In my thirty plus years of coaching, I have found our player development and evaluation to be a huge tool for our consistency throughout the years regardless of our talent level. I am always searching for new and better ways to develop players throughout the year. I look forward to discussing further ideas or concepts with other coaches.

Randy Blankenship can be reached at blankenshipr@madera.k12.ca.us.





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