Get Strong – Four Proven Off-Season Strength and Conditioning Programs

BISHOP GORMAN HIGH SCHOOL
Las Vegas, Nevada

Head Coach –Tony Sanchez
Enrollment – 1,200 students
9-12 Football Program – 160-180 athletes
Four consecutive Nevada 4A Championships, Nationally-Ranked Program

Sean Manuel serves as Head Strength and Conditioning Coach and also coaches the offensive line at Bishop Gorman. When he joined the Gorman staff in 2010, he completely revamped the outdated strength and conditioning facility.

The Facility

Our weightroom facilities include a 4-lane, 60-yard track, 22 work stations (11 half racks, 11 full racks that include four pneumatic air-run power racks). The racks are connected by cross suspension pieces that provide us the ability to do cross suspension work outside the racks. Each work station (rack) has a single leg squat pad, TRX band, dip attachment, a pair of 22 lb. chains, two pairs of bar rack cups, two pull up stations, a land mind piece with a jammer attachment, built in Olympic bumper plate rack and band attachment pegs built into the rack frames for band training with three pairs of different size bands.

We have 10 sleds, 10 50lb. kettle bells, 10 120lb. dumbbells with a dumbbell area that includes seven benches. We have three leg drives, 48 foam rollers, 40+ jump ropes, 40 weight vests, 28 bosu balls, 35 phisio balls, 24 medicine balls, six glut-ham machines, two multi-pillar cable stations, two leg press, two leg curls and 4 treadmills that reach 25 grade and 18 mph.

Off-Season Philosophy and Strategy

Our philosophy focuses on building an environment and program design that aids our athletes in becoming the strongest and most athletic version of them possible. We implement the “What you got” expectation – whatever you “got” on any given day when you come in to train, we expect 100% of it. Our expectation isn’t that the kids just do something. The expectation is that the kids learn to build the character and work ethic necessary to do what it takes to get the job done.

Our basic approach to our winter program fits within our 52-week periodized program design. It includes assessment - being able to clearly identify the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the athlete or team - development and implementation of a systematic plan to address those needs by carrying out a program that increases athletic performance over a given period of time. Also, injury prevention through proper lifting techniques and corrective exercise training.

We generally begin the winter program the first week of January. The primary focus of our initial time together, about the first month, is assessment, anatomical adaptation, corrective exercise training and strength stabilization work.

Once we have gone through these initial phases – to create proper alignment and technique, develop more functional movement patterns, sufficiently increase joint stability and adequately restore muscle length tension relationships in compensatory areas – we go into a pretty extensive hypertrophy phase for about four to eight weeks depending on the needs of the group. If we have a very muscularly developed group, we do about four weeks in hypertrophy. If we have a less muscularly developed group that needs to put on considerable size and weight, we do eight weeks of hypertrophy.

Program Specifics

Here is an overview of part of our annual program design for January-April (Charts 1-5). We do not usually go into any position-specific work with the team until the end of March. The QBs and WRs start throwing the ball on their own in February and the DBs usually go and shadow them, but they do this on their own and it is not something that is facilitated by our program. Our whole focus at this point is to see how technically functional, stable and big we can get the kids.

We also do body weight training with the junior high players coming in to be freshman. Once we have worked to really stabilize their kinetic chain and build proper technique, we start to load them with body bars that range from 9-32lbs. They do baseline movement patterns (proper speed mechanics and jump landing mechanics) and technical lifting patterns on basic lifts for the Clean, Squat and Bench in a slow, controlled fashion for the majority of their freshman year.

The JV does an extended version of the varsity’s anatomical adaptation and strength stability phase. They usually stay in this baseline phase for two months. We do this for both their strength development and speed development. We also make technique and proper movement patterns the primary focus for them from January-March. Then we begin to load them after this point gradually until the summer.

Motivation Program

Our incentive for the kids is a shirt program. Every kid starts out wearing a white shirt. Once he reaches a certain max on his lifts, he is allowed to wear a different color shirt. The different color shirts signify a certain lifting accomplishment and “status” in the weight room.

In order to wear a blue shirt an athlete must bench 225, squat 300 and clean 200. In order to wear an orange or black shirt, an athlete must bench 275, squat 350 and clean 225. In order for an athlete to receive the highest awarded shirt (an Iron Man shirt) which is a specialty shirt that is navy blue with a picture of a lifter on it and the words “Iron Man” printed on it, an athlete has to bench 300, squat 400 and clean 275. The shirt they wear in the weight room is a source of pride and a symbol of the athletes’ hard work and dedication to getting better.

Chart 1: Bishop Gorman annual winter program design overview

Chart 2: A weekly overview for corrective exercise and general anatomical adaptation

Chart 3: A week overview for strength and stabilization training

Chart 4: A week overview for hypertrophy training

Chart 5: A week overview for end of hypertrophy and the incorporation of position specific work on Wednesdays

Piedmont High School
 Monroe, North Carolina

Head Coach – Ron Massey
Enrollment – 1,100 students
9-12 Football Program – 75-80 athletes
The Panthers play as a member of the 3A Southern Carolina Conference. They have won seven games (7-4) heading into the post-season.

Mark Hoover is the Piedmont Strength and Conditioning Coach. He also teaches Social Studies. This is his second year at the school.

The Facility

We have a field house that is separate from the high school. We have nine power racks and two Olympic bars at each rack. We have bumper plates, metal plates, and a bench for each station. We also have two reverse hyper machines, two glute ham machines, two pull down machines and two complete sets of dumbbells up to 100 pounds. We have a “tools” closet with stretch bands, chains, slam balls, medicine ball, kettlebells, foam rollers, jump ropes, sledge hammers and battle ropes. We also have plyometric boxes.

Behind the weight room is a large grassy area. We have a 30 x 8 sandpit, big tires, various sleds and speed agility equipment. Most everything we have was purchased through fundraising or our by our football booster club.

Off-Season Philosophy and Strategy

At Piedmont High School, a strong, well-rounded and proactive strength and conditioning program is the key to developing a strong football program. We work tirelessly to sell that philosophy to our student-athletes and their parents. We believe that the strength and conditioning program is where you develop team chemistry and where team rules, standards and expectations are put into place.

The Panther motto is “technique before numbers”. We strive to be as technically sound as possible and refuse to allow the players to sacrifice this for sake of bigger weights. The initial phase of our off-season program begins after the end of our season, or in early December if we’ve participated in the playoffs. This initial phase is really not a phase, but active rest. Being a smaller school, a good percentage of our athletes participate in winter sports. Others are encouraged to be active but our organized strength and conditioning activities are suspended.

We kick our program into full swing once our Spring semester begins in mid-January. We are blessed to have strength and conditioning as an academic credit course during the school day. We have four 90-minute periods during the school day. The vast majority of our student-athletes will be enrolled in the course. The small number of athletes we do not see during the school day will train in the mornings before school three days a week.

We begin to work with our rising freshmen in early February two days a week after school. Monday we squat, clean and jerk. Wednesday we front squat, snatch and bench. We use the basic principles behind the “Bigger, Faster, Stronger” program for this. We feel the BFS program is a great way to introduce the players to progressive overload. We will run this program through the middle of May.

Program Specifics

Three days each week are lifting days with the other two being our speed/agility/ and conditioning days. We start off with testing. We will test the full squat, flat bench, clean, vertical jump and pro agility. We use a formula based on those maxes to project every other exercise we will do. We use a “density training” philosophy for our volume and intensity ranges.

Mondays we will clean, back squat, jerk and snatch along with some lower posterior work. Tuesday we will dead lift, bench, incline and do some sort of barbell rows and pulls. Our goal is to do our pulls and our pushes at a 2:1 ratio, meaning we do double the volume of pulls as we do pushes. Thursday is our third day and we will hit snatches, front squats, good mornings and overhead squats.

Wednesday is our agility and change-of-direction day. We do an extensive ladder routine with steady state, linear and elastic response agility. Our change-of-direction drills focus on both open and closed drills using cones. One key addition we have made recently is a “mental training” aspect to our cone drills. The final set of drills, once our players are taxed physically, is to challenge them with a physical drill that takes “thinking on the run” to complete.

We place a series of colored cones out for the drill. Each group is given a series of colors that correspond with the cones. For example, I will say “red, blue, orange, red, purple” and then blow the whistle. The players must touch the cones in the order I called out while on the run. I believe this forces them to think on the run while they are also tired, simulating a late-game situation. We believe this has translated into our team’s improved ability to perform late in games last season.

Friday is our linear speed, plyometric and intensity training day. We will do our sprinting, our plyometrics and challenge the players with stations of various drills and movements. We use tire flips, sledge hammer swings, battle ropes, sleds, etc. for these stations. Each station is timed and we make it as competitive as possible. We want this day to be a physical and mental challenge.

Here is an example of a week with our three lifting days (Chart 6).

Chart 6: Piedmont High School’s Three Lifting Days

Motivation

Our motivation program is a points system where each player can achieve levels based on performance and other factors. This is a three “tier” club program based on total points accumulated during the winter/spring program. Our top scorers fall into the “Barbarian” category. This is hard to achieve and these athletes must score high in each category to qualify. Most of these players will be rising seniors.

The second tier is “Hard Rock” and the final is “Iron Panther”. We have billboards in the weight room with the qualifications for each group. They also get a t-shirt when they reach the club levels. This leads to a great level of competition and causes the kids to really push themselves. It also sets the tone for who our leaders will be. In the past I’ve also used a “clean club” in which I set a minimum weight goal for each player to reach for entrance into the club. The first year I set the goal at 185 pounds. By the end of the school year we had all but a small handful reach that level. The next year we raised the weight to 205 pounds and saw similar success.

Battle Ground Academy
Franklin, Tennessee

Head Coach – Rahim Batten
Enrollment – 320 students
9-12 Football Program – 62 athletes
Battle Ground Academy has won seven state championships, the last one in 2003.

Fred Eaves is the Strength and Conditioning Coach at Battle Ground Academy. He is also defensive line coach and Wellness and Athletic Performance Coordinator for all BGA students and athletic teams. Coach Eaves has trained 32 NFL Draft picks as well as 10 NCAA All-Americans.
The Facility

We have a 6000 square foot weight room with a 40’ x 40’ indoor turf area and 40-yard speed track. We have ten platforms and ten half racks with step-up boxes and training blocks at each rack. We also have six glute-ham machines, two jammers, and a variety of selectorized and cardio equipment for rehabilitation and general wellness purposes. Our dumbbell area is also very large with six benches and dumbbells from five to 100 pounds. We also have a large section of medicine balls, foam rollers, and bands.

Off-Season Philosophy and Strategy

Our philosophy is multi-faceted. We want to develop our athletes mentally as well as physically. We assess their strengths and weaknesses and then create a comprehensive plan for each athlete to reach his potential for the next season. It takes the cooperation of our entire athletic staff to accomplish this goal.

We are a small school and many of our football players are multi-sport athletes. Our wellness and athletic performance program as well as the cooperation of all of our sport coaches ensures that our athletes continue to lift year-round. We still lift heavy in our in-season program, and both our players and sport coaches understand that we must do this to make sure that our athletes are progressing instead of just maintaining. It was very important to get our coaches from other sports to understand this philosophy in order for us to successfully develop our players.

Academically, BGA is very challenging, so we also hold workouts before school and after school for athletes who may have a hard time fitting the class into their day due to the rigors of their academic schedule. Study Hall is also a time where students can complete a workout if their grades merit an exemption from this period during the school day. We have many opportunities for our players to get in the weight room, so we do not accept excuses on participation in the off-season program.

It is our plan each year that we are going to play until the first week of December. At BGA, we then go into exams immediately after that week. We cannot have organized workouts during our exam period, so we are going to use that time and our Christmas break as our active recovery/rest period. We want our athletes to come back both physically and mentally prepared to work when we begin in January.

Program Specifics

When we return in January, we go on a tier system. We do a three-day total body lift with two days of speed and movement work. Our program is broken down into four blocks – five counting the wildcat block. Monday will be session T (total body), Wednesday will be session U (upper body), and Friday will be session L (lower body). We will perform total, upper, and lower body exercises on each of these days as well as a posterior chain and posterior shoulder exercise. We use our block system to progress our athletes through middle school, freshman, junior varsity, and varsity play.

Block 1 (White) - Is where our athletes begin to work with weight and perform some of the basic exercises they are going to need to be successful and healthy long-term in our program. We are working on our Olympic lifts with great technique and speed on the bar. Push-ups, pull-ups, inverted row, and dips will be an element at the end of every workout at this developmental stage. Core lifts for this group would be the trap bar deadlift, overhead press, and overhead squat.

Block 2 (Gray) - This is usually where our athletes begin to do more advanced exercises, but they still work very heavily on technique with our Olympic movements. We are very strict about the weight we let them use at this training stage. The core movements for this group are clean deadlift, bench press, and front squat.

Block 3 (Gold) - We begin to progress heavily into the Olympic movements with our athletes in this stage. This is usually our junior and senior athletes. We also introduce the back squat in this block. The core movements for this block are - power clean, front squat, bench, and back squat.

Block 4 (Blue) - Our very advanced and best lifters will progress to the Blue Block. These athletes have tremendous technique, core strength, relative body strength, and athletic ability. This is a stage we might implement some more conjugate type periodization with the rotation of exercises. The core exercises for this block are the full clean, bench variations, back squat/front squat rotation.

Wildcat Block - Is a specific program for middle school athletes and freshmen. This block is mainly body weight, and works to establish a base of relative body strength, balance, and body control with our athletes. They will learn our Olympic progression and how to perform our basic exercises correctly and safely. The speed program will also be very basic and they will learn proper body position and proper arm action during this phase.

This is our January through March
overview of our program:

January - We begin our speed and movement work in January.

Week One – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

Week Two – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

Week Three – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

Week Four – 3-day total body lift (unload), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

February - We begin incorporating one strongman lift per day at the end of the workout. For example, keg carry, tire flips, sledge hammer slams, prowler sleds, battling ropes.

Week One – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

Week Two – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lineal series speed work.

Week Three – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lateral series speed work.

Week Four – 3-day total body lift (unload), 2-day base lateral series speed work.

March - We continue with our strongman lift per day plus we add lineal plyometrics such as bounding during this phase on a speed day each week.

Week One – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base lateral series speed work + plyo’s.
Week Two – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day base weave series speed work + plyo’s.

Week Three – 3-day total body lift (load), 2-day weave series speed work + plyo’s.

Week Four - Spring Break (unload) - Active rest - we provide them with a light plan for that week. We count this as our unloading week.

Motivation Program

We use various methods to motivate, but we truly believe that our Pyramid of Success is the foundation of all we do (Chart 7). We give players other types of awards to build confidence as well as to keep the attention of our athletes throughout the school year. We give awards that honor our best lifters in our in-season, off-season, and summer programs. We have a standards board for each grade level that has milestones we want each player to achieve in certain lifts depending upon which block of training they are in. We attach T-shirts to these milestones, and these shirts are very popular with our kids. You can only earn these shirts through our program, and they are not sold at the school store unlike most of our other gear.

Chart 8: Randolph’s Sample Week

Our pound-for-pound record board is also a great motivator for our athletes. I truly believe in pound-for-pound recognition at the high school level due to the different developmental ages and sizes we deal with at this level. It gives a variety of kids a chance to work hard and be recognized for committing to our program.

Lastly, relationship building is the most important way in which we connect with and motivate our players. We love our players, and we spend a tremendous amount of time getting to know our players and investing in their lives. They know they can come to us with any issue, and we are going to be supportive and work to help them through whatever challenge they may be going through whether it be school, family, or peer-related. Kids will run through a brick wall for you when they know you love and care about them. Caring and loving your players is something that has to be genuine, and kids will know if their coach is sincere or not. They will see through coaches that do not truly invest in their lives. Our philosophy is that everything has to be centered on our players in order to be truly successful at the high school level.


Randolph High School
Randolph, Minnesota

Head Coach – Chris Stanton
Enrollment – 161
9-12 Football Program – 36 Athletes
Randolph plays 9-man football. This year, they won their first playoff game since 2003 and only their second playoff win since 1992.

Aaron Soule is the weight room coordinator at Randolph High School. He also serves as offensive coordinator and athletic director, and is a middle school social studies teacher.

The Facility

We recently built a new weight room that came from a referendum. We have four platforms for athletes to do Olympic lifting and we have two multi-racks that have squat racks on each side for a total of four squat/bench stations. We also have a cable crossover that can do a variety of exercises. Additionally, we have two treadmills, two elipticals, and a range of dumbbells. I started the weightlifting program one and a half years ago and have been slowing getting rid of big stationary equipment like our leg press, pectoral machine, and other machines that were more often used as seats than workout equipment. The majority of our workouts are done on the platforms, in the racks, and in the hallway and gym.

Off-Season Philosophy and Strategy

My basic philosophy building a program for our football players is to make the weight room a place where the kids want to be. Once they commit to the program I can make them work as hard as I want them to. I’m always trying to build more explosive athletes and get the athletes to squat deeper. I believe that a deeper squat will help us become more flexible, stronger, and ultimately faster. We have many athletes that play two-three sports due to the size of school. As much as I want to create an ultimate football player, it is more important in our situation to build athletes that can also succeed on the basketball court, baseball field, etc. I want to have an answer for every kid that says he can’t lift because of basketball or baseball.

I don’t create position-specific workouts, but I have two workouts for the athletes – in-season and out-of-season. I believe that incorporating the junior high has been huge in the growth of our weight room. Our varsity football team hasn’t had a winning record since 1993. I have been recruiting as many kids as I can to commit to the weight room. Our older kids have been so set in their ways that it is harder to get them to commit so I decided to start recruiting the kids earlier. I have the younger kids do the exact same workout our older kids do, but a lot less weight. I want the kids on the platforms performing snatches and clean-and-jerks.
 
Program Specifics

At Randolph, we follow the Bigger, Faster, Stronger philosophy and training schedule. Our weekly off-season schedule mirrors our summer eight-week strength and conditioning schedule. Below is a chart for the first week of January that shows the lifts for the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday sessions. This schedule then continues for eight weeks (Chart 8).

Motivation Program
 
First, we reward the kids who show up. I also write hand-written notes and mail them home to the kids. In this day of technology, it is amazing how a hand-written note still means something. I have noticed the kids who received letters have become more committed, are better leaders and are encouraging other kids to join. Finally, we held a Lift-A-Thon in the spring. Kids went out and received donations and I let them max out. We used the money to purchase equipment in the weight room.