High School Strength and Conditioning

THE NECESSARY INGREDIENT FOR SUCCESS
by: Matt Fulks
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“But if I knew then what I know now, we might have won a few more championships.” - Mike Nitka



In Indiana, basketball is king. Except at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis. Sure, the basketball teams have enjoyed modest success recently. But since 1984, the football program has won seven state championships, been nationally ranked three times, including a national championship in 1991.

Strength coach Kevin Vanderbush is largely responsible for that. Before Vanderbush arrived in ‘84, the football team had only 11 winning seasons in the school’s previous 47 years of football.

“I was very fortunate in that when I started as a strength coach, our school’s football coach (Dick Dullagham) had just come back to high school coaching from the college level, so he had an understanding of the importance of strength training,” said Vanderbush. “Our strength training program was credited as one of the important factors that allowed our football team to win.”

Vanderbush, who was selected as the 2001-02 National High School Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year by the Professional Football Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society, is proving the point that an increasing number of high schools are learning: a good strength and conditioning program is necessary for teams that want to be successful.

Until a little more than a quarter-century ago, strength training was taboo. Many coaches at all levels felt that strength work would hurt performance. It was assumed that athletes would bulk up to Hulkian proportions, lose speed or damage their hearts.

Then, in the early 1980s, the coaching world as a whole started to see the benefits of strength and conditioning programs. Athletes became faster. Nagging injuries, such as muscle pulls and strains, started decreasing. Even when athletes did sustain an injury, they recovered faster when they were well conditioned.

Athletes had the building blocks they needed to succeed. That’s even truer today.

“I think that (strength and conditioning) has gone from something that was optional to where it’s absolutely mandatory to compete,” says Ken Cass, the strength coach at McQueen High School in Reno, Nev. “If you’re not doing it at your school, you’re falling behind the eight ball.”

The Base of Your Program

Whether in spite or because of its importance, there really is no sure thing when it comes to setting up a strength and conditioning program. The general standard today encompasses year-round resistance training, cardio work and proper nutrition. After that, the possibilities for the actual program are seemingly limitless.

“The biggest hurdle for high school strength coaches today is setting up programs,” says Patrick McHenry, the strength coach at Ponderosa High School in Parker, Colo. “We encourage our athletes to go out for more than one sport because research shows it will help them in the long run. However, this will cause the athlete to not have an off season because they go from one sport to another.

“I have to modify my programs so I do not burn the athlete out or over train them.”

During the early years of conditioning programs, when coaches were still learning how muscles work, athletes in all sports were on one workout. Now, with advancements in exercise physiology, even athletes within the same sport are on different programs.

“We must know WHO we are training, WHAT we are training for and have a PLAN,” Doug Fairchild, the strength and conditioning coach at Caprock High School in Amarillo, Texas, wrote in an e-mail interview. “In football, the requirements for speed, absolute strength and endurance may be quite different for an offensive lineman as compared to a free safety... To really match up a good program, each individual athlete needs their own, individualized workout.”

Bruce Harbach, the head football coach and strength coach at Lancaster Catholic High School and the strength and conditioning coordinator at Wilson High School in Pennsylvania, added: “The strength coach needs to communicate with the other coaches to see what their teams’ needs are and then design programs around those needs.”

“Every High School Should Have Free Weights”

Although fitness machines found favor in many weight rooms around the country, coaches still prefer good old-fashion free weights.

“Every high school should have free weights!” wrote Fairchild. “We can replicate with barbells and dumbbells, literally, every exercise any machine can do. We can do myriad variations of these exercises, take up less space, get more people trained and have much greater proprioception and neural adaptation with free weights.”

“I think free weights are the way to go,” said Mike Nitka, strength coach at Muskego (Wisc.) High School. “You can get a ton of free weights for the same amount of money that you’d spend on a machine.”

It’s common to find high school weight rooms also outfitted with jump ropes, plyometric boxes, medicine balls, kettle bells, stability balls and some type of cardio machine – treadmill or stationary bike. Oh, and a radio.

“You can have a quiet weight room,” said Nitka, “but when the kids put on their favorite music, the attitude in the room completely changes, as long as the music’s not offensive and they don’t fight over it.”

Bigger Bang for Your Buck

Mike Burgener’s weight room has changed a little since he started at Rancho Buena Vista (Calif.) High School in 1985. At one time, the room was about 2,000 square feet with three free weight platforms. Now, a decade after switching with the art room, the weight room is 4,000 square feet, and it has nine platforms.

“It blows me away that things like kettle bells are coming back,” said Burgener, who has trained everyone from high school students to Olympic athletes. “In my weight room it’s all free weights. I had to stay ‘old school’ because I didn’t have any money.”

In fact, the type of program a coach sets up is based largely on the biggest challenges for the high school weight room: funds for equipment and the size of the room.

With money tight, coaches have learned that they’re more likely to get more equipment when they can find the best deals. That can be a little more challenging, though, than locating the cheapest pair of cleats in town. The key is to check around and find the highest quality equipment for the best price. This is because saving a few dollars now by buying poor quality equipment will cost you thousands more repairing or replacing equipment.

Many programs rely on self-sufficiency for new equipment. Lift-a-thons and fundraisers are great alternatives to district funding. Ken Cass proudly reports that McQueen High School had a fundraiser last year and raised enough money for all new equipment.

Support

When the football teams at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis started winning, other teams wanted to experience that exhilaration.

“The successes from football made for an easy sell to the rest of our athletic program, which has seen over twice as many state championships in all sports in the last 15 years as it had seen in the history of our athletic program,” said Kevin Vanderbush.

At Ben Davis, it’s easy for the athletes and other coaches to see the importance of a strength and conditioning program. The administration also has bought into the value. The school currently has a 6,200-square foot weight room for athletes and a 2,200-square foot weight room for the general students.

Regardless of wins and losses, however, coaches need to be able to “sell” their philosophy to everyone involved in the school from parents and administration to the team coaches.

“The strength coach or the weights teacher should take care of the kids and the team coaches should sell the program to the kids,” said Cass. “If the coach looks at conditioning as a period off or a time to prepare for their practice, it’s never going to be successful. If they have high expectations and they know what they’re doing, the program will be successful even without great equipment.”

With many strength coaches in charge of their school’s weightlifting classes, one way to get the administration’s support, Mike Nitka says, is to show the room’s importance to the school.

For Nitka that means calling his 4,800-square foot weight room the “Human Performance Lab.”

“The weight room is another lab in the school because it’s a place where coaches and athletes are experimenting and finding what works best for their performance,” he said. “If all administrators would look at the weight room that way, everyone’s facility would be better. Really, that lab gets more work than a science lab or any other lab in the school.”

Take Time to Learn

Coaches who have been involved with strength and conditioning programs for several years will talk about the learning process they’ve endured from buying equipment to program implementation.

That’s eliminating the guesswork for some younger coaches.

“I have had over 160 schools throughout the Midwest visit my program,” said Kevin Vanderbush. “I would highly encourage all coaches to take the time to visit established programs, and learn from each other.”

Coaches who are willing to share information are as close as the phone or conditioning clinics. There also are three main organizations that are widely recommended: the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (CSCCa) and USA Weightlifting.

“We conditioning coaches must stay on the cutting edge of the massive amounts of information and changes going on in the sports science world,” wrote Doug Fairchild. “I do NOT recommend a coach merely copying or borrowing workouts from a winning team. Quite often it is not the program that makes for wins; it is better athletes in that program.”

Regardless of how you start your program, the important thing is to just start one and learn what works best.

“For me it’s been 28 years of trial and error. It’s been that way for a lot of us,” says Mike Nitka. “But if I knew then what I know now, we might have won a few more championships.”

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