A lot of times when Im talking to a parent they always want to know what we are going to do with their child during a training session… I always say a lot of GPP to start then it depends.

This morning was a great example our training program and how it works. This wasn’t beginner style stuff, this was an example of how training should look after at least a year of training in our program.

I’ll try to keep this understandable and not too technical for everybody.

I trained 3 college athletes… all play different sports.

A D1 football player, a D1 baseball player, and a college wrestler.

Its Monday so everybody is training Max Effort Lower Body and after the warm up we picked our ME exercise based on the last 5 weeks of training and what they were motivated to hit today. The warmup would fatigue and untrained athlete. This is where we maintain GPP (General Physical Preparedness) with our athletes that are on conjugate programs. 3 rounds of 60 yard sled drags, planks and front foot elevated split squats.

On to Max Effort. The most important strength quality.

The receiver did sumo deadlifts off of a 2″ rise. Worked up to a new record of 475 and then couldn’t budge 495. (Another reason why our heavy training is mostly singles)… guys don’t get injured grinding out multiple ugly reps. They either get it or it doesn’t budge.

The baseball guy did sumo’s off the floor because it was his last week here until after summer ball (prob end of August) and he wanted a number on the deadlift for in-season programming. He actually worked up to his max from the summer.. so not much progress in the deadlift this fall which is understandable as he was away at school and they train “differently”.

The wrestler did 3″ rise sumo deadlifts because he hasn’t ever done that and I wanted a number on that lift before he leaves to go back to school. Having solid numbers on all different lifts and heights makes programming easier for me while he is away.

During all three of these Max Efforts we learned different stuff about each athlete…

The football athlete has gotten much stronger in 6 weeks in that lift so what we’ve been doing has been effective. We know that his hamstrings and back are getting stronger and we know that his explosive strength is there as the bar speed was fast even at 475. However, at 495 he couldn’t even break the ground. This tells me that he needs to work on some more slow strength or strength speed on his Dynamic Effort days.

The baseball player has a good set up and we know that his hamstrings are decently strong. For him to not move up in a PR means he needs to add more hip ab-duction to his programming because he needs to push out with more force to break the ground. This lateral ground force just happens to be super important in just about every sport especially baseball. Just for reference the guy weighs about 170 and pulled 455.

The wrestler off 3″ didn’t miss at all. He worked up to a good weight and his weak spot was at lockout. Thats where he strained the most and the bar really slowed down. So we know that we need to add some more glute work and upper back training. I also know that he hasn’t gotten much speed work with bands during the season because of time and access to equipment. This is another reason he struggled with locking out. The bands force athletes to accelerate through the added resistance as they are standing up. This is called CAT (Compensatory Acceleration Training).

From here they all went to do jumps. Sometimes we all do the same jumps and sometimes I give out slightly different jumps depending on the sport. These guys all did straddle jumps to boxes and then I had the catcher do some kneeling db clean jumps to a split stance based on his sport. Typically our advanced athletes jump 40-60x twice a week and our intermediate and in-season athletes jump 25x twice a week.

After jumps we supplement in now with higher rep training to build weaknesses and target specific muscles.

Everybody always trains reverse hyper extensions and also some type of Abdominal work. The rest just dependss on where we see weaknesses in each athlete.

The football player continued on with what he’s been doing the past few weeks because we know its working. We switched the ab variation and we made the other stuff harder by adding either resistance, or increasing sets or reps per set to add volume. For him, his biggest change will come on dynamic day where we will change his percentages to slow the bar down on him.

The baseball player needs more medial glut / hip ab-duction strength so we put him on the belt squat and did wide belt marching coupled with wide squats… this is a real killer.

The wrestler is in-season so Im happy with what he’s been doing thus far. He needed more hamstrings and what we’ve been doing has been effective. Now he needs to really attack the upper back on upper body day and with small targeted sessions in between.

I hope this gives you an idea of how we attack a training session. Many times parents ask what we do but the answer really is going to be “it depends”.