RSP46: In-Season and Sport Specific Training

We wrapped up 2021 with our Barbell Bourbon Coaches Event at the R/Farm Distillery. It was a great day talking shop with strength coaches.

A couple questions stuck out to me during the event that I know most strength coaches deal with.

1. How to get buy-in from coaches and athletes to train in-season?

2. How "sport-specific" should your programs be?

Let's quickly tease my thoughts on each question. Check out R/Strong Podcast #46 for my thorough thoughts and rants.

How to get athletes and coaches to "buy-in" to in-season training?

Make sure you know what you're doing

The typical argument for the in-season-training-naysayers is "I don't want to be sore," or "I want to be fresh for game day." Both valid points. Your programming shouldn't make the athletes that sore and should build up their performance on game day, not take away from it. Don't support their argument by doing a crappy job.

Coach the hell out of the athletes that are "bought-in"

The athletes that are training with you and trust you will be your biggest advocates if you provide a great experience for them. Their teammates and coaches will see them getting bigger, stronger, more explosive while also dominating on game day. They will get the point eventually.

How sport-specific does my programming need to be?

This topics all boils down to what our role is as strength and conditioning coach. My main objective is to improve athletic qualities - strength, size, power, speed, agility, etc. In other words, make athletes better athletes. That improved athleticism will translate to better performance on game day as long as sport-specific skills are developed as well (shooting, hitting, throwing, dribbling, tackling, blocking, etc).

My programming follows that line of thinking. To the untrained-eye most of my programming will look very similar for athletes across multiple sports... because it is. Of course there are some subtle changes here and there to account for different variables, but for the most part, I train athletes to be great athletes.

Check out R/Strong Podcast #46 for more thoughts on these topics!

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