Is your strength & conditioning program working?
Whether you’re a strength & conditioning coach or a sport coach who runs your own S&C program, how do you know your S&C program is working? What are the metrics you should use to assess this each year?
Let me preface this post by saying that sometimes the best S&C programs aren’t effective and there could be several reasons for this. Also, “effective” is subjective and nuanced. For some, effective means a team had a winning season. To others, effective means the team made performance improvements and had less injuries regardless of the win-loss record. To others the effectiveness of an S&C program is based on whether or not the kids showed up in the off and pre-season and if they gave a lot of energy to their training.
When I’m consulting with coaches about their program, there are a few questions I ask:
Is your team performing well late in the season?
Were you plagued with injuries?
How does your team look in the 4th quarter compared to your opponent?
Question #3 is, in my opinion, the most important metric in team strength & conditioning.
When I write programs, I write them for the 4th quarter. The team that is most skilled, who's the strongest, fastest and most explosive and has the fewest injuries in the 4th quarter is most often going to win. A skilled team who's gassed and/or hurt in the 4th quarter will probably get beat. So, if a team is constantly running out of gas in the 4th quarter, a strength & conditioning program needs to be scrutinized. Take a deep dive with me!
Possible culprits of a failed S&C program.
It could have been a great program but there was no buy in, no accountability and therefore a terrible overall team culture. If this is the case, you don’t need a new strength program yet. You need a culture intervention. A mediocre plan executed consistently will yield better results than an excellent program executed sometimes. If there is no consistency in the training, your results will be disastrous. If culture is your biggest issue, the weight room itself won’t fix that. My recommendation is to fix culture first, then take a deeper dive into your physical preparation.
Your team is strong but lacks work capacity. I think work capacity is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood aspects of sport and strength & conditioning. The S&C program absolutely should begin to address work capacity in the first week of the off-season program. Off-season training should start small and progressively build over time through training blocks. Pre-season, it ramps up and consists of moderately to very demanding sessions that take into account the energy systems required for that sport and programmed accordingly. As a side, this doesn’t mean what you think it means. This isn’t the go hard or go home mentality. This is not cramming a ton of conditioning into a session until kids are puking to get them ready or to toughen them up. This is smart programming that when executed consistently, works to expand work capacity over time. It’s smart, simple and effective programming that builds and it requires a lot of patience. You have to play the long game when it comes to work capacity, and you will not expand work capacity if you don’t have buy-in to its very long and drawn-out process. PERIOD.
You didn’t continue, or you weren’t consistent with your S&C program during the season. I know you need time for X’s and O’s. The majority of your time should be spent on that. But you must carve out 45 minutes twice a week if you want to maintain the strength, power and work capacity you built in the off and pre-season. If you’re not doing this through the end of the season, you effectively wasted months of training. I know you don’t want to do that, but it's very easy for a coach to get caught up in the X’s and O’s and not even realize your S&C has slipped through the cracks. Have something in place to ensure this doesn’t happen to you.
You trained too hard in season. In-season S&C should add to the energy tank; it should not deplete it. Most sport coaches don’t know how or when to dial it back when needed to make sure their team has enough in the tank for the next game. If you’re going too hard in the weight room during the season, this will show up in the 4th quarter, maybe sooner. The in-season S&C should be like the pre-season but slightly less and may need to be adjusted throughout the season depending on the game schedule.
Your team is not recovering. This is the hardest part, because sport and S&C coaches really have no control over what an athlete does when they’re not with us. If they’re not getting enough fuel, are not properly hydrated, don’t have at least one full day off from sport and training every week, and if they aren’t sleeping well - THEY ARE NOT RECOVERED ENOUGH TO PLAY. They may look fine in the first half of the game, but they’ll be asleep at the wheel in the second half. This is where your culture comes in. The teams with the best cultures care about these off the field habits, take care of their bodies and recover well. They’re committed to feeling and performing their best.
I’ve given you five things to explore. Of those, 4 of them the head coach has either the power or the influence over. My hope is that if you can get clarity around where the disconnect is from the weight room to the field, you can begin to solve these problems. And with that being said, I am in the problem-solving business…therefore…
My shameless plug
MRPT offers comprehensive S&C consulting services, delivering tailored performance solutions for sport coaches and sport organizations. I would love to partner with you to improve your team's performance and strengthen your impact as a coach. Contact me directly at melanie@mrperformancetraining.com to schedule your free consultation and program audit.