High School Performance: Thoughts

Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of high school athletes across multiple sports, male and female. At first thought, it would be an ego driven strength coach to bash what type of (if any) training is going on at this level. Having been around this field in many different situations I like to think most coaches are doing the best they can with what they have. Hopefully there is a method to the madness and the athletes health and well being is the first priority. Some coaches are developing amazing techniques to coach, progress, and inspire athletes at this level and it is amazing to see!

What am I getting at? Here are some quick thoughts that I'd like to lead into further discussion.

- Athletes need to spend much more time in a basic Block 0, Introductory, Foundational phase to teach teach teach! It seems like there are coaches out there that just want to entertain themselves/athletes by making their kids do the latest YouTube or Instagram video they saw to say "Our kids won't get outworked!" It's very easy to just make athletes tired.

- Consistency, balance, and program design. Start slow, get strong, develop a base, and progress from there. Good training is not entertaining, it is hard work mastering movements and takes a good coach to inspire the athletes to trust this process.

- Nutritional education - High school kids these days are getting zero to nothing in nutrition information. This is in part to the massive amount of info out there, and people do not know what is good vs bad advice. Lets not get complicated here...get protein, veggies, and water down and then we can work on the details. 90% of athletes are not mastering the quantity, consistency of intake, or correct habits to move to more specific nutrition recommendations.

- There is nothing better than getting a freshman athlete at the college level who knows his/her way around the weight room, and has a baseline proficiency on movements. The college strength coach might even call you and say "thank you for your quality work, you made my job much easier this season."

What's the solution?

- Everything takes time and good coaches are hard to come by because they already have a job, cannot commit the time elsewhere (pay, hours, etc.), budgets, etc. There are major high school programs out there that have amazing staffs. I feel like they can be utilized more for education. Follow these coaches' social media, interact, and help spread the knowledge, communication, and content. This will benefit not only the coaches, but more importantly the athletes.

Thanks to all and have a wonderful week/end!

- Thoughts?