Getting Ready for the 2001 Season

If you are a serious athlete, then it is time to start thinking about how you are going to prepare for next season. It is never too early to get a head start on next year. All successful programs have off-season conditioning programs. There are several components to think about when beginning your off-season program. The most important of which is to find a program that will best prepare you for the rigors of the sport. First, you must look at what your goals are. Are they to gain muscle mass, reduce body fat, increase your speed, or improve your overall conditioning? Your goals must be established in writing prior to designing your program. Once goals have been formulated it is time to plan out a safe, efficient, and productive training program.

Goal setting is extremely important. Goals should be challenging, measurable, and specific. A good start would be to reflect on your past season and think of ways you would like to improve. Maybe you want to increase your speed? Maybe you want to add 10 lbs. of muscular body weight. Regardless of you goals it is very important to think them through and write them down. After goals have been formulated, you can begin designing your program. Take into account the time you have to train and the equipment you have to use.

After you design your program you want to make sure you log everything in a workout journal. The workout journal will be an important part of your program because it will be a means of recording your progress. You may want to begin the workout journal with a pre-test. Here at Elite Athlete Training Systems , we use a general pre-testing system. For the upper body we test the Lat Pulldown (underhand grip) and the Bench Press. For the lower body we test the Leg Press. We do NOT do a one rep maximum lift. we choose a resistance that causes the athlete to reach muscular failure between 8-15 repetitions. In addition to strength tests, we also have speed and agility tests. These are: the 40-yard sprint, Pro Agility shuttle, and the vertical leap. (NOTE: that these same tests used at most combines).

Another aspect to think about when designing your program is the periodization of the program. Periodization is how you structure your weekly workouts, taking into account both strength training and conditioning/speed training. Here are a few examples of your weekly training routine:

Monday: Upper
Tuesday: Lower Speed
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper
Friday: Lower Speed
Saturday: Speed

or

Monday: Full Body
Tuesday: Speed
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Full Body
Friday: Speed
Saturday: Full Body

Please realize that these are just two different ways that you can format your weekly workouts. Once you establish the days of your training program you should begin to think about details of the strength training portion of your program such as set and rep schemes, overall volume, and equipment selection. At Elite Athlete Training Systems , we have our athletes perform 1-2 sets per exercise, 2-3 exercises per bodypart, and use a varying range of repetitions (anywhere from 8-20). As far as equipment, we use free weights, machines, manual resistance, as well as the athlete's bodyweight. This variety allows for exciting and stimulating workouts. Once the details of your strength-training program have been formulated it is time to start thinking about the conditioning portion of your program. This topic will be covered in a future article.

If you have any questions regarding the design of your program please give us a call at 301.972.0558. Good luck and work hard!

Jason Hadeed , CCS