The beginning of school means a lot for a traditional student. It means football games, parties and studying for classes. For the strength coach, (GA) like myself, it means 50 hour weeks, endless amounts of coffee, workouts, training and all the other knick-knacks of dealing with in-season teams.
It's important to remember that with training in-season teams, the training atmosphere should take the side-car to the actual skill/sport development. While training has been shown to reduce injuries and enhance performance; the most important factor for the in-season athlete is the ability to practice & produce results IN GAME. Right now at Michigan State we have Volleyball, Men's & Women's Soccer, and Field Hockey all in-season. As a strength coach you must carefully balance appropriate levels of training with appropriate and ample amount of time for recovery. This is one of many difficult tasks. How much is too much? How much is too little for results?
A piece of advice I was once told was that to get the best in-season program you should really have a solid foundation with your off-season program. Granted that a classic periodization model would suggest cutting back volume in-season and increasing intensity. It becomes difficult to scale back volume in your in-season training if your off-season program doesn't have legs to stand on. It becomes an important programming process to ensure that your apoff-season has the appropriate volume and intensity in order to later scale it back during the in-season program.
I digress...
As strength coaches we must also be cognizant of athlete injuries. It becomes absolutely vital to work closely with athletic trainers, sport nutritionists and medical staff to ensure athletes are healing and returning to the game as fast as possible.
