Monitor & Manage

A big issue we all continue to experience in sports, as coaches and athletes, is balancing high and low volume (time or reps) and intensities within our training or practices. With a lack of management, constant high or low volume/intensities may increase the chances of injury and can lead to decreased performance.

Common examples of mismanaged training and practices:

• Coaches planning low intensity or low volume practices consistently because they worry the team will be “too tired” for games

• Coaches implementing multiple, high intensity practices on back to back days

• Coaches administering high intensity and high volume conditioning following a hard practice or a very long practice

• Coaches putting athletes/team through a high intensity and high volume practice the day after a loss for “lack of ____”

• Coaches administering low intensity or low training to keep athletes fresh for practice

• Coaches implementing long practices or very intense practices 1 day prior to a tournament weekend to get more reps

• Athletes getting more volume with extra and low-quality reps if they had a bad practice

• Athletes performing extra fitness because their lifting or conditioning was not “hard” enough

Consistently higher intensities and volumes will lead to increased fatigue. This is where coaches always ask, “Why is the team so out of shape? We only did conditioning for 30 minutes after a 3 hour practice.” The question should be, “Why is the team so tired? We should assess the training and practice plan from the past week.”

High intensity or high volume sessions are appropriate in your preparation for high performance. That stress is necessary for growth. But if there are no moderate or low intensity/volume sessions to complement those high sessions, fatigue will be very present and you will never see the improvements that could have been. This may add more L’s to your record and limit the availability of your athletes because of injury.

The other side of this spectrum are the negative consequences of having too many low volume and low intensity training or practices over time. This leads to being unprepared for the demands that the body will have to endure. Recovery time will increase as well due to lack of work capacity and strength developed. Performance will never reach its full capacity and injury is still a possibility. 

The ultimate goal is to train hard while avoiding constant high days or constant low days. I want our athletes available and able to compete at a high level. So how do I do that?

• Educate

  • I want to build training and practice tolerance and balance their overall load. I do that by progressively improving their ability to express movement efficiency, solid work capacity, strength, power, speed. Addressing such progressions is necessary for the athlete to understand why we started where we did, and where we plan to get to. This can also help those athletes who always want to do “extra” work understand that throwing up or being out of breath isn’t always necessary for improvements.

• Schedule Backwards

  • I would go to the most important date: Tournament weekend or game/competition day then plan from there. When looking at a single week, I probably want to put a high practice day at least 2-3 days prior to a game. Then I may want to add light to moderate days to fill in, with the lightest days prior to the game. It is easy to expand this timeline to a month and even a year which can be beneficial for long term progression and planning.

• Build Trust

  • I develop strong relationships and trust with my student-athletes so I can go to them for honest feedback on how they are responding to the training and practice demands. As coaches we can have a “planned” or “expected” demand for each physical activity administered. But the only people who truly know how the athlete is responding is the athlete themselves. Their feedback can be helpful to planning future sessions.

The above are just a few options to explore and to put your team and athletes in a successful position when it matters most. Develop a strategy on how to manage daily, weekly, monthly, and annual training intensities and volumes within your plans and programs. One small change can make the biggest difference.