Most people agree that strength and conditioning are not just about lifting weights. The body strength and postures of all the athletes signify a lot of things related to the overall approach and team culture. Strength and conditioning coaching plays a key role here. And therefore, a good coach is always a valuable asset to the team.
But what makes a coach the person capable of transforming a good team into a great team? Here are the important factors to consider.
- Expectations
- Accountability
- Attention to details
- Pride
- Teamwork
- Culture
- Technological adaptation
Expectations
Strength and conditioning coaching involves setting expectations for the athletes. But what expectations can a coach set? Here are a few.
- Be on time: Athletes must be on time for their strength and conditioning sessions like other sports training sessions. The significant benefit of encouraging athletes to be punctual is that it allows them to spend more time training for strength and speed. Allowing people to stroll in a few minutes late would lead them to miss the initial warm-up session. And they would likely be out of sync with other athletes.
- Be properly dressed: Coaches should instruct and expect their athletes to dress properly for strength and conditioning workouts.
- Expectations regarding phones, earbuds, and social media: You may have good reasons to dislike your athletes’ habits of listening to music and using social media. And you might also expect your athletes to avoid using all these gadgets. But sticking to your expectations is a different story. You must communicate your concerns assertively if you believe that your athletes’ inclination towards using social media or listening to music causes distraction or has become a cause of poor coordination.
Accountability
Expectations alone cannot drive your team to perform well during workout sessions. Effective strength and conditioning coaching involve accountability of your athletes. Here is a brief overview of how to go ahead with accountability.
- Following expectations: Failing to follow up with expectations will send a message that you, as a coach, are not quite serious about your team.
- Consequences: If you have expectations, you must decide on the consequences your athletes must face when they fail to comply.
- Good technique: Athletes who have been receiving strength and conditioning coaching for over a year must now be able to help their teammates in their coach’s style. This approach helps your athletes become accountable for each other.
Attention to Detail
Big teams must pay attention to every small detail to master their game. While coaching to improve the strength and conditioning of your team, not only do you need to improve your athletes’ performance but also keep an eye on the competing teams. Here is how you can pay attention to details that matter.
- Correct loading of the barbell: All strength and conditioning settings involve exercising with a barbell. It is absolutely necessary to ensure that your athletes load the barbell correctly.
- Technique: Another important aspect of paying attention to details is to perform exercises correctly. Make sure that your exercise technique is perfect.
Pride
Effective strength and conditioning coasting essentially involve teaching athletes to take pride in being a part of the team. Here is how you can develop this in your team.
- Putting everything in place: You do not want the training place to look chaotic, so it is necessary to put everything up where it goes. An immaculate arrangement of everything reinforces attention to detail.
Teamwork
In an ideal setting, several team members should work together on one piece of equipment to maximize efficiency and coordination. For instance, one may lift the weight, and others may load and spot. All of them communicate with each other during the workout. This is how teamwork gets instilled into the athletes.
Moreover, athletes can come together and celebrate their achievements in strength and conditioning. It is undoubtedly the right idea to get every athlete on board during the moments of celebration. This unites the entire team and improves collaboration among them.
Culture
A team’s culture plays a significant role in achieving goals, from strength and conditioning to sport-specific performance enhancement. A strength and conditioning facility is where all athletes do something other than training specifically for the sport. This allows them to work together for some more time, which helps them build a team culture. And, as a coach, you have to ensure that this culture influences the team’s performance in a positive way.
Technological Adaptation
For best results, you want to improve the strength and conditioning of your team using the latest equipment. Strength and conditioning exercises typically involve weight training, which is more of a conventional way of building strength and power. But adding technology to the mix can work wonders.
For instance, you can use velocity-based training in your strength and conditioning coaching job to incorporate some explosiveness into the athletes’ workouts. Velocity-based training or VBT is a way to measure the speed of the barbell movements. This speed measurement helps coaches determine the amount of load to add or reduce in order to acquire the required velocity. This way, several workout goals are achieved.
Velocity-based training involves using a specialized device called a linear position transducer, which uses a string to get attached to the barbell. Any movement in the barbell is sensed by the transducer, which calculates the speed of the move and displays your velocity states.
Vitruve is one of the best devices to measure the velocity of workouts performed during strength and conditioning drills. This linear transducer can be tethered to a smartphone or a tablet, where the coach and athletes can view their velocity profile. The best thing is that the specialized app used to show these details is AI-based, which measures the moves and formulates stats helpful in future workout planning.
Conclusion
Athletes, regardless of their sport, must pay adequate attention to their strength and conditioning to enhance their physical abilities. For this reason, they must receive regular strength and conditioning coaching sessions from skilled coaches. As a coach, you can stick to the protocols mentioned above to maintain the best form of your team.
