AT THE CONCLUSION of your season, all players not involved in a winter or spring sport should be expected to participate in your winter and spring conditioning training cycles. During the winter and spring cycles, your players should work toward developing their base strength, lifting techniques, balance and agility, while performing speed drills and jump circuit-training.

The bread and butter of our strength and conditioning program is the summer conditioning cycle. It’s in this phase of the conditioning program that we see the greatest gains in the greatest number of athletes. It’s also when most of our athletes are participating in the program. We run our summer program 5 days-a-week. We have sessions in the mornings to accommodate jobs, summer school, evening conflicts, etc.

This limits us to 60 to 90 minutes of daily workout time, which leads to some challenging scheduling and planning in order to allow all the athletes to complete their daily regimens within the given time frame.

Summer Conditioning Plan
Our summer conditioning program is a 10-week program and starts the first full week after school is out. The first week consists of orientation, testing and 3 to 4 days of an introductory body weight strength circuit. The body weight circuit is an effective activity for bringing athletes up to speed physically. It also helps the freshman, sophomore or novel athletes to learn body control.

Off Days Critical
We then move into two, 4-week lifting cycles, the first of which is a 4 day-a-week lifting regimen and the second 4-week period is a 3 day-a-week lifting regimen. Both regimens do the job of building an explosive strength base, but the greatest athletic gains we make in the summer conditioning program are on the non-lifting days, or as we term them, the “off days.”

The objective of the off days is to improve your players’ speed, power and agility. To organize the off-day stations, we split our athletes into four equal groups and try to keep each station to about 10 minutes in duration. Within each group, the seniors are responsible for keeping the action flowing smoothly, which allows the coach to float from station to station to assist and observe technique. To accomplish our goals within a 60-minute time frame, we set up four stations at which the athletes perform a series of drills or runs geared toward the development of each particular objective.

1.  Speed Station
Every athlete should show some speed improvement over the course of the summer. Each daily workout, including the lifting days, starts with stride drills and running mechanics. After working stride and mechanics, move to the running portion of the station. Try performing the speed drills with a partner or in a small groups to introduce some competition.
Start the cycle with longer runs of 800 and 400 meters to build an aerobic base, then progress to shorter, more intense anaerobic sprint work — 200 meters, 100 meters, 50 meters, 20 meters and 10 meters.

Set up exercises to work on running mechanics. Start with 20-yard, three-quarter speed runs that focus on the following progression of running mechanics:

-  Head Run. The head should be straight with eyes looking forward.
-  Lean Run. Show your players the proper body lean. Determine body lean by having your players stand flat-footed and slowly lean forward until their heel comes just off the ground. This should be their proper forward body lean while running.
-  Arms Run. Teach proper arm action. Their arms are locked at a 90-degree angle with palms facing in and elbows tight to the body.
-  Leg Run. Emphasize proper leg drive.
-  All-Out Sprints. Put all four components together for two, 100-percent effort sprints.
-  Speed Drills. The speed station is also the place to have your players work on various speed drills.

- Tennis Ball Drop And Catch.
- Resistance Sprints.
- Intervals Sprinting (20 yards each with 15 seconds rest between each sprint).
- Directional Sprints.
- Line Gassers (40 yards).

2.  Power Station
The power station is actually an elementary plyometric station. For the first 4-week cycle, use hops and cone jumps as an introduction. Add depth jumps and upper-body plyometrics in the second 4-week cycle when the athletes have built a fitness/strength base. This station helps build explosiveness in your players.

The power station involves the following exercises:
JUMPS, HOPS:
- Double-Leg Hops.    - Single Leg Forward Hops.
- Ankle Jumps.            - Linear Cone Hops.
- Kangaroo Hops.       - Side-To-Side Jumps.
- Zigzag Jumps.          - Stationary Cone Hops.
- Box-Depth Jump.      - Box-Depth Jump (horizontal).
- Box-Depth Jump (horizontal, then vertical).

UPPER-BODY PLYOMETRICS:
-  Wheelbarrow Jumps With Partner.
-  Push-up Jumps To Box.    -  Push-up Side To Side.

3.  Agility Station
Agility drills mesh the best of speed and power with the sports skills of an athlete. They’re also fun and stimulate a healthy, competitive environment. There are hundreds of agility drills to choose from, so we select and categorize our favorite agility drills into three classifications — bag ability drills, cone agility drills and agility runs.

Pick three drills each day, one bag drill, one cone drill and one agility run.

BAG AGILITY DRILLS:

- 4-Bag Run.    - 4-Bag Ladder.    - Weave.

CONE AGILITY DRILLS:
-  4-Cone    -  5-Cone.    -  3-Cone.
-  Zigzag.    -  Figure 8.   -  Backpedal Zigzag.

AGILITY RUNS:
-  Pro Agility (5-10-5).         -  Flip Hop.
-  45-Degree-Angle 10’s.    -  Backpedal/Break.
-  Backpedal 5 and Catch Rabbit.
-  Centerfield.

4.  Medicine Ball Station
The medicine ball is given its own station designation because of the importance of developing functional strength in the torso. It’s vital to build the torso as a link for the transfer of force from the ground-based strength of the lower body to the upper body.

-  Overhead Throw.
-  Overhead Backward Throw.
-  Side Catch And Throw.
-  Sitting Backward, Overhead Throw.
-  Lateral Bounce, Side Catch And Throw.
-  Sitting Side Catch And Throw.
-  Chest Pass.
-  Twists.