THERE ARE A NUMBER of weight programs that a coach or physical education instructor could use to improve the strength levels of his or her athletic program. But before choosing one, several considerations must be addressed prior to deciding on any one particular program.

A good strength and conditioning program must address the major muscle groups and be built around a group of core lifts. It should be a program that fits the needs of your players and it must be well organized and efficient.

The program also needs to be easily understood by the coaches, parents and athletes and it must have a certain amount of flexibility built-in to incorporate other lifts at certain intervals in the program.

The following strength program is one that we’ve developed and have used successfully over the years. It is by no means revolutionary, but it’s a program that meets all the aforementioned considerations and allows players to reach their full potential in the weight room. Plus, the athletes enjoy it, which makes it easier to keep them actively involved in the strength-building process.

It’s a program that has been successfully used in several different schools and is equally effective with both male and female athletes. In each school where this program has been implemented, athletes of both genders have broken school weight-lifting records.

The organization and structure of this program allows athletes to complete a workout in 45 to 50 minutes. When we initially developed the program, we began with a group of core lifts that consisted of bench presses, hang cleans, dead lifts and incline bench presses. We’ve since added Olympic lifts into the more advanced lifting regimens as supplemental lifts or in place of one of the core lifts.

Safety, Proper Technique & Getting Started
The first week of the program is an orientation week. At this time, we’ll show all the participants tapes of proper lifting technique, demonstrate the lifts for them and have them practice the proper technique under supervision with little or no weight on the bars. We videotape the students lifting and watch the video with them, correcting mistakes and encouraging proper technique, safety and injury prevention. The coaches stress proper lift technique over the amount of weight that’s lifted and always teach safety through use of spotters, belts and collars.

Week 2 is our “max-out” week. We use a 1-rep max for all the lifts except the hang clean. We feel that using a one-rep max for the hang clean invites accidents or possible injuries. This strength program seeks to avoid all possible injuries that could otherwise be easily avoidable. The hang clean becomes a 5-rep max. Again, it is not how much a player lifts that’s judged early on, but how that player lifts it. We’re currently considering implementation of a 5-rep max on the dead lift as well.

Once all the max-lifts are completed, the participants fill out a record sheet with data that includes their maxes and work-out weights. One of the best aspects of this program is that the athlete’s workout is based on how much they lift (their max-out weight). Max-out lift becomes the determining factor for the program.

Athletes are then paired with partners whose maxes closely mirror their own.

Let The Work Begin
After maxes have been established, the first week of actual lifting begins with 3 sets of 10 reps. Each lifter finds his max weight on the Set-And-Reps Table (see Form B, which is described in detail later in the article) and writes down the corresponding amount of weight he should lift for a set of 10. After that, it is one set of 10 with the first weight shown on the table, one set of 10 with the second weight and finally a third set of 10 with the third prescribed weight. At this point, the athlete has completed 3 sets of 10 reps for that particular lift with a slight weight progression for each set. Once three sets have been completed for a core lift, the athlete is finished with that particular lift for that day’s session.

Each athlete proceeds through the workout in the same manner. The athletes work in groups, lifting the assigned lifts for each day. When they have completed the core lifts, they can proceed to the supplemental lifts for that day. The supplemental lifts consist of 4 sets of 8 reps. That’s the beauty of this program — it takes all the guesswork out of the reps and sets. It is based solely upon what the athlete can perform in a 1-max lift (or in the case of the hang clean, a 5-rep max). Upon completion of the workout, the athlete records the weight lifted in each set and he is ready to lift for the next 5 weeks.

At the end of the 5-week lifting period, the athletes are maxed out once again. Once this is completed, the cycle begins all over again. For the second 5-week period, we follow a cycle of: 3 sets of 10; 4 sets of 8; 5 sets of 6; 5 sets of 5; a set of 10; a set of 8; a set of 6; a set of 4; a set of 3 and a set of 2. This cycle is followed for all core lifts.

We always have our athletes do a thorough warm-up before each lifting session. We’ve incorporated a wide variety of things into the warm-up period to keep it fresh and new. We’ve used jump ropes, ladders (ladders have become our players favorite type of warm-up), form running drills and plyometrics. You can modify the warm-ups and add your favorites — whatever works for you within whatever time constraints you may have. The key is doing something that warms an athlete’s body up and helps him prevent lifting injuries.

Charting Progress, Keeping Statistics
Charting and monitoring an athlete’s progress is critical to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the strength program. To aid in this procedure, we have used charts and standards forms which have been helpful organizational tools for the operation of this program.

Max-Out Sheet
The “Max-Out Sheet” (see Form A) is a simple yet effective method of tracking your athlete’s on max day. This form is very basic and you can easily modify it to add specific lifts that you emphasize as critical. We also include a column for total weight lifted and a space for the percent of gain. We use the “percent-of-gain” statistic for grading purposes.

We keep our grade sheets in a file for each athlete until he graduates. It’s fun to meet with a player around graduation time and go back over their strength grades from the time they entered our program and see all the progress they’ve made.

Sets-And-Reps Table
 The Set-And Reps Table is perhaps our most important form for the strength program and is a tool that we use to determine the sets and reps for each athlete’s lift (see Form B). The column of numbers on the left is the max-out weights and the numbers that run along the top of the page are the weights for each set. Once a player knows his max-out weight, he then knows how much weight to lift and how many reps based on this table. These are the numbers that the athlete logs into his work-out sheets between max-out weeks.

Say, for example, that a lifter maxed-out 150 pounds on the bench press. The lifter would then locate the 150 Max number on the table and see that his workout numbers are 75, 90, 105, 120, 135 and 140. On his designated sets of 10, he would lift 75 pounds as mandated by the table, followed by 10 sets at 90 pounds and 10 reps at 105 pounds. The four sets of 8 reps would include a set of 8 reps at 75 pounds, a 8  reps at 90 pounds, 8 reps at 105 pounds and 8 reps at 120 pounds. The rest of the reps and sets are done accordingly.

By using the Sets-And-Reps Table in this manner, the lifter needs to fill out his workout sheet just one time, which saves time and allows for more lifting work to get done.

WorkOut Sheet
The Workout Sheet (see Form C) serves as a recordkeeping sheet and workout guideline for an athlete’s week of lifting. This sheet is by no means technical and you can easily adjust it to your own programs needs. But it serves as a good example of what we expect from an athlete during the course of a week.
The bottom of the sheet shows supplemental lifts that can be added into the workout routine. All supplemental lifts require 10 repetitions.

Advanced WorkOut Sheet
This workout is a more complex program and is geared more toward athletes with experience lifting (see Form D) and who are veterans of our strength and conditioning program. In this workout, we assign percentages for the athletes to work toward. If you have a large group of athletes, it’s a good idea to start groups on different days to avoid too much overlap.

In the advanced work out, Olympic lifts and other more advanced lifts are built into the routine. Incline bench presses, for example, are done with dumbbells, as opposed to a straight barbell or machine.

Set-Percentage Form
In this form, we assign percentages to each set of reps for all the lifts in the routine (see Form E). The athletes still max out to get the starting points for their workouts, but the percentages are all based off the max weights.

Notice at the bottom of the form that we have changed the lifting format. Those numbers indicate the sets and number of reps we’d use for a specific work-out routine.

Complex-Cycle Sheet
In this form, we have radically altered the lifting format (see Form F). In this workout, we’re still maxing out and recording those lifts — and we would still do the prescribed sets and reps based off those numbers, as well as have the supplemental lifts built into the program. But the big change in this program is that we intentionally interrupt the normal cycle and insert a complex cycle of lifts into the routine. In this type of lifting we have four main categories of lifts — bench press, squats, cleans and dumbbell workouts. The athletes rotate each day doing a different set of the complex routines.

To get all this work done efficiently, we’ll divide the athletes into groups and rotate different groups with different sets of complexes each day. The object is to have each member of the group perform 6 sets of 6 reps for each lift listed. This is a great workout and an excellent change of pace for to the set-and reps routine.