Texans strength and conditioning coach Dan Riley is back for ...

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Gatorade Sports Science Institute: www.gssiweb.com Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter: www.healthletter.tufts.edu American College of Sports Medicine: www.acsm.org Human Kinetics Publishing Company: www.humankinetics.com Coach & Athletic Director: www.coachadguide.com Best of luck with your police work and your workouts. I am a high school strength and conditioning coordinator. I often need to suggest to coaches proper times to perform strength training during the inseason. With time constraints such as school hours and practice sessions, sometimes-optimal conditions are hard to find. For maximum gains to be made during the season, when should the strength training sessions be scheduled Before or after practice, and why -- Ed Cicale, Oak Hills High School, Cincinnati, OH During the season time is tight for all coaches, to include strength coaches. I always joke with our head coach Dom Capers that games, practice, and meetings, get in the way of weight workouts. Each strength coach must decide how to most efficiently utilize his/her facility with the time available. You are better prepared in your situation to decide what is best for your players. You may be forced to train players in conditions that are less than ideal. During the season my personal preference is to train our players before practice. After practice players can be fatigued. This may force a player to place a lower priority on exerting a maximum effort. I have mentioned many times how important in-season strength training must be. Strength is lost rapidly if a near maximum effort is not exerted each time a player works out. During the season our players use the exact same workouts that they used during the off-season. Our games are on Sunday. Our entire team performs a total body workout on Monday. Training the day after the game helps reduce and eliminate stiffness and soreness. It also allows enough recovery time to perform a second workout later in the week. All weight workouts on Monday are completed before our team looks at the game film in the afternoon. During the week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, most of our players lift in the morning before meetings. We have some veterans who prefer lifting after practice.
I am fourteen years old and do not have any access to weights. So I do push-ups and an ab workout before I go to bed. How should I perform my pushups to make the best strength gains (Name not included) When using bodyweight to perform an exercise (push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, pullups, chin-ups, dips) people often become more concerned with "how many" reps they perform rather than "how" they perform each rep. For example when performing sit-ups (or crunches) athletes often jerk their body upward (incorporating momentum) and allow the upper body to effortlessly fall back to the starting position, allowing the muscles to perform little or no work during the lowering phase. We call these throw-ups and fall downs. The same can be observed when performing push-ups. The lifter drops to the floor rapidly, performing little or no work during the lowering phase and then bounces his chest off the floor using some momentum to help recover to the starting position. Some athletes do not even recover to the starting position. They are basically performing half-rep pushups. Perform any exercise with your bodyweight in the same manner as you would any other exercise. We ask our players to observe four rules while performing a repetition of any exercise (to include push-ups). 1. Eliminate momentum during the raising phase. Force the muscles to do all of the work. 2. Pause momentarily in the muscles contracted position. More muscle fibers are recruited at this point than in any other position. 3. Emphasize the lowering of the weight (take longer to lower the weight). The same muscles are used to lower the weight. Significant strength gains can be developed from lowering a weight if more weight is used or more time is taken. 4. Raise and lower the weight through the muscles full range of motion. If you are not getting an adequate stretch, elevate your hands off the floor (place a some pads under each hand) to prevent your chest from touching the floor. Using a persons bodyweight for resistance can create problems for some people. A person may not be strong enough to handle his/her own bodyweight. This forces the person to abstain from performing certain exercises, or it forces them to use terrible form in an attempt to complete a set. If you cannot properly handle your own bodyweight while performing push-ups we suggest the following: 1. Perform modified push-ups by dropping to your knees (only the hands and knees touch the floor). 2. Perform negative only push-ups (only lower the weight). Allow 8 seconds to lower the weight and get back to the arms extended starting position position any way that you can. Perform eight to ten reps at eight seconds per rep. Use a
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Texans strength and conditioning coach Dan Riley is back for ...

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