How Much Volume For Young Athletes?
Too often we allow volume to dictate our programs rather than skill development. In the past month I’ve reviewed workouts from many different coaches and athletes. These workouts are aimed at building strength and power. Two of my athletes was given a workout by his football coach and the volume on one day of knee bending exercises was 120 repetitions per leg (this is just one day, not the entire week). Not to mention, many of the exercises were done on machines. To give you an idea this is what his workout for Monday included: leg press, back squat, calf raise, leg curls, and leg extension. The sad part is the days for the upper body were even higher in volume.
I recently received another workout from a coach that also had a high volume of work. It was too much for anyone, especially high school athletes. But what also struck me was too much sagittal plane training and the lack of frontal or transverse plane movements.
In defense of these coaches and athletes, they simply do not know. They are using what they have learned from others and passed down over the years. We have not done a good job of providing quality information to the coaches and athletes at the high school level. There is a popular high school lifting program that has been around for decades, but it is not based on the development of young athletes. It is based on using more weight and breaking records. It does not emphasize correct form as long as the athlete’s previous rep record was broken. Poor lifting technique I don’t believe was the intent of the creator, but that is the problem when emphasis is on record breaking and not development and technique.
In my training sessions, I will have kids that ask to use more weight, but they have not mastered the technique yet. I always tell them, “When your technique is consistently good for multiple sets then you can increase.” It should be all about the execution of the lift rather than the volume or the intensity.
The human body is so well designed. It functions at its best when everything is working properly. When an athlete’s body is aligned well and produces force through the entire kinetic chain like it should, strength and power are displayed very well. But when an athlete increases strength on a poor foundation of posture, technique, and skill, the strength is useless or leads to injury.
Some need to recognize that the numbers athletes are pushed to reach during weight lifting only force the athletes to rush the proper developmental sequence of skill acquisition. They perform the full power clean before they even perform a proper RDL or power shrug. They perform a max bench press before they can perform proper biomechanical push-ups. Regarding the push-up, I have no problem with an athlete doing the bench press (I prefer DB bench press) even if they are not strong on push-ups as long as they can perform a perfect push-up from a hands elevated push-up. The reason is the core has as a lot to do with a great looking push-up as the upper body strength. But if they can move their arms and shoulders correctly through the push-up I am fine with it.
Let’s get back to the basics of skill development and skip all this high volume withkids who do not have proper skills. Volume is fine for experienced athletes who have been properly prepared, but there are not many in that category.
