Part 2: Beginner Training- Form the Foundation

Post by Mark Ehnis

Progression begins with technique. An athlete should never progress until his technique is adequate. Notice I didn’t say perfect technique. You can always work on perfecting your technique and in most athletes, they’ll never be perfect- part of being a solid strength coach is knowing when to say “that’s good enough” and move on without risking injury. That being said, when working with beginners, be cautious when adding weight or making the exercise more difficult, until they have shown they can perform the exercise properly again and again.

Varsity PSTS athletes performing some handwalks at the end of their warm-up. Keep the basics in your program and continue to build the foundation even with "strong" athletes!

Part 1: Beginner Training- Form the Foundation

Post By Mark Ehnis

What is a beginner? 

When training athletes, a beginner constitutes a young, 12-15 year old kid- at least that’s what I’m going to refer to a beginner as anyways (Anyone new to training or lifting is a beginner regardless of actual age). I like to look at an athletes “training age”. I define training age as how long has the athlete been seriously training. A 16-year old might have a training age lower than a 14-year old because the 16-year old has never done any training, while the 14-year old has been doing bodyweight workouts and technique training since he was 12. The 16-year old has a training age of 0 and the 14-yeard old has a training age of 2. Get it?

Two 8th grade PSTS athletes performing general exercises of thick rope sled pulls and sled drags