October/November 2021 - 35

Strength & Conditioning
When beginning to develop a program, the three variables
that dictate its design are time, mode of training (training
implements), and space or a number of athletes. Before we tie
these together, we must account for special considerations.
Due to the pandemic, all training sessions must follow
specific guidelines: 60-minute sessions, 25 or fewer athletes
(including strength and conditioning and sports medicine
staff), and six feet of space between athletes. Sessions
may be conducted outdoors or indoors based on the team's
current COVID-19 testing protocol status.
The pandemic also changed the timing of our
competitive football season from fall to spring. As a result,
our athletes reported for pre-season training camp after
a six-week break from the fall semester. To ensure their
health and well-being, all athletes trained through a twoweek
minimum acclimatization period. During this time,
training volumes, intensities and work to rest ratios were
followed per CSCCa-NSCA Joint Consensus and NCAA
Sports Science Institute guidelines.
Utilizing these guidelines allowed our athletes to focus on
safely returning to a high level of performance. One of the
most important training variables in all high-performance
programs is progression, especially when focusing on
an extended training plan such as pre-season. To many
strength and conditioning professionals, progression is a
means of prescribing movements to transition from simple
to complex state of training. This idea of progression would
carry over to each segment of a training program to include
warm-up, speed dynamics, strength training, and energy
system development. Because our six-week pre-season
training plan consists of a two-week acclimatization period
and four 20-hour weeks of involuntary football practice,
strength training, field walk-throughs, meetings and
recovery time, utilizing progression on both a daily and
weekly plan is of utmost importance to ensure our athletes
reach a high-performance level.
After hours of staff meetings and sitting behind the
computer, it is now time to implement the six-week
pre-season training plan. The training plan is broken
down into two, three-week training programs. Due to
quarantining and testing protocols in Phase 1, training in
the first week must be conducted outside. Our athletes
trained within their position groups using the guidelines
mentioned earlier, performing three 20-minute segments
focusing on warm-up and activation, speed dynamics
or energy system development, and general physical
preparation circuits utilizing different training implements
such as body weight, medicine balls, and kettlebells.
The segments were rotated daily to ensure each athlete
completed two high-intensity days, which included speed
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training-conditioning.com | 35
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October/November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of October/November 2021
