At T.L. Hanna High School, we have a 7,300 square foot weight room. We utilize Williams Strength equipment and have eight half racks and eight double racks. I train most of our high school athletes daily. I dedicate much of my time working closely with football players and staff, helping prepare the team for competition year-round.

I was blessed to be the first strength and conditioning coach at T.L. Hanna. My advice on starting a strength and conditioning program from the ground up is the same advice I would have given myself almost 10 years ago. The first thing I would do is meet with all the different sport coaches. Without the sport coaches’ buy-in, you have no athletes to train. You might have participation in the beginning, but if your vision and theirs do not line up, you will see a decline in their athletes’ participation. Get the coaches’ feedback on what they want to see in training. Listen to them, see their perspective, and if it does not align, let them know your concerns from a safety or philosophical standpoint. Let them pick one of their favorite exercises to include in the training program. Inclusion like this will go further than you think. This will create a feeling of ownership in the program.

Execute Your Plan

Come up with a plan that works for the coaches and the athletes. Once the relationship is developed with the coaches, reach out to them every week or so by providing updates on their athletes. The athlete wants to make their sport coach happy because the coach controls playing time. If the head coaches buy into your training program, this will keep the line of communication open between you, the coaches, and the athletes. The strength program is only as good as the commitment from the sport coaches. In my experience, you may not have 100% buy-in from all coaches, but never give up on them. Do your best to keep “striking the stone” with them and trying to develop a relationship. Remember, we are in the relationship-building business with both players and coaches!

When starting a new strength and conditioning program, you may not know the athletes or coaches. I would start with the K.I.S.S method (Keep it Simple Silly). I would do my best to evaluate the athletes in the beginning with basic exercises. How well can they squat body weight? How well can they do push-ups and pull-ups? You can build your program off how well they can perform these, and this will give you a good rule of thumb of who is ready to progress to the barbell. In the beginning, the exercises might not look as crisp as they should. There is a bell curve in all things, especially the weight room. I used to think I could fix all things in one training session. When it comes to exercise technique, that is not the case. It takes time to develop some of the movement patterns in the weight room. Be consistent in how you teach it, give direction, and stick to it. Do not use different coaching techniques in each training session. One of the most important things we can do as coaches for our athletes is to be consistent. This will benefit you greatly down the road!

The Hanna Way

One thing we do at Hanna is keep all of our athletes in one area of training during the session. Example: We keep our athletes at a fixed location with the equipment they will use for that training session. This reduces the amount of time an athlete has to be distracted and drift off task in our weight room. This has helped us tremendously. Another thing I would recommend is keeping your weight room clean and organized. When I first got to Hanna, I implemented a “Jacket Order” standard, closely linked to the T.L. Hanna Yellow Jackets mascot. “Jacket Order” is all weights are returned to the original location, organized, and wiped clean after each session. Leave it better than you found it! There is an old saying, “many hands make light work,” however, it teaches the athletes to clean up after themselves and to take pride in our weight room. In closing, find out what works best for you.

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No training tool, book, or advice beats having experience. Everyone’s situation is different. You have to figure out the space you have to work in, the equipment you have, and how long you will have your athletes for a training session to solidify a training plan. Set the plan and work the plan!

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What many do not know yet is that social media use inhibits training gains and game performance.

A recent story from LetsPlayHockey.com detailed the studies’ findings and how they relate to athletes performing their best. Below is an excerpt from LetsPlayHockey.com.

Many other studies are showing the same: late-night social media use is correlated with lower point production in NBA athletes and with worse performance outcomes for college swim and track, and field athletes. In these cases, the reduction in sleep quality is a major factor in worse performance outcomes.

The nature of social media itself is also the problem. Watching TV is a largely passive activity. The entertainment does not really interact with you. With social media, nearly every second requires a decision – do I continue to scroll, like, comment, switch apps, or search for something? Imagine watching television for 30 minutes, but the entire time you only watch a show for five seconds, then change the channel. That would be exhausting!

Serious athletes should understand that social media use has a myriad of negative impacts on their health, physically and mentally, and that using it before training and competition has performance implications. Youth and high school sports coaches, organizations, and leaders should lead the charge to get phones out of team settings and educate their players on the negative impact phone use is having on their performance.

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At Fortis, we have a social media and video games seminar for parents and athletes that reviews this and other research, helping to educate and inspire youth and high school players to put the phone down and become better athletes! Reach out if you’d like to learn more and schedule a seminar with your high school, team, or association.

Josh Levine is the owner of The Fortis Academy, a sports performance training organization that works with youth to professional athletes. Fortis provides training, sport-specific skills work, leadership and parent education, and nutrition services. To learn more, go to www.thefortisacademy.com. 

To read the full story from LetsPlayHockey.com, click here. 

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On March 12, a 14-year-old student-athlete was warming up during a track practice at Allen Park High School when the event occurred. The two coaches administered CPR and called emergency responders to take her to a nearby hospital.

A recent story from WWNYTV.com detailed the coaches’ heroics and the response from the student-athlete’s family. Below is an excerpt from WWNYTV.com.

The 14-year-old later learned she went into sudden cardiac arrest.

“I was very grateful to be even awake, but it was also scary to know that happened to me,” she said.

It was a surreal moment, especially for the athlete, as she had never shown any signs of a heart problem previously.

“She does her sports physical every year for sports activities in high school and middle school. So, this was sprung upon us and we had no idea,” her mother, Kelly Dolan, said.

As she recovers, two Allen Park track coaches are being called heroes. After she had gone unresponsive at practice, they quickly performed CPR and used an AED.

“It got her heart rhythm back before emergency crews arrived. Those critical seconds changed my life, my daughter’s life, and it saved her life,” Dolan said.

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Being ready to respond during a medical emergency is something Allen Park High School’s Athletic Director James Victor says they take very seriously.

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Wareham High School unveiled the unified strength and conditioning team coached by the school’s occupational therapist, Marybeth Kiernan, who also helps with the school’s unified basketball and track teams.

Unified sports is a Special Olympics program that gives kids with special needs the opportunity to compete in team sports.

A recent article in Wareham Week detailed the unified strength and conditioning team and what it has meant to the athletes. Below is an excerpt from the Wareham Week article.

Adding the sport to the unified athletics department was important to Kiernan because she said she wanted kids to have a way to stay active in between basketball and track season.

“My goal was to help kids create healthy lives, and I accomplished that,” Kiernan said. “Also, the ability to be with the kids twice a week was great.”

The team did not just give kids an opportunity to be healthy; Kiernan said they excelled at it. At the conclusion of their nine-week season, the Vikings were the number one ranked unified strength and conditioning team in the state.

The strength and conditioning competitions looked different than most other sports. Kiernan explained how it worked: they would take initial benchmark measurements on a variety of exercises like running in the hallway and wall sits, and she would track the kids’ progress and report the numbers to Special Olympics. The teams that showed the most progress were ranked higher.

“When we first started, I would have kids run in the hallway, and most of them walked, but by the end of it, most of them ran the entire way,” Kiernan said. “I also increased the number of times they did it so they were running for longer periods of time.”

The ranking at the end of the season was not the only success. Kiernan said many kids experienced near unprecedented levels of growth and gained confidence throughout their nine weeks together.

“I would be handing out weights and the kids would say ‘I can’t do this it’s too heavy’ and within no time at all they were doing things they didn’t think they could do,” Kiernan said. “Some of them hold a plank for a minute and they never thought they would be able to do that. They learned how to do hard things and keep going.”

Bill and Shelly Mobilia saw a lot of physical growth for their son Bryson, who was diagnosed with low muscle tone.

“He’s slimming down, and it’s also calmed him down,” Bill said. “It’s always been difficult to go for a walk or go hiking because of his low muscle tone, so this has been a huge help.”

To read the full article from Wareham Week, click here. 

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The Massachusetts father filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the MIAA and the Somerset Berkley Regional School District for “violating the rights of my daughters and countless other female student-athletes.”

The incident allegedly took place in November 2018.

A recent article from The Boston Herald detailed the parent’s complaint and the incident that sparked the complaint. Below is an excerpt from The Boston Herald article.

The parent is calling for the feds to investigate the MIAA and the school district for “noncompliance with Title IX and with President Trump’s recent executive orders on protecting women and girls from gender ideology.”

Title IX violations should lead to canceling federal funds from these organizations and schools, the father wrote in his complaint.

The parent’s youngest daughter in November of 2018 was reportedly severely injured by a male player when she was playing in a field hockey tournament game against Somerset Berkley.

“This male player shattered my daughter’s thumb when he whipped a shot toward the goal during the game,” the father wrote in the complaint. “My daughter suffered significant pain from this injury and was forced to miss her freshman ice hockey season because of it… This boy should never have been allowed to play against my daughter in a girls’ tournament game, and his presence on the field led directly to her injury and loss of competitive opportunity.”

The Walpole all-girls field hockey team lost to the Somerset Berkley team with two male players in the state tournament semifinals. Then the next year, Somerset Berkley again beat Walpole in the state semis.

This Title IX complaint comes after the Department of Education last month announced a Title IX investigation into the MIAA after a viral high school basketball game when a reportedly transgender player injured three girls.

A Swampscott High School boy player’s shot struck a Dighton-Rehoboth High School player in the face, sending her to the hospital with significant facial and dental injuries. The incident led to shrieks and tears all over the field hockey pitch.

The viral shot from the male player led to calls for gender rule changes for high school sports, especially when it comes to girls’ field hockey.

To read the full story from The Boston Herald, click here. 

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