Saint Louis University Sports Performance System
Our goal as a performance staff at Saint Louis University should be the same as the teams: win as many games as possible. How can a sports performance staff contribute to winning? When players are stronger, faster and move more efficiently than their opponents, they are more likely to be successful on the court or field. The challenge is maintain this high level of fitness throughout the grind of a long season.
By collaborating with the rest of the support staff, we could implement and refine a high-performance in-season/ off-season training system that prepares our athletes to meet the demands of division one sports. Our approach would be founded on working with the support staff and individualized training that accounts for each player’s physical development and number of years spent with our department. We would bring everything together by utilizing the latest advances in data collection to ensure the work we do in practice and in the weight room doesn’t hamper our athletes’ ability to move and perform in their sport.
Laying the Groundwork
Our role with the team as the performance coach would be to communicate and collaborate with the medical staff so that we can relay one message to the coaching staff, and all of the other individuals who work with and serve our athletes, such as the team’s athletic trainer, and assistant coaches. Everyone who surrounds and supports the team’s efforts would provide consistent messages to the athletes about what is necessary to be successful.
Because nothing is more important for creating a winning culture than having the right frame of mind, a significant component of our role would be to facilitate a process-oriented mindset. To do that we would speak to our athletes’ about being “24-hour athletes,” which means eating right, managing their sleep and making good decisions in social setting. We drill home this message in hopes our athletes adopt a lifestyle that lend themselves to our pursuit of championships.
Our philosophy takes a movement-based approach to training, and our mantra of “Move well, move often, and then move well under load.” To address the “Move well” component and determine each athlete’s potential limitations, we will utilize the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), upper- and lower-quarter screening, performance test, and observations.
Categorizing the Athletes
Our approach to screening carries over to the training regimen. Each athlete is categorized based on his or hers specific needs. The first classification divides them into one of three groups based on how much time they’ve spent within the program: Advanced, Intermediate, or Novice.
The advanced classification is reserved for athletes who have been in the system for two years or more. These individuals possess the requisite mobility and attention to detail to utilize Olympic lifts and their derivatives, squats, and presses as the foundational exercises of their training, so they require more complex programming and periodization to continue to experience adaptations.
During the competitive season, the primary training goal for the advanced group varies greatly depending on the athlete. For instance, athletes who need to get stronger train more frequently at higher intensities. Those who have sufficient levels of strength spend more time on skill-related qualities that may not be as developed.
Intermediate athletes have gone through a year in the training system. They’ve developed the requisite work capacity to be successful in our program, and their primary in-season training goal is to develop strength. The methods we use to accomplish this vary depending on an athlete’s role in the rotation. Generally players who receive more minutes work with lower volume in the weight room to offset the physical stresses of competition.
All first-year athletes and transfers would be defined as novices. Transfers fall into this category because we assume their training history is not adequate for them to be placed immediately into one of our higher levels. We always start at zero. The athletes’ competency will dictate how quickly they move forward.
We have two goals for our novice athletes. The first is developing fundamental movement competency and addressing ay dysfunction that may hinder us from putting them under load. In addition, we focus on building their work capacity by improving motor patterns, aerobic fitness, strength endurance, and body composition.
During their first off-season in the program, we progress slowly with our novice athletes. They spend a considerable amount of time completing peripheral heart action-oriented circuits and dumbbell – and Kettlebell-loaded movements. The Summer/Fall is typically the foundational time for our first year athletes.
