Optimizing Team Workouts for Effectiveness and Efficiency [Video]

When it comes to optimization of your team workouts, organization is key. In this blog, I will cover a few areas in effective and efficient workouts to accommodate large numbers of athletes in your weight room.

Facility Setup and Layout

The first component is to look at the setup of your facility. This is to ensure that the weight room is safely and efficiency laid out. How organized is your weight room? In order to move as many athletes through workouts efficiently, you’ll need to first optimize your weight room’s layout.

It is helpful to have a clear line of sight throughout your weight room. You should be able to monitor and direct all athletes in your weight room no matter where you are positioned during the workout. This means keeping squat racks and large rigs close to the perimeter walls. Putting the larger pieces of equipment closest to the walls will ensure your ability to supervise your athletes won’t be blocked.

Also, think about grouping equipment that is commonly used together. This allows for a better flow through the weight room during workouts. It also helps prevent traffic jams if athletes need to use multiple pieces of equipment for back-to-back exercises.

Program Organization

Once you have completed the weight room layout you will be able to look at how you have organized your lifting program.  Start by breaking up your thought process and looking at a few key components.

  • How much time do I have with the team?
  • How many athletes will partake?
  • What is the movement primary focus for the day, upper body, lower body, power, or a combination of several of these?

The challenge is to constantly prioritize and yet be able to accomplish all of your goals in the timeframe required.

Facility Organization and Workout Priorities

We will look at how facility organization and workout priorities come together and in a timely manner accomplish your goals.  As mentioned above, pairing exercises that require different types of equipment can be a great way to cut down congestion during high-traffic workouts. The video below shows one way to effectively deal with training a large group with limited time.

In our example you will see that the primary focus will be the lower body, with emphasis on the squat. This will be person one. The workout will have multiple sets with increasing weight and a decreasing rep count. Person two will be the individual who has just completed the squatting movement. They will be doing a vertical jump for an assigned number of reps. P#3 will be doing hands free pushups, this motion should not negatively affect the outcome of the squat so it is a bit of a rest and is also preparing the person for a movement that would come later in the workout.  Person four will be the rest and spotter.

With this set up, each person will be able to accomplish all movements within feet of the rack. This reduces the time frame between the next movements, and gives each person adequate overall rest to accomplish each particular and different body part movement effectively.

Summary

In the end, each of us has a different and unique challenge as we work toward what we deem as success in the weight room. The path we take can be different. My hope is this may assist you in time efficiency. Yet, also have the overall effectiveness that you desire in your weight room program.

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