High School Weight Room Scheduling and Workouts For Efficiency

When most high school strength & conditioning coaches start out in the field, they have two goals. First goal is to establish a sound program within their school. The second, to establish a sound program where all team are involved. Most programs begin with a few sports and then build from there as the program grows.  The hard thing to manage as your program builds, is the number of athletes and teams that want to use the weight room.  Everyone has a limited amount of space and equipment to work with, and you can only handle a certain number of athletes at once.  The larger your strength and conditioning program becomes, the more important it is to create a weight room schedule that allows for efficiency of workouts, as well as for a flow of athletes and teams through your weight room.

In Farmington, Minnesota, I am working with 18 different boys and girls sports, and with multiple levels for most of those, ranging from varsity teams down to 9th-grade teams.  With that many groups who want to use the weight room, along with our off-season athletes, creating a strict schedule for teams’ lifting workouts is a must for me.

Weight Room Organization

The layout of equipment in our room is also maximized to handle a large group of athletes, while at the same time allowing for efficiency in getting workouts completed.  Every workout, for both in-season teams as well as off-season athletes, always start with what I call our “Big 3”.  These are a lower body/squat movement in our black squat racks, a total body lift (Olympic lift/variation or deadlift) on our platforms, and then an upper body lift at our orange multi-rack stations.  We always start with those three stations and rotate between all three.  With nine of each station, I can have 54 athletes working with partners, or 81 athletes working in groups of three, all training together at the same time.

Stations

Weight Room Organization

Then, with a large group of athletes or multiple teams in the weight room at once, we will go for a certain length of time at each station.  Everyone stays at that station until the time is up, and then everyone rotates at the same time.  This way, when we switch, everyone has a spot to go to and there is no waiting for someone else to finish or not having equipment available.  If we go with 9 minutes per station, we can get through our Big 3 lifts in a half hour.

With our in-season workouts, we will usually do only the Big 3 lifts.  Off-season workouts will move to auxiliary lifts after that to finish in about an hour.  This brings me back to how I schedule our in-season teams.  I have a half-hour time slot available for up to 2 teams (or 3 if they are smaller) right after school so they can lift before practice.  I try to get our off-season athletes in for an hour right after that.  If possible, we will do their speed & agility training right after school while in-season teams are lifting.

Weight Room Schedule

Weight Room Schedule

When off-season athletes are finished lifting, I then have one or two more half-hour slots open for more in-season teams, depending on the day, so those teams lift after practice.  Below is a sample week from this spring and what our schedule looks like:

At the beginning of each season, I try to coordinate the weight room schedule with each of the sport coaches and build a master plan for the whole season.  I try to get teams in at least two times per week, but can sometimes get more depending on the week and competition schedule. It can be a little tricky at times but for the most part, it works out. Teams know their scheduled lifting times. They know every day is planned out and they can’t show up without notice and expect to use the room.  This has helped me tremendously as a coach because it allows me to properly program our in-season workouts. 

Closing Thoughts

It’s also great for our athletes to have a regular and consistent lifting schedule.  It’s a win-win for everyone: teams, coaches, and myself. Every strength coach has their own situation and will need to create their own plan. To maximize everyone’s time, I highly recommend developing a structured schedule.

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