Remember when summer break used to actually mean summer break? Now our high school student athletes are involved in several extra curricular activities including AAU teams, summer camps, and strength and conditioning programs. Just because the school year has ended does not mean our kids stop working to achieve their athletic goals. This means we as athletic trainers are still involved in supporting our athletes throughout the summer.
While the summer is no doubt time for the beach and hitting the links, this is also the time where our student athletes need to set goals in the strength and conditioning part of their athletic work. As athletic trainers and strength coaches, we expect our student athletes to be in their best shape when fall sports kick off in August. In order to give our kids the best chance to achieve their strength and conditioning goals at Catholic Central (CC), head strength and conditioning coach Adam Nelson and myself offer daily, carefully constructed training programs tailored to our CC athlete’s needs.
Generally our programs begin in early June and finish at the end of July. Roughly eight weeks of intense training assists to prepare each athlete for the fall season. Come June, several of our athletic trainers’ schedules at The Center completely change from PM to AM. At Catholic Central we begin our summer days with workouts at 7am.
Half of a typical workout is completed in the weight room with strength training while the other half is a cardio conditioning and agility session. Football is a large group of kids so we like to train these kids separately. After football workouts, other groups come in to train as well. In addition to high school students we also offer our strength and conditioning services to our upcoming middle school students. Typically these are just a couple days per week, and overall our summer days wrap up around 1 or 2pm.
In terms of athletic training, since our summer work does not consist of any full contact sports the injuries we treat the most are muscle strains and general fatigue/dehydration. We also focus time on injury prevention and soft tissue rehabilitation. Injury prevention starts with safe training. For example, lifting with proper technique and warming up appropriately are highly valued in our summer workouts.
The beauty of having a strength coach and an athletic trainer on site at CC for workouts is that our kids benefit from all aspects of sports performance. We are fortunate at The Center to have an amazing support staff for our high school athletics. And the team approach of athletic trainers, physical therapists, strength coaches, and team physicians assists our kids both in being healthy and improving performance.
Wishing your school had a summer strength and conditioning program? We can help! Check out our Academy Page here.