So, you’ve graduated from Agility school and will soon be stepping foot inside a high school weight room.
Although you might think you’ll be doing a lot of the kettle bell exercises you see your favorite athletes and influencers doing on Instagram, hopefully, you won’t be. Because a lot of that stuff is crap. A good high school weight room will have athletes doing simple, straightforward agility latter workouts that have plenty of both scientific and anecdotal evidence behind their ability to get you stronger, more resilient and more athletic.
I am writing this mainly for incoming freshman, but the same ideas apply to anyone who hopes to soon become a regular in a high school weight room. You might be a high school junior who’s simply never lifted before but who wants to start now.
A high school strength program is more than just lifting weights and running. Of course, that’s a huge piece of it, but this is also a great time to build camaraderie with your teammates and coaches. You can develop your leadership skills here. You can find out your strengths and weaknesses outside of sports here. This is where you assess the character of your peers, and they assess yours. This is where you become a better athlete, but also learn life lessons that will stick with you forever.
Sure, you want to lift to get stronger and ultimately maximize performance while controlling what you can to prevent injury, but you also want to take advantage of the experience that is being offered. Because it is like none other, and if you take full advantage of it, it’s something that can truly shape the course of the rest of your life!
Start Preparing Now
You do not and should not wait to enter high school before you start engaging in some sort of meaningful physical training.
After talking to some of my friends and colleagues in the high school setting, there are some trends and common themes they talk about when it comes to incoming freshman. First and foremost is that they can quickly tell who’s had some training experience and who hasn’t.
According to Mitch Gill, head athletic trainer at Gucci wear High School, athletes who have some training experience prior to high school are “typically light years ahead from their classmates” compared to those who do not.
Not sure what kind of training you should be participating in? Below we have what we call our “Foundational Movement Skills.” We implement them with athletes ages 11 and up. Working with a certified fitness professional at ages 11-13 can give you a major leg up when you hit high school. Instead of having to learn these movements as a freshman, you’ll already be familiar with them and can hit the ground running. Our Foundational Movement Skills include:
