The Recipe for a Great Strength and Conditioning Program

By Wayne Burke

-January 26th, 2016- If you read this blog or search the internet for cool exercise tips to be a better lacrosse player, you can find allot of information (some useful and some useless).  While there are an infinite amount of exercises and drills you could include, it can be hard for players, coaches and parents to try and figure out which ones are best for them.

Think of a great program as a great recipe. A great recipe, like a great strength and conditioning program, has the right amount of specific ingredients to help create a delicious meal. But, without the right ingredients or by including too much of one ingredient you can end up with terrible tasting meal.  This happens with many of the strength and conditioning programs I see people doing today.

First and foremost, every program should start with a goal.  A single goal.  Trying to achieve too many goals at the same time is like having too many ingredients in your recipe, you end up with s*** soup!  These goals should be defined clearly, be very specific and have a time frame attached to them.

Second, you need to create balanced program in order to build towards this goal.  Things that should be considered in building a program are:

• Age
• Experience
• Existing/previous injuries
• Mobility and Flexibility needs
• Warm Ups
• Speed/Agility/Acceleration mechanics and drills
• Power
• Strength
• Energy System Development

The items listed above are usually the key elements of great strength and conditioning program.  Now, the exercises that you include, drills that you select, the lifts that you execute and the progressions that you choose are the real meat and potatoes of the program.

We have posted and continue to post some great exercises or drills we use with our athletes to achieve a certain outcome.  The most difficult part is putting the information together to build a great program.

Here is an example of a speed and agility section of  workout I built for one of my athletes. Her goal was to improve her agility. So, I started using some of the progressive plyometric drills I have included over the past month plus a few other drills you can find on this site.  Right now, she needs to improve her transfer of force, her landing mechanics and some hip mobility in order for us to improve her agility. So I have included a medicine ball throw, lateral plymetric drill and a stationary spiderman in the speed/agility section of her training session to help address these needs.

We did 3 sets of 5 reps per exercise per side in this training session.

This is just one great example of how to integrate speed training into your program and maximize your training time.

If you have any questions about training, programming or you would like to have a strength and conditioning program designed specifically for you, contact us as strengthcoachburke@gmail.com or sean@thedynamicathlete.ca.

Tags: agility, change of direction, complex training, core stability, core training, injury prevention, injury reduction, lacrosse training, lacrosse workouts, muscle activation, Power, shot power, smart lacrosse training, speed, Speed Training, stability, Strength Training