Yesterday I arrived home from Iceland. It was an amazing experience and an amazing country. The land is beautiful and the atmosphere was so natural. It was refreshing driving along the highways and seeing only nature, lava rock, and ocean and in the distance, glaciers. There was not a single billboard blocking the beautiful view. Seeing the countries attractions was incredible, but the reason I traveled to Iceland was to present a seminar to sport coaches and fitness trainers. I presented information on the development of sports performance programs. During the seminar breaks, many of the participants would come up to me and ask questions. The most common question I was asked was how to fit a speed into a program.

I recall a wonderful conversation I had with one of the country’s national team handball coaches. His concerns was how to fit speed training, conditioning, strength training, jump training and team handball practice all in. He went on to outline how he wanted to do it and what he had been doing in the past. I think my response was kind of shocking at first, however it was followed by relief.

My first response back to him was asking him what his goal was. His answer was to make his team better players and better athletes. I told him that having so many different compartmentalized training sessions for speed, strength, jumping, metabolic conditioning, and skills practice was unnecessary. He was telling me they have a 45-60 minute strength training session, a 45 minute speed session, plus two hours for practice (not all on the same session, but overall during the week). I went on to explain to him that much of what he was doing could be implemented into the skills practice of team handball. Strength training session might be the only component that could have a separate training time.

If during the actual skills practice he would carve out small bits of time to focus on linear and lateral speed training he could find tremendous value out of this time frame. Plus, he could address the speed skills as it relates to the sport. I then explained if he ran his practice efficiently he could achieve all the metabolic conditioning he wants during the practice. If he needs more, then tag it on to the last 5-10 minutes of practice. When I coached football and basketball, I would get a lot of my conditioning completed because I structured running offensives and defenses so we were working at a high intensity with short rest intervals between play sets. The athletes were learning the offensive and defensive systems while I was able to challenge their metabolic systems. Plus, the full court drills or position football skills were completed at a high pace.

The final piece of the puzzle was getting the athletes stronger. If it is possible to carve out a separate time for strength training 2-3 days per week I recommended doing so. However, if not then use the good old body weight strength exercises such a push ups, lunges, partner pulls, planks, and pull ups to strength train after or before practice.

The bottom line is this you don’t have to have separate training times for all the components of athleticism and sport systems development. You do have to find small slots of time to train these components. There is no reason not to work these components in during the same two hour block of time if that is the best solution for you and our athletes.

I have always said, “The training sessions are run by YOUR watch”. If you only have time for 20 minutes of athletic development on a given day, then design your program around 20 minutes. If you have 45 minutes, then design it around 45 minutes. Don’t  try to fit a square peg into a round hole. You can make it fit when and where ever you want. Just make sure you find time for it.

Even though my field is strength and conditioning and I encourage all athletes to be involved in some program, as coaches we can be the athletes own worst enemy. The reason I say this is because we try to jam more training time into an already busy schedule. Athletes are busier these days than they use to be. They have more travel teams, more homework, more activities on their plates. If S&C coaches try to load even more on their plate, it will eventually turn into more injuries and less positive emotions.

I believe what I can offer to athletes is very important but I also know I have to scale it down to fit into their schedules and not try to over tax them. Your job now is to figure out how can I fit speed training, strength training, metabolic conditioning, and “jump training” smartly into a sports program rather than trying to “JAM-IT” in by pushing with all your might.

P.S. – If you are interested in reading my notes from my 14 hours of seminar in Iceland, click here.

P.S.S – If you know of sports organization, high school athletic director, college sports coach or director who would like to schedule a 2 day Lee Taft Athletic Development Seminar contact us at info@SportsSpeedEtc.com and ask how you can host one in your community.

P.S.S. – The systems that many of the Sport Coaches in Iceland invested in to expand their athletic development coaching model are Basketball Speed, Quick feet for Soccer, Low Box Training for Athletes, and GroundBreaking2. All these systems can be found at www.SportsSpeedEtc.com