If you are trying to prep your athletes for a college or professional career, and you are having a difficult time monitoring their progress and pushing them, there are some things that you will want to consider. You want to be sure that they are getting stronger, faster, and in better shape to reach their goals, and you want to know that their training is effective. Here are some of the things that you can do and monitor to make sure that your athletes are getting to where they need to be.
Weight Room Results
Make sure that your athletes are recording what they do in the weight room, and then you want to monitor their weight room results with weightlifting testing. This means that you see what their max is every few weeks, to see if they are gaining in strength and improving. Setting up charts and goals so everyone can see where they are at, and where they need to be, can help keep the athletes motivated.
Physiological Testing
Physiological testing on the bike can provide you with a lot of information on many different things. On this bike you can do the following:
- Power ramp test
- Sprint power test
- Check blood pressure
- Monitor heart rate
- Assessment of core stability
- Get a body fat analysis
These are just some of the things that you can do if you invest in a physiological test bike, or if you take your athletes in to get this type of testing completed.
Timed Running and Sprints
Every few weeks make goals for your athletes to run a mile, two miles, or specific sprints in. Many universities or professional programs require that their goals do these things in specific times if an athlete wants to be on the team. You can set their goals so you know they are conditioning as they need to be, and so you can see how much faster they get at the end of the program.
There are a lot of different things that you want to do to help push your athletes, but you can't be sure how much progress they are having unless you can see the documented results. Look into all of these different things so that you can keep a track record of their improvements, and so they can see how far they've come and how far they need to go to reach their goals.