I want to finalize the series I have been doing over the last month of my personal philosophy for strength and conditioning at King’s Ridge Christian School. As many of you know this summer I took over that program and have been developing new philosophy and new programming for their high school sports as the Director of Strength and Conditioning.
The first point I made was a necessity for injury prevention as primary focus in the weight room. The second point I made was a necessity to develop athleticism in a high school environment where general physical preparedness is paramount for success in life in and beyond high school. The third and final point is a basic hierarchy of development that is emphasized in the weight room for the four years and hopefully seven years that I have students.
The following hierarchy is a non-original pyramid that I picked up from my high school weightlifting coach Stan Luttrell who picked it up from somebody else and neither one of us know for certain who the original creator was. Here is the statement made in our school manual:
“Strength, Power, Movement, and Skill: Our hierarchy of development will always been with strength. Strength gives athletes the ability articulate their desired movement and capacity with excellence. Strength is the foundation for everything we do in sport as it creates a capacity for force that allows athletes to engage in athletics. Also, strength prevents injury and allows for faster recovery from injury should it happen. Built on top of strength is power. Power is the ability and rate by which you apply your strength. Power can also be translated as explosiveness. Power is the body’s ability to use the strength it has gained to run faster, jump higher, and work longer. The third level in the hierarchy is movement. Strength and power give an athlete the ability to move with precision, agility, quickness, and speed. Proper movement happens when an athlete has achieved a higher level of strength and power in order to allow them to move in select movement patterns that directly correlate to their sport. At the top of our hierarchy of movement is skill. Skill is the ability of the athlete to take all the strength, power, and movement they have gained in the weight room or in training and apply it to their sport. The strength and conditioning program will develop athletes by creating a base of strength, power, and movement on which sport-specific coaches will develop skill.”
This hierarchy is pretty simple. First make them strong. As I’ve said in previous posts, strength is paramount. Strong athletes are the most useful, the most multi-purposed, and ultimately the most successful. The primary goal in the weight room is to make them strong. Duh. On top of their strength we will develop power. Power gives them the ability to use their strength in useful ways in their specific sport. Both strength and power can be developed alongside each other but in order to reach extreme gains in the power department you must first be strong. You will always only be as powerful as you are strong. Once our athletes are strong and powerful, we can begin to excel in the movement department. Many CrossFit coaches and athletes are going to think this is backwards. Many believe that in order to develop strong, powerful athletes they must first be able to move with precision. I do not wholly disagree with this idea but in the high school world it is a little different. In the high school world, kids need strength and power development IN ORDER TO move well. That’s an important emphasis. I have kids with no mobility issues, no flexibility problems, and yet they lack zero stability in order to perform the movement required of them. Asking a kid to perform a well executed snatch without the strength to stabilize a barbell over their head is a recipe for disaster. Before we can begin developing precise and advanced movement they must first be strong and powerful enough to perform that movement. After proper development, then we will ramp up the expertise of movement required of them. Obviously, every movement they complete whether it is an air squat or a clean and jerk, will always be performed with a movement emphasis. The reason movement is ranked on top of strength and power is because in order for high school athletes to reach a level where they can perform any movement required of them they must first have the strength and power to move well. The final piece is skilled movement. This is the level at which athletes become sport specific. On field coaches develop their skill movement. My job in the weight room is to make them strong, powerful, and precise in their movement in such a way that they are able to step on their field of play as a blank slate ready to perform anything asked of them by their coaches. Skill is developed in practice for their specific sport that they are specifically playing that season. My job is to create a base for excellence and achievement in that arena.
Those are the three pieces and parts of our strength and conditioning philosophy at King’s Ridge Christian School. I’m sure my commitment to these three will change and mold over the course of the many years I plan to spend in high school athletics but we are confident this is a great starting place.
Developing Power & Strength through the use of the Olympic Lifts.
