Where to Start With High School Teams

I recently had a great talk with a high level high school basketball Coach in Florida about training his team.  The thing that always come to the front is what to do in the weight room?  When to do the strength and what exercises to do?  When thinking about large groups you have to remember you want the learning curve to be small and sometimes stupid simple is the answer.  Why spend 20 plus minutes teaching Olympics lifts when the athletes are movers and not weight lifters?  Yes, I understand the importance of those lifts in a program but you have limited time and they can wait till weight lifting class to learn those important lifts.  What about ankle and hip flexibility training?  Why are we doing so many crunches and barbell squats when the athletes have little spine stabilization in the first place.  Enough facts now lets look at some ideas you can use in your programs with groups.

1.  Start with movement and flexibility training barefoot
2.  Use Functional Power instead of Olympic Lifts in most situations
3.  Teach body weight first and single leg strength
4.  Avoid loading the spine in the beginning of progressions
5.  Use little to no machines in most program designs
6.  Make the atmosphere fun and challenging
7.  Don't spend time testing in the bench and squat in most situations
8.  Use isometrics and eccentric training for strength progressions
9.  Educate the team as they train with why they are doing this part of the progression
10. Before they go into season (2-3 weeks out) the workout might look like this.
-Movement and Activation  10 minutes
-Strength 1-2 exercises
-Power 1-2 exercises
-Active Rest flex. and core