This next document represents the collaboration between the technical staff led by the head coach and the high-performance team led by the high-performance director. To design the most well-rounded plan and progressions, both entities must address many aspects of the training process, which centers on the common belief that player health, availability and performance will allow the team to achieve their goals.
To create this document, I will copy and paste a single week from the “physical document” (only two days shown in the example below) and start building two blocks of rows underneath each day of the week. The first block allows the head coach to outline and emphasize the goals, coaching aspects, and targeted behaviors for the week and each training day. The second block allows the technical staff to lay out the session outline for each day – broken down into the different training segments. At this point, we are only looking for a simple training outline and not necessarily diving into all the details of size, sets, reps, rest, number of players, etc. Once the outline of the week is created, the high-performance team can start assessing each training day and the associated drills, measuring it against the physical plan and goals for the week within the frame of the current block of work. With that feedback, both entities will enter conversations to help the head coach make decisions on finalizing the training plan for the week. Ideally, this crafting process happens one week prior to the actual training week, which will help everyone enjoy a full day off and be fully prepared as they return to work on the first training day of the week.
Now, I want to spend some time discussing how we can help facilitate these conversations, which too often fall into a push/pull between high-performance and technical staff. My first order of business is to work with the head coach to develop a common language related to our specific micro-cycle, our days of the week, and the basic principles guiding each training day of the week. The head coach will then implement this language within the technical staff, while I will implement it within the high-performance team. Once we have established this language, we will utilize it as the foundation for our weekly conversations about the training plan, and we will continue to challenge these ideas as we grow into the season.
Below is an example of two days plucked from a training week to show what it could look like. The content within each of these days is simply for the purpose of this example. Each team can adjust and craft the design of each line item within the blocks exactly as their personnel sees fit.
