By Tom Kaberna

Lake Park HS Jumps Coach

This post will be dedicated to getting into the specifics of my training for my jumpers. Last post I spoke of the two different days I use and now I will put them together in a weekly setup so you can see how it all goes together.

The season is broken down into three different pieces when I plan it out at the beginning of each year. We have a general preparation phase which is usually half my season then a specific preparation phase which is a quarter of my season and the last phase would be the competition phase which is the last quarter. The general preparation phase is really just getting the kids used to the demands of training and getting them setup technically. I focus on hypertrophy training in the weight room and acceleration during this time of the year. The technical parts I focus on during this phase are making sure they understand the model I want them to follow and short approach jumps.

 During the specific preparation phase I focus on maximum strength in the weight room and maximum velocity on the track. For technique I am moving out farther to 6-8 steps for triple jump and 8-10 steps for long jump. In my competition phase I am focused on lighter explosive movements in the weight room as well as speed endurance on the track. My technical focus is on triage of what is going wrong with the athletes at that time of the year. I don’t try to change much during this time of the year as I know it will have a negative effect on them for a few weeks if you try to make big changes during this part of the season. I will continue to make changes for my younger athletes with a long term outlook on their high school career in mind. In my mind the technical part of track is the most important part.

When I first started I was far too focused on the workouts and making the workouts really tough on the athletes. Those first few years my kids were extremely strong in the weight room and could do a lot of volume on the track. The problem I ran into was I followed coach Schexnayders’ training program very closely and did a high day every other day.

This only left a couple days a week to actually work on the technical part. In my mind high school athletes need more learning time and less training time. A few years back I switched from what I was doing and peeled back the high days from three a week to only two. The rest of the days were technical in nature.

My kids were then put in an environment more frequently to learn the skills I wanted them to learn in long and triple jump. I have attached a PowerPoint with a sample yearly plan and a sample week from each period of my training program.