Are you sleeping enough? Are you sleeping well?!

With a busy holiday season ahead, busy academic schedules, and for some of us, even busier athletic training and competition schedules- our focus on sufficient and proper recovery has never been more important...

Reducing the likelihood of burnout and fatigue is a top priority, but how does good recovery take place? What does it look like?

While active-recovery methods like yoga, low-intensity spin cycling, de-loaded resistance work, foam rolling, and other mobility exercises should always play an important part in our approach to recovery, often, the most-neglected and yet, most influential factor in effective recovery for athletes is sleep.

So what does good sleep look like?

The National Strength and Conditioning Association recently released a publication on the importance of sleep for athletic performance.

Along with the article, which highlights the importance of sleep duration and quality for the sake of improving athletic performance, reducing injury risk, and improving the overall quality of a training session, the NSCA also published this cool info-graphic, which does a great job of simplifying what good quality sleep looks like for an athlete!

Check it out! How many of these recommendations are you currently following? Is there anything you can do right away to improve the quality of your sleep? And as a result, your athletic performance??

Happy training,

DV

Extra-Curricular Strength & Conditioning Program Orientation Session: This Wednesday!

Hey BCSS!

If you're interested in learning about extra-curricular strength and conditioning opportunities this year, be sure to attend the lunch-hour information session this week!

This lunch-hour session is important for all students who want to participate in extra-curricular strength and conditioning/fitness programming this year at BCSS.

This includes, drop-in training sessions and scheduled, sign-up programs.

The session is taking place in the lecture hall on Wednesday during common lunch from 12:10-12:45. Students who will be able to receive a copy of strength and conditioning / fitness program schedules for the 2017/18 year, and will also be able to learn about opportunities to complete facility orientation sessions and submit requests for custom fitness/strength and conditioning program development.

If you plan on attending, you can sign up in advance at the Athletics Office, or just sign-in at the door on the date of the session.

Hope to see you there!

Happy training,


DV

Program Design Template for SSF / LTAD

Greetings SSF and LTAD students!

This post is just for you!

The link below will provide you with access to the generic 3-day program design template for your SSF and LTAD strength and conditioning programs.

Remember: You do not have to use this template if you would prefer to use your own.

Using the information we discussed in our seminar on deliberate practice and program design, you should be able to create a 3-day strength and conditioning program that is both unique and purposeful to your role as an athlete.

Your program should be designed with consideration to:

1. Exercises that are sport-specific;
2. periodization / the current stage of the training year (off-season, pre-season, etc.)
3. specific fitness goals that you have and areas that best-serve your potential improvement.

Here is a link to the template if you are interested in using it.