Summer Manuals

So it is that time of year again and most strength and conditioning coaches are beginning to think about summer training and preparing the all fun task of summer manuals. The purpose of this discussion is merely to open a few doors and throw around ideas that hopefully will get some feedback from you guys about how you design your summer programs and the means with which you produce them and distribute them. Here at DU in my time have basically enhanced our manuals from year to year and they now are almost upwards of 150 pages each. We have fosterd the belief that if we do not cover as many bases as possible that our athletes will not complete their training to the highest degree. Within our manual we provide nearly every image of every exercise that they might find in their program, diagrams of every conditioning and agility drill that they may come across. Also are included special needs programs, alternative programs to combat the "I did not have a place to workout this week" excuse, to name a few. What we are hoping is to get up to the times and get much of the expenses out of the printing and production and find a way to get everything online b/c all of our student here are required to own a laptop and should have access to a CPU. We are trying to create a login for each sport and ultimately get everything wireless.

This is just an example and I would really like to hear other ways that people construct their manuals and ideas that can make this tall task easier to do. Good luck to you all and thanks in advance for any input you may have.

Joel Raether MAEd, CSCS*D
Univerity of Denver Strength and Conditioning

Tags: Manuals, Summer

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Potts on March 5, 2009 at 11:20pm

We've distributed manuals via USB jump or "flash" drives. A 2-4GB drive will hold a good amount of data and can be found at minimal cost.

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Permalink Reply by Sergio Rojas on March 6, 2009 at 12:16pm

Your Sports Information Director should be able to help out in posting summer workouts online. We did that for last summer, I brought up the idea to our SID and he just told me to send him the workouts and he would take care of it, as far as making password protected, and having each sport find there own specific workout he took care of it and did a great job, and it worked out great. The only thing with instruction on technique I referred them to websites that had video demos of exercises. I know Air Force and UCLA have great demo videos on there strength and conditioning website and I used them a lot as references if any of my athletes had questions. I'm in the process of trying to post our exercises on our site, that way I don't have to refer them to other sites.

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Permalink Reply by Joel Raether on March 6, 2009 at 1:55pm

Sergio,

Thanks for your input. I believe that we will go this route as well. Two of our former assistants both work at Air Force and they do have a good set-up. I appreciate your feedback. Best wishes JR

Sergio Rojas said:

Your Sports Information Director should be able to help out in posting summer workouts online. We did that for last summer, I brought up the idea to our SID and he just told me to send him the workouts and he would take care of it, as far as making password protected, and having each sport find there own specific workout he took care of it and did a great job, and it worked out great. The only thing with instruction on technique I referred them to websites that had video demos of exercises. I know Air Force and UCLA have great demo videos on there strength and conditioning website and I used them a lot as references if any of my athletes had questions. I'm in the process of trying to post our exercises on our site, that way I don't have to refer them to other sites.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Hartman on March 10, 2009 at 12:01pm

We are working with our media support staff to post as much information on our S&C website as possible. We are uploading numerous videos to help show the athletes the correct (or at least they way we want it done :-) ) way to perform the exercises on the workout. We also post all of the summer workouts on the website under the team specific heading in a pdf format. We then take the workouts down after the summer is over, or at least we have in the past. We do not have anything password protected, but may in the future. We don't typical post or give examples of alternative workouts, because we have a no excuses policy. If you cant get it done, someone will. It may sound harsh, but when it is laid out like that it is amazing how many athletes can actually make it happen. This years/summer website and information will be significantly improved. This is a result of the addition of Trent Greener to our...his staff. :-)

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Permalink Reply by Christopher T. Anderson on March 16, 2009 at 6:53pm

I have to use the standard manual distribution but have gone to website distribution as well. Our SID has been really good to work with in that when I first got here 2 1/2 years ago, there wasn't anything on the web for strength and conditioning. He and I have been trying get a fully functioning website up to include videos / pictures of all exercises and SAQ drills. It has been a work in progress as we've also had to hash out issues with the webhost. In the meantime we've begun distributing all our teams summer and winter manuals electonically via the website. Each teams workout is a password encoded pdf which remains up for the calendar year. The impetus behind this was to save money and like Rob said, I have a no excuses policy. Now the athletes can't say they lost their workouts (the number 1 excuse I hear year after year). This method has been favorably received by the majority of our athletes and coaches, with the exception of a few coaches who feel it best the athlete has something in hand when they leave. Doesn't really bother me as each team is responsible for paying the cost of binding, just a pain in that I have to them a little earlier.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Moody on March 25, 2009 at 9:05am

We have been consulting via our website, www.AthleteFIT.com (which has over 2000 video clips of exercises and progression) to colleges and corporate wellness programs to use instead of a printed manual. This has proven to be an easy way for coaches to write the exercises, sets, reps and periodization and then link it to the appropriate exercise. The nice thing about this is we already have progressions and digressions of each exercise with research and descriptions, a fixing the flaws section and calendar to track which workouts to do and record progress. Then this is all password protected and only viewable to the specific university and their athletes.

I think online training manuals are the way to go in the future. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video description should remove all doubt.

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Permalink Reply by Matthew Nein on April 17, 2010 at 4:16pm

Joel,

One concept we have used was CD's. This was less expensive when compared to the manuals but allowed us to put the program in each athletes hand. They are a little more time consuming because each must be downloaded. What was nice about the CD's was that you could link your pictures right to the exercise, conditioning, etc. This way athletes could click right on the activity they were unsure of and follow the pics for correct technique. When the CD was put into the computer it would automatically come up showing the training calendar, weight training workouts, conditioning workouts, and nutritional information. Linked to these plans were foam rolling, mobility, warm-ups, and technique pics as listed in the workouts. One other nice feature is that the athletes can save the file to their computer and then type into it after or during a workout. This concept may be similar to that of the USB Flash Drive Idea.

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Permalink Reply by Joel Raether on April 19, 2010 at 9:56am

Matt,

Thanks for the insight. I like the idea of linking the exercises. I may look into that as well as I am getting ready to prepare again. It is always such a task regardless of the route you take but it helps to find better ways to do things. Best of luck to you and thanks again.

JR

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Permalink Reply by Adam Sebastian Chamberlain on December 1, 2010 at 10:57pm

I got a local print company to pitch in and print for free. They didn't mind at all. I dont think the electronic methods are very good. Since the players need to be at a comp or something to access the manual. I find they carry print with them. As for the images. I would say put together a technique book that is seperate. most guys won't need it but new guys will. This will save lots of paper.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Brown on April 7, 2011 at 9:34am

Hi Joel:

I've been distributing summer manuals on CD-ROM for the last 10 years. At the time I switched, our manual was costing over $10 to print. I can produce it on CD for less than $1. We have our entire manual, plus video clips of most the exercises and drills the athletes would be performing in the summer. The CD features an auto run command that opens up the disc to a Table of Contents page. Athletes can then navigate through the manual from the TOC page.

Best of luck,

Steve