Our New Normal, Volume XII

On a normal weekday, Collegiate’s sports performance laboratory, also known as the weight room, is teeming with activity.
Music blares. Athletes move quickly from station to station and up and down the back hallway, trying to find space to perform their assigned tasks. Coaches supervise and encourage. 

In this COVID world, that’s not the case anymore. Sure, there’s music. Sure, there’s encouragement. Sure, there’s activity. Sure, it’s intense and inspired. But “teeming” hardly describes 18 mask-wearing athletes (max) directed by sports performance coach Chris Peoples in a cavernous facility at the north end of the athletic center on the school’s Mooreland Road campus.

Welcome to Our New Normal, Volume XII, the latest in a series about how Collegiate folks are making the best of a challenging situation.

How has COVID changed the operation of the weight room? I asked Peoples, a Reidsville, NC, native who arrived at Collegiate four years ago.

“We’ve basically doubled the racks, doubled the bars, doubled the plates, doubled the rings, and got more dumbbells and bands,” he began. “It works out this year so the athletes can come in and have their own individual rack. They enter from two hallways. One hallway goes to the front racks and the other hallway to the back racks. Once they get to their rack or their station, that will be where they stay the entire time.” 

So there’s no moving about as in the past?

 “Exactly,” he replied. “What we’re trying to do is limit their movement. Their station has all the equipment they’ll need. Everything is done at their station. That gives us plenty of space to work with, and it’s manageable for one coach. 

“They always wipe the equipment down as they enter. When they’re done, they put everything back where it belongs and wipe it down a second time, especially everything that they touch. They make sure they stay at their station and follow the strict exit process that we have as well.”

The weight room both on Mooreland and at Robins didn’t open at the beginning of school, I commented. What accommodations did you make before that so we could continue the program?

“In the fall,” Chris replied, “we still scheduled sports performance with the varsity and JV coaches and worked with their schedules. We scheduled it just like we normally would, either pre-practice or post-practice, and went to their practice location. We worked on the same type of exercises, same movements, same basic fundamentals and principles. We weren’t able to bring equipment so it was much more sport-specific body-weight, circuit type training.”

Sports performance is part of the culture. How have the kids responded to the changes?

“Really well,” Chris said. “They understand the process, procedures, and policies that we have to follow. They understand that things can be taken away very quickly. Once it finally got implemented back in, there was a sense of high energy because the kids lost it for such a long period of time and they were excited to be back training. And they were excited about the new equipment.”

Has COVID caused you to be more creative as a sports performance coach?

“Honestly, not being able to share equipment has made it a little bit more difficult as far as programming,” Chris said. “It’s awesome that we have the new equipment, and they’re able to do everything at their station. We’re able to get a little bit more work done because everybody has their own equipment, but we’re not able to do the same things we’ve done in the past, so we have to be a little bit more creative with the exercises themselves.”

And you’re coordinating with coaches as you did in the fall?

“Yes,” Chris said, “we’re always communicating with the coach and talking about what exercises they want. Some coaches might want to stay away from overhead exercises or maybe they want to stay away from legs that day. Or it may be based off their practice and their weekly agenda. But, hey, we communicate with them about what they want to work on for their sport, and we try to implement those specific exercises and drills into their training.”

Sports performance work seems to have a hidden curriculum, I offered. It’s about the future as well as now, and it’s about playing the cards you’re dealt.

“What we’re trying to do, obviously, is create bigger, faster, stronger athletes who are more resilient to injury,” he said. “We’re working on all the basic principles of athletic and sports performance…but we’re also trying to get them to understand basic movement patterns and what it’s like to train and training principles. That way, when they leave here and go to college, whether they play a sport or not, they have the education, knowledge, and confidence to walk into a weight room and know what they’re doing. They understand what they need to do to stay healthy and live a long and healthy life.”
~ Weldon Bradshaw
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