Pre-season checklist - athlete assessment
A new season is knocking on your door and it’s time to get everything ready to hit the ground running.
This week we will dive into some things you should get through early on so that you can focus on your athletes and their work.
Today we will talk about assessing your athletes current fitness level in order to be able to program their training schedule better.
Athlete assessment
Every athlete that joins your club and all existing athletes that are coming from an off-season break should go through an assessment process so that you know their baseline fitness level. It can be a comprehensive test with multiple dimensions like jumps, reactions, range of motion tests etc. or it can be a straight forward test like a 20 minute all out run.
The key thing here is to tailor the test in a way that will give you insight into the current state of your athlete.
Athlete’s skills
If you are working with athletes that are using any kind of equipment (football, basketball, tennis etc.) you can perform various test that will give you an insight into how your athlete’s technical skills have changed after a break. Those can be different dribbles and movement patterns with or without equipment as well as work with and without team mates.
You goal is to get a sense of how rusty your athlete is so you can determine which drills to include into the initial phase of your new training regime to get those skills back to an optimum level.
Fitness
Testing your athlete’s fitness is a very important task at the start of every season. You want to know how well they currently are compared to a baseline value you have determined throughout the season.
Runs, sprints, jumps and other will give you an indicator of how their fitness level has decreased during off season. This can also give you some needed data points for future season where you can prescribe specific training sessions during off season to prevent excessive fitness loss.
Professional medical checkup
This one often gets set aside or only the minimum gets done but it can be a critical step in finding if something is wrong with your athletes.
Regular screenings include an ECG test where potential heart issues can be detected. If you are able, blood tests and spiroergometric test should be done with your key athletes to ensure they are ready to tackle another season of training.
Readiness for the upcoming season
It’s not all about the physical state of your athletes. You should also take care of their motivation levels and readiness for competition.
Talk to your athletes and see if they are ready to dig deep and get back to work. Many athletes are fired up and can’t wait to get back into a new training cycle but there will always be someone who needs a little extra encouragement. It’s not easy to push hard for prolonged periods of time especially for young adults who have to juggle a lot of different things outside of training.
If someone isn’t fully committed, allow them to take it easier and skip one or two events until they get back up to speed and can commit fully to your training plan.
Your club is only as good as your athletes. You want them to reach their full potential but if you don’t know where you are starting from, how do you know where you want to go? Design a simple or complex set of pre-season test that will give you an insight into your athlete’s state so that you can help them get into the best shape possible.
