#589 How I Train My Daughter IN-SEASON + A New Lower Body Primer You Gotta Try!

He started this first gym out of a 500-square-foot storage closet, worked as a soft-to-build-a-world-renowned brand while becoming a legend in the sports performance industry. It's 12 years of the work through my walk, to turn this little gym into a world-renowned place. And I'm not going to be satisfied until we are number one in the world and the country on this whole block everywhere. Damn! I'm not trying to blend with the crowd. I'm trying to make an impact in this industry. And now he's bringing his personality, passion and expertise to you through this powerful podcast. Welcome to the Industrial Friends Show. Here's your host, Joe DeFrikel. Hey guys, welcome to episode number 589 of the Industrial Strength Show. We are going to get right into it today because it is already freaking late AF. I really thought I was going to be able to record this show earlier today. But the freaking damn Beckton Wildcats had to go into double overtime tonight. My daughter had a soccer game. Wednesday night game. We should have freaking won two to one. But we let up a horrible goal in the second half to tie it up two to and then neither team scored for the next what felt like three hours. The game ended up going into double overtime and we ended up getting home way later than expected. Obviously when the game is three times as long as you were planning on it being. But maybe it's fitting and appropriate considering you probably see the title of this show which as of right now I don't know what the exact title will be. But something to do with in-season training. So maybe it's appropriate that my daughter just had a long long double overtime game which ended in a tie which sucks like kiss in your sister as they say. But it is what it is. By the time we got home I had to go walk one-eyed Willie because Ashley was prepping Ava Start School tomorrow or when you're listening to this today. September 10th but Adriana who goes to a different school started last week. She's been in school a week and a half already. But Ava starts on Thursday when this podcast drops so I told Ashley I will. I walk one-eyed Willie for her tonight while she was kind of getting Ava's lunch ready and can't have school lunch anymore this year because we found out she has silly acts. I believe I mentioned that on the podcast so we have to be much more careful with what we're having for lunch. So you know prepping for the first day of school by the time we got all these things done. I ate dinner. I had a prep Paul and Steph Triple H and Steph's workouts for tomorrow morning. Here we are after 11 p.m. So let's get right into this. I'm just going to answer one question today again because I do feel like it is Tis the season as they say with football soccer, fall sports starting. I always I feel like this time of year because I've trained so many football players in my lifetime and now having daughters who played soccer and now one daughter left who is still playing soccer. I get a lot of questions this time of year about in season training. And I don't know if we when the last time was that I spoke about in season training. But I know we have a lot of coaches that still listen a lot of parents that you know train their kids or want to give their kids the appropriate advice for training in season. And even if you don't have a kid or you're not a competitive athlete or you're not a coach, I think a lot of people just enjoy hearing about this topic and want to educate themselves on this stuff because even if you're not a competitive athlete, maybe you're an adult but you go through periods of your life or with your job where maybe you travel way more often during you know a certain time of the year. And you need to manipulate your training where you don't want to just drop training altogether. But you know that you can't maintain the same volume and intensity that you normally do. So how do you you know manipulate things tweak things so you're still getting a training effect. You're maintaining your strength, your size, whatever your goals may be without losing everything during those times of years. So hopefully you could all benefit from this episode but it is mostly for the athletes, coaches and parents. So I'll read the question even though I don't really, I don't think we need a specific question but this did come in this week. And it is what prompted me to decide to focus on in season training this week. So I will read the email that Joel sent me this past Sunday. He wrote, "Coach, can you share your daughter's in season soccer training? I would love to hear what you have your own child doing. Now that full sports are in full swing. I realize every athlete is going to be different depending on their goals, sport, position, injury, history, etc. But it would be cool to hear the thought process that goes into an in season training program, especially for a sport like soccer where I'm assuming she will be playing multiple games per week. Which yes, she is two, sometimes three games per week. He goes on to say, "I'm especially curious if you'll be including Hill Sprints in season and how you work around her school training schedule. Any insight you could give would be greatly appreciated Joel." So, well Joel first off, let me say this, regarding the Hill Sprints, I had forgotten that you mentioned Hill Sprints in your question, but that is a great question. In a perfect world, I would like to include Hill Sprints once a week, even in season, like if I had access to a Hill closer to my house or if I'm a high school coach and we have a Hill on our campus. Like I know St. Joe's, which is the rival high school, when I went to Bergen Catholic, we played St. Joe's amazing rivalry, Bergen Catholic, St. Joe's two power houses in the state of New Jersey. Shout out Oggy Hoffman, a longtime client and friend of mine who is the head coach over at St. Joe's now. But anyway, I mentioned them because they have a Hill right on their campus. And I know a lot of the St. Joe's players that I've trained throughout the years talk about them utilizing the Hill pretty much year round, which I would too. But it's just not practical. I don't have access. The Hill that I posted that I bring my daughter to in the off season, that is in the town I used to live in, the town I grew up in Hawthorne, which is about 20 minutes from where I live now, and 30 plus minutes from where Adriana goes to high school, our public high school is 20 minutes. But even in the opposite direction of the town I grew up in, but anyway, we don't have access to a Hill. So it's just not practical. So no, she will not be running Hills in season in less. Maybe they have a week where a game gets rained out or something or they only have one game that week. And if she has the time and felt like she had the energy to go run some Hills, I would love to incorporate it in season. And in a perfect world, what I would do is include it. If it was on my campus and I'm a high school coach, I would either finish a warm up once a week with short. Hill sprints 10, 15 yards, do a couple reps at the end of the warm up to kind of prime their legs before we went into practice or maybe finish practice with Hill sprints or on our lifting day. If we were going to lift weights, maybe that would almost, almost program it as like a dynamic effort strength exercise where we do a couple short Hill sprints, then we go in, do our squats or whatever the main lower body strength movement is. So we have like our dynamic Hill sprints, then you do your main strength movement and then maybe one other accessory movement for legs. I normally program full body workouts, strength workouts in season. So that would be the two main lower body lifts quote unquote the Hill sprints and then you know probably a squat pattern or a lunge pattern and then maybe one other exercise, a posterior chain movement or you get into your upper body stuff. But those are some examples of how you can incorporate Hill sprints if you had access to them and it was convenient too, but I don't so I probably won't be incorporating it in my daughter's in season programming. So just make sure you it's shorter sprints, 10 to 20 yards max, which I don't like long Hill sprints even in the off season. It's more for acceleration, short burst, you know full recovery, high quality, maximal effort, but low volume, just a couple of those go a long way in season. If you have access, if not, then you know, you're in the same boat I am and we'll have to wait until next off season to incorporate our hills. Also, I do not have to worry about interfering with Adriana. You mentioned how do I work around her school training schedule? They do not have a formalized strength and conditioning program at her high school. So I know that's very tough for parents or personal trainers that work with high school kids. Most high schools tend to have a strength coach. Good batter and different. They have mandatory workouts on top of sport practice, but I don't have to compete with that. In fact, the coach did reach out and I might be the volunteer strength coach. This upcoming off season, but that is, you know, we're a bit away from that. If I do help out, I'll kind of keep you guys posted, but we'll focus on the in season training now. I just wanted to get those two things out of the way because you had mentioned the hills and working around the school training schedule. The only thing, they have practice two games a week on average and practice every other day. Besides weekends, most weekends, they seem to have off. It's pretty much Monday through Friday. Most games this week was different because of Labor Day. Excuse me being on Monday, but for my daughter, most games are on Tuesdays and Fridays and then they have practice Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. So it's a Monday through Friday deal. So let's talk about in season training. And I will share. I literally just wrote up Adriana, my daughters in season strength program. I will share it with you guys. No extra charge. But first, I do want to just mention my kind of in season training principles. There's a couple things that I think are very important. If you followed my content for any length of time, you've heard me talk about this. These are tried and true principles. They have not changed over the years. Number one being quality over quantity. I already mentioned with the hill sprints, but with everything favor lower volume quality over quantity, minimal effective dose, which I'm normally a minimal effective dose guy. But like really in season, you really have to be careful because even young kids that are young and resilient, right? When you're young, you could get away with more, die. It's not perfect. Sleep's not perfect. But you're young. You're resilient. And that's great. But man, I got to tell you, like if you have kids, you know, their schedules are crazy. Ashley and I are running around all the time. It's like you don't get a second. It's go here, go there, pick up from practice, drive to school, get the bus. It's just it's constant and between practices and games and knowing that you still want to fit in some kind of in season training. So so important to still train in season. But man, it's got to be the minimal effect of dose because even younger kids, they they still only have so much capacity, right? So much energy reserve. I whenever I talk about in season training, a conversation won't go by without me mentioning Charlie Francis, the great sprint coach Ben Johnson's sprint coach had a concept that I always loved called fill the glass. I love, you know, simple analogies that explain things. And this is one of those the the fill the glass concept. Basically, he would say think of your athlete's body as a glass. And every stressor pours a little water into the glass. So practice games, sprinting, lifting weights, school, a lack of sleep, you know, social anxiety and stress that that goes hand in hand with being a young kid and being a teenager. Trust me, you know, if you have, especially teenage girls, it seems like there's always some drama and issues with the friend groups that like that's a real thing, right? That that's still stress. It all fills the glass, so to speak. And there's only so much water slash stress that the glass can hold. And once it's full pouring more water into it, doesn't help. It just spills over. And when it spills over, it could make a mess. And in this analogy, when I say it could make a mess, I'm referring to your performance starts to suffer. Or you get injured, you know, or at the very least, you're increasing your risk of injury when that glass is overfilling constantly week after week. So during the season, my main job, you know, in the context of training my daughter, being my daughter's coach, as well as her dad, my main job as, you know, the strength coach, if you will, when designing her in season strength program is to figure out how much room is left in her glass each week and then give her the smallest effective dose necessary to maintain strength, power, durability, et cetera, without overflowing that glass. Makes sense? That's my in-season training philosophy in a nutshell. Minimal effective dose. Don't overfill the glass. And to do that, you need to be ready. Like, again, I'm going to go over the the workouts that I wrote for her. I have planned them ahead of time and written them ahead of time, but each week before she does the workout, I am sure I will change at least one thing. It's it's going to be, you know, you know what, here, do this workout, but only do one set of this or remove the last exercise you don't need that today or just go through the warm-up and then do the first two. Like, there's it's going to be some variation of the workout I wrote probably most of the time. There might be days and weeks, especially towards the beginning of the season, when you are a little fresher, where she'll go through the program as written, but I will be ready to auto-regulate and make little tweaks. Each and every time she performs the workout I told her before you go in the garage just check in and Let me know and I'll just ask her the basic questions like this is a great example double overtime game She ran up and down the field. She doesn't get subbed out a lot. She pretty much I think she came out for three minutes at the end of the first half And then never came out again double over time, you know running back and forth up and down the field So she's gonna be shot now she got school tomorrow the whole deal So she's gonna be Shot so we'll we'll see how her legs feel tomorrow and then she has a game on Friday I had had planned for her to do her main in season lift either Saturday or Sunday so we'll make a decision on if we're gonna tweak the the workout at all But you got to be ready to you know change things on the fly auto-regulate But when I say change it's not Changing exercises change mostly means just taking some things away or doing less doing one set instead of two doing you know Four exercises instead of five that that's what I mean by change not changing the whole program around You know making drastic changes to exercises. You know I love planned variability and and rotating exercises and programming in three to four-week mini cycles I love all that in the off season or if you're just an adult like me I'm you're not a competitive athlete. You could train like that year round But in season I do not like variety. I like stick with the same thing with the exception being maybe you Manipulate the volume the weights, you know you might take an exercise away But we're not rotating exercises and doing a ton of different exercises I chose the exercises that I feel have maximal effectiveness In the least amount of exercises. That's what Makes up her in season training So don't want a lot of variety because variety tends to create more soreness We don't want to be sore in season We want to do the bare minimum to maintain our muscle and strength Which will carry over to helping us maintain our speed and our power. We'll talk about that So that's the goal and you could do that with Just take the exercises that produce the best results throughout the year that your body is used to doing and do those at A lesser volume in season and and with that, you know, you still want to train hard But the the final principle is we don't train to failure. It's I call it like the one two method Basically, we're doing one to two work sets per exercise With While leaving one to two reps in the tank. So one to two work sets With a one to two RIR that's my my in season training in a nutshell now biggest mistakes before I get into her actual I'll share her actual workouts with you guys And this hasn't changed. I've I've these are the same two mistakes. I have seen for 30 years number one Trying to do the same shit you did in the offseason during the season It does not work. It will not last yet. I still see I could understand kids being confused But I still see strength coaches And not any good ones, but you know, there's some at the high school level like volunteers, but they're still the strength coach They implement the same program that they did in the offseason and they wonder why Kids are shot and then they're yelling at them calling them lazy, you know, like you cannot Expect anyone to do the same amount of volume and frequency that they did in the offseason you have Five practices a week plus games like you just can't do it. So biggest mistake is trying to do the same thing in season that you did in the offseason and mistake 1b the the other biggest mistake is the opposite and usually it comes from having that first mentality and and that is You think when you think of training in season you think like oh my god, there's no way You think of like all the hard workouts that your coach put you through in the offseason or you put yourself through Which is great in the offseason But that's what you think about when you think training and when you couple that with Football practice or soccer practice or whatever the sport may be you say to yourself Oh my god, there's no way I'm doing that after practice or after a game like the I don't have the energy for that To hell no, I'm not training in season like I need my energy to go towards practice and games like they're hard enough so you end up dropping Strength work all together in season because you just think I don't have the time. I don't have the energy And what happens you end up losing all the strength and and the results that you got in the offseason Like what good is it if you're just going to lose it when you need it the most like you were training in the offseason For your competitive season and so if you just drop it all together It's almost a waste It's like why did you do all that work if midseason that's going to be gone and forget about it by the end of the season And then if you are on a team regardless of the sport soccer football whatever If you're on a team that makes the playoffs or you're going to states And you've lost all your strength which probably snowballs into you losing a lot of your speed and power as well like What's the point that's why you trained in the offseason for the season and It the good news is it does not take much. I've spoken about this. I won't spend time on it But just you know for maybe the newer listeners You could maintain Size strength speed power with a meticulously It takes a fraction of the effort to maintain Compared to the effort it takes to actually gain you know get stronger improve your 40 time improve your speed like the the effort That it takes to gain something is just way more than it takes to maintain so it doesn't take a lot It to maintain so that that one full body strength workout could go such a long way if you just appropriately Program it but so many people they either do too much or they do too little slash nothing at all and and neither of those Work it's the sweet spot is right in the middle Training in season is so freaking important but you got to do it right the the goal isn't To you know Create like New adaptations at at at at all costs were we're just trying to Do the minimal effect of dose to just maintain what we've already built like that's the mentality now some people And younger kids I've seen this with you might be able to get stronger in season if you do it right especially You're depending on your sport and your position. If you're not a starter Absolutely, there's no reason you should just think oh, it's the season now. So I'm gonna lose all my strength So I'm gonna take a back seat no you should be training almost like it is the offseason if you don't start Everyone else the starters. It's just minimal effective dose. It goes such a long way. So Let's look at What that looks like the minimal effect of dose For an in-season training program so and just before I I I will say to give a little bit Since this is this was written for my specific daughter a sophomore in high school who plays soccer You know main goal being generally speaking I already mentioned to At the very least maintain The strength and muscle she gained in the offseason and she worked really freaking hard Like she really got bit by the iron bug this offseason I was very proud In the garage training diligently taking her creatine I see sometimes even at night if she goes to bed and she realizes like oh shit I forgot to take my creatine today. I'll be up It'll be like 11 o'clock at night She'll be coming back downstairs and dry scoop and creatine and then going back up to bed Oh daddy. I forgot. I didn't take my creatine after I worked out today So like that's the type of offseason she had which was great So we want to maintain at the very least the the strength and muscle keeping the not that you know Being jacked is the most important thing for soccer, but a Loss with a loss of muscle mass and and wait if you're losing good weight You know functional tissue. I have just seen the strength goes with it and with that goes the speed and the power and and her speed is her strength like what she may be Lacks a little bit in technical skill compared to the better players on the field She makes up with Because of her speed and and her explosiveness and her power So very important for her to maintain Strength and muscle in season because that will help her preserve her speed and power So that's a priority Specifically speaking, you know, I I want to address the foot and ankle complex as you'll see the I don't like doing a lot of eccentric work in season again because of soreness, but She did have a bit of a Annoying hamstring thing going on last year that it went from her hamstring to her adductor to her hip flexor Then back to her hamstring again, but it kind of started in the hamstring, so I do want to kind of keep her eccentric hamstring capacity, which But again, like with just enough, you know, just kind of address it, but not overdo it So I will share the exercise I have her doing for that and then also the I mentioned the adductors Keep those strong because so many girls had Tweaks and and groin pulls last year That's just a common one in general, but and a very overlooked component of so many programs, right? So we want to keep the adductors strong and Again, doing all this it glutes as well glutes and hips I think goes without saying especially for female athletes and you know, the effect it has on knee health and ACL prevention and not that week we could guarantee or prevent ACL tears, but we could dramatically reduce the risk of ACL injuries by keeping the the glutes and the deep hip rotators strong so We need to do all this, but we need to do it while keeping the volume As low as possible, so none of this interferes with soccer because as I mentioned her schedule is freaking packed so That's kind of a little overview of her as an athlete now What I designed what I wrote up for her very simple There's only one main full body strength workout the goal we keep it very realistic Get it in once a week if you have a light week a week where you only end up having one game we will Do two workouts a week, but I think for her the amount of sprinting and cutting that she's doing on the field one day One full body strength workout will be enough for her to maintain those qualities with that I Wrote up a 15 minute little neural primer type workout that I feel like We'll make a Decision each week if she feels like she needs a she wants to do a little something extra I'll I'll review this one. I'll go over it quickly with you guys as well it literally will takes 15 minutes and it's more just to prime the nervous system and You know if she's drag and ask come Thursday. This might be something she goes in the garage She does it takes her 10 15 minutes and it kind of helps recharge her body and and you know Isn't gonna make her sore or anything if if Anything if if for nothing else it'll do nothing or prime her a bit for the next day's Game and this is something I started doing back in 2001 2002 with the honey Jones who was a linebacker with the New York Giants at the time he used to love he used to come in Storage closet when I first opened up the storage closet. It was like the first workout Well, I think I ever put someone through he would come in on either Thursday or Friday No, I'm sorry. Yeah most of the time Fridays because the NFL games are Sunday two days before the game and We would do this little neural primer workout is basically like box squats with either bands or chains two rep sets High speed high, you know, just keep in the keep in the pace and and the speed of the bar then we would do some jumps some Reverse hypers. He had Back surgery in college and he was someone I've talked about people having mixed reviews with the reverse hyper Some people said it's a miracle for their low back some it aggravates for him it was In the miracle category who's like if I don't do my reverse hypers my back feels like shit But I just don't I don't feel strong in my core. So we would do those reverse hypers some Abs, you know extra band pull-aparts are a little extra something for the upper back shoulder area and Get him the hell out of the gym. He was primed and and ready to go and we did that every Friday for like his last two three years With the New York Giants. So I came up with something similar for Adriana that we will do if need the once midweek Day before a game and then I have a she really likes I put together a follow-along mobility routine for triple-h Shit close to 10 years ago. It is already if you're a A member of team forever strong. It is in the exercise index. There's like a follow-along Upper body mobility routine lower body mobility routine full body Mobility routine, which we ended up sharing. It's a follow-along video on a on a private YouTube link But she really likes that it's like takes about 20 minutes She just feels better when she's kind of like me like stretching some static stretching and and just some mobility makes her feel better and so I told her she could do that Every day whenever she feels she needs it, so that's there as well. Those are like the three main components of her in season training. So let me go through this the the main full body strength workout. All right, so we're starting with about a six-minute warm-up slash primer where she just stretches her calves on the slantboard. She complains a lot of feeling like her calves are always tight, which It's funny because a lot of athletes I've trained that are fast that seems to be a common theme so anyway, just getting that dorsi flexion and stretching the calf even almost more of like psychological thing I think it is for her. So just a basic static calf stretch. Again, whether it's more psychological It's there's a physical component as well definitely, but I just share that for what it's worth. We We stretch the calf then and this is all barefoot by the way Tib raises leaning against the wall. Basically, I tell her just start banging out Tib raises when you feel the front of your shin Start burning do 20 more and that's how we do the Tib raises then we go right into a glute activation Exercise which if you have the lean bastard program if you know, you know HTK single leg iso hold glute bridge the hand to knees iso hold glute bridge Go 20 seconds each leg there. I'm not gonna go explain why We do the, the hands to the knees, but that is an all star of an exercise. If you have the lean bastard program, hopefully you watched the video and didn't just try to figure out on your own what it was. Speaking of lean bastard, it is available on my website, frankostraining.com, click on the program's tab at the top. You will see it. Anyway, back to this program. Then we go to the opposite side. We activate the glue. Then we fire up the hip flexors with a kettlebell. I, on her program, I wrote balancing knee raises because it's how she remembers it. Basically, it's hip flexion balancing on, I have her stand on a little six inch box with the, the balance leg. And then with her other leg, the working side, she picks up a kettlebell with her foot, drives her knee up to until it just raises above hip height, hold for a second, lower it back down to your leg is straight, and then raise it back up. I like that because it reinforces the, the dorsiflexion, right? We, we started by stretching the calf and then the tip raises, which your is dorsiflexion. And then we have this now, an isometric dorsiflexion at the ankle while we're strengthening the hip flexor. So she does that with a 12 pound kettlebell, 10 reps each leg with a pause at the top. And then I'm gonna spend a minute on this one. This has quickly become one of my new favorite warm up drills and it's nothing, you know, I didn't invent this. But it's, maybe the combination, I just combined a couple movements that, I don't know, since I had her doing these, I started doing them. And now that she's done them, she's done this workout to, she just did it for the third time. This is an all star. I call it the step down matrix. And this, this is one I'll, I don't wanna spend too much time because it is late as hell. But I will, I promise I will make an Instagram reel. This one, and I actually already have video of this. So I just will do like a voiceover. So I'll probably post this on Friday, but step down matrix. What the hell is that? It's basically a front heel reach or like a, yeah, I call them step downs. I used to call them low box heel touches. It's kind of like a TKE or a polyquin step up on, you know, the balance leg, quad activation. And again, dorsiflexion. I have her. So you could do these starting on the ground, even hand supported. I like if, if you have poor balance or poor ankle mobility or both, I would recommend doing these on the ground and holding either a PVC pipe or have a foam roller next to you, stand it up vertically and use it kind of like a cane, just, you know, to help with your balance. But it's basically, just pretend I'm working my left leg. If I'm balancing on my left leg, that's the work leg. I do a front heel reach. So my right leg is straight and I reach out and touch my heel as far forward in front of me as I can without my left heel coming off the ground. So it's, again, it's like a TKE without the band of the left leg, the working leg. Then I go right into a posterior reach. So now I reach my right leg back as far as I can. I reach as far back as possible, then just gently touch my toe to the ground. So now that's hitting more hamstring and glute. Then I come back to the center all while trying to not touch the off leg down to the ground. You're trying to do this balancing the whole time. So front reach back to the center, pause for a split second, posterior reach back to the center, pause for a split second, crossover reach like a curtsy lunge. When I say crossover, bring the leg behind the working leg and reach as far to the side as you can back to the center. That's one rep. As you can imagine, it burns like hell. So again, it's none of those exercises individually or anything new, but putting them all together, and I just want it to come up with a name. So instead of saying like front heel reach, posterior reach, crossover reach combo, I just call it the step down matrix. And again, I have heard doing it either standing on a weight plate or a, now she's progressed from the video I had to a box that is a little bit higher. But you're essentially combining a traditional step down heel reach with two different posterior reaches. One straight back and one crossover. So the stance leg has to control movement in multiple directions. It is incredible for ankle, knee, and hip stability, but also ankle mobility with the front heel reach. You're getting a lot of ankle mobility on the working leg. But let me tell you, you just five or six reps. Again, one rep being like three equals one, and once you get to the point where you could do it, balancing the whole time, not touching your off leg down to the ground. It is like a freaking heat seeking missile finding the weak link in your lower body. Like, so Adriana, when I asked her, she immediately pointed to her quad. And it was like, oh my God, it burns right here. And it was like rubbing her whole quad. Me, my glute is on fire. Rep to, it's like the burn is insane. And I've spoken about this to you guys. I have not to get into the whole story of why, but with the nerve damage, especially on my left side, my glute just does not fire the same as my right. I have atrophy, a non-existent left hamstring, and an actual non-existent left tip anterior. Like, I have real nerve damage. Not just like, I'm not just making it up or saying, ah, my nerve is damaged because it hurts. There is no, I have almost no tip anterior. But the hamstring is also affected. And even when I get like, when I do the in body, my left leg is, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's close to like a pound lighter than my right leg. It's significant, it's crazy. Anyway, I feel it in my glute, Adriana, I feel it everywhere, don't get me wrong. And so does Adriana. But she feels it more in her quad. I feel it more in my glute. Some people feel it more in the bottom of their foot, some in their calf, some in their hamstring. And that's why I say it's like, it's just an all star. For both assessing, not only ankle mobility, but overall lower body stability. And the cool thing is, in this case, the assessment can also be the fix or at the very least part of the fix. I'm not saying this little warm up exercise is like the be all end all, but it could absolutely and should absolutely be part of the fix for weak, unstable ankles, knees and or hips. It just, again, it's just a warm up exercise. I don't want to over-hype it. But if we're talking about in-season training and the theme being lower volume, I want best bang for my buck type exercises because I don't want her to be in the gym long. One set of that is all you need to fire up and prime your feet, your ankles, your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes, like finishing the warm up with that little movement. One of the best things I've programmed in a while. So just wanted to share that with you guys and spend a little bit more time on that one because I like sharing helpful shit and the step down matrix, unless I come up with a better name for it for now, once you get the technique down and especially once you get to the point where you could do it standing on a box, yo, that shit is no joke. Super, super beneficial [BLANK_AUDIO] for balance, stability, mobility. I freaking love it. All right, let's just blow through the actual, so that's just the warm up. And I ended up talking more than I wanted to, what else is new, but that only takes about six minutes. Then the workout, the main lower body stimulus we went with is the duck squat. It took over. It knocked the Bulgarian split squat out of the number one ranking. And for her, she just, it's the exercise. I wanted a unilateral exercise that we could load the most. And this is one she could get a full, deep range of motion. So we're getting, again, big bang for your buck, glutes, quads, hamstrings, some adductors. We could overload it. I just love it. So that's her main lower body stimulus. She just does three sets. Since it's the first exercise, and she's, again, she's young. She doesn't need, her warm up doesn't need to be as extensive as mine in season, you know, she's doing a lot. So after that little six minute warm up, she does one warm up set, only five reps per leg. Then I have her do a medium set. I told her seven out of 10 difficulty, like tough, but not crazy. And then one all out work set leaving one to two reps in the tank. Using straps, I showed her how to use straps. I don't have, I don't even know how to use straps. I have the old school ones that, the only straps I've ever used, the few times I've used them, that my dad gave me back in 1988. They are the idiot proof ones with like the hook on them. You just put your wrist in and then you hook the hook around the dumbbell. You don't have to like wrap the actual strap around the dumbbell handle. They're very easy. I'm grateful I still have a pair. So she uses them. I just share that because we want to really, you know, get that stimulus for the legs. That's her main lower body stimulus kind of max effort exercise. Remember, max effort lower body exercises don't only have to be squat, you know, barbell squat or deadlift variations. I spoke about this years ago way back in the day, back in the storage closet days with Dave Deel, offensive lineman for the New York Giants. He had back surgery as well in college when he came to me and he was six, he is six foot six, didn't feel great loading his spine with heavy barbell back squats, especially in season, but knew how important it was to keep his legs strong. So he was the first client when I was really experimenting with like west side and max effort days and dynamic effort days that I thought outside of the box a bit and said, you know what? Instead of squatting or deadlifting heavy, if you don't feel comfortable with that and with his body type squatting never looked great, we eventually got him to box squat pretty good, but we would do more dynamic effort work with it than max effort work. And we got most of our max effort work with just heavy ass sled pushes. So I just like to remind people of that or, you know, if you're a newer listener, share that with you. Don't think max effort has to mean barbell bench squat or deadlift. In my daughter's case, it's a dumbbell duck squat in Dave Deel's case. It was a heavy sled push. If it was a little more convenient, I have the tank, whatever the hell, I forget what it's called, the M1 tank, whatever in our shed. But there's usually cars in the driveway. It's a little bit of a pain in the ass to roll out, but I do love the sled in season. But in this case, it's just more convenient for her. So duck squats, three sets of five each leg, but really only two work sets with one being the all-out set. Then I have a lower body upper body super set. This is when I was talking before about eccentric hamstring capacity. One of my favorite exercises that I brought back after programming it in my early, early years. But for whatever reason got away from it, not because it's a bad exercise. Just because you kind of, there's so much different shit you start doing. And if you have the lean bastard program, this was in week one workout, number one, bridged hamstring walkouts. Basically, you lay on the floor, on your back, bend your knees, feet flat on the floor, do a glute bridge, hips up, heels as close to your butt as possible to start, and then walk your, I take your toes off the floor, and walk on your heels, walk your feet forward. I have heard do about three steps each leg, one, one, two, two, three, three. Once you get to that third step, your knees should be just slightly bent. You feel a ton in the hamstrings. Hips stay off the ground, butt is off the ground, and then you walk your feet back. You know, right, left, right, left, right, left, reset, drive your hips up, because generally your hips are going to drop a bit, although you don't want your butt to touch the floor at all throughout the duration of the set. But your hips will drop a bit as you're walking your feet out. When you walk your feet back, reset, drive your hips up as high as they could go. Walk out again. Each time you step one, one, two, two, three, three, and then back, one, one, two, two, three, three, that's one rep. So I have heard do four reps in that fashion, and I supersed it with external rotation. She had some shoulder issues with clicking, and the banded underhand grip, band external rotation, some people call it the no money exercise, because it's like, you know, when you empty your pockets and you go, "Look, I got no money." I to describe it to her, she never remembers what I say no money. So I just say, underhand, band external rotation, it's easier. It's like the description is the name. So we address, you know, the rotator cuff, the shoulder girdle, with that superset. Only two sets, bridged hamstring walkouts, four reps, which is a pretty, you know, that's a legit stimulus for the hamstrings in that lengthened position. But I think that exercise is amazing for helping, you know, strengthening the hamstrings very specific to sprinting without sprinting, because most people pull their hamstring by over striding, and then when their foot strikes the ground in that lengthened position as your knee is extending your foot strikes, and if you were a heel striker, that's a lot of times when the hamstring goes. So getting it strong via lengthening is just a great body. It's a great body weight strength movement. And because she was doing them in the off season, I wouldn't give it to her in season if she had never done them before. But I put them in her program towards the end of the off season, so she could do them now, and they don't cause that much soreness. So two sets of that supersetted with two sets of external rotation. Then we do her main upper body superset, which is basically just a flat dumbbell bench press supersetted with an inverted body weight ring row. She's starting with body weight, 10 to 12 reps. You know, she's still, that's a tough exercise when you do it right. So we do three sets there. On the dumbbell bench, I have her working up and weight similarly to what she did with the duck squats. And on the ring rows, we just do eight to 12 reps. And I told her once she gets to the point where she could pretty easily do three sets of 12. Then we have a lightweight vest that is it's between 10 and 12 pounds. I told her to start wearing that, but we're not there yet. So three supersets there, flat dumbbell bench with inverted ring row. And then we finished the workout with some adductor slash oblique slash core. Two supersets of a bent knee, Copenhagen side plank. I love those. Adductor strength with your core oblique strength. Coupled with a body saw. core exercise with her forearms on the foam roller. That's one of my favorites that doesn't look like much but if you've never done those, simply get in a plank position but put your wrists on a foam roller and now just push the foam roller forward about a foot and then pull it back. That's one rep. Push it forward, pull it back. That's another rep. Set, if you do it slow and under control, man, 10 reps is brutal. If you're keeping your hips square, not letting them sag, you know, glutes tie. If you're locked in, like that's a really good core exercise. So two sets, I just have her do 15 to 20 seconds each side on the bent knee, Copenhagen side plank, squeeze in the knees between our bench and then, you know, two sets of the two sets each side of the Copenhagen side plank in each set is supersetted with the body saw with her forearms on the foam roller and that is the main in-season full body strength workout. Takes her about 35 to 40 minutes if she's taking her time, you know, on her phone, which I told her, if she has the time, no need to rush through it, you know, take full, I told her for the rest, I said as long as you need with each thing, you don't have to be like super anal with looking at the stopwatch, you could freaking go on Instagram or wherever they go, Snapchat in between sets, take your time and then just focus because there's not a ton of work sets, focus during the work sets, and you're good to go. So that's the main workout. Notice, there wasn't any jumps or sprints or conditioning in this in-season workout. That is because soccer itself is supplying a massive amount of sprinting and cutting and explosive work and conditioning with that. So with our in-season training, the main goal for me is to preserve the physical qualities that soccer itself doesn't adequately maintain and the most important quality being strength. I really want to do what I can to prevent strength loss in season because as I mentioned, I think that's the number one way to help maintain her speed and power. And again, of course, it helps reduce the potential risk of injury. As the season progresses, you just see it. These kids, they get weaker, they get run down, they get fatigued, and that's when not only does performance drop, but injuries happen. So it's funny. Last week, we talked about the strength training snowball effect, right? And I did an Instagram reel that I just posted today actually on it. It's the same exact thing here. It's just a little bit different context instead of talking about longevity and, you know, after the age of 40, we're talking about young athletes, but the snowball effect. If I lift weights, that helps me maintain my muscle. And if I maintain my muscle, that's going to help me maintain my strength. And if I may, if I maintain my strength, that's the foundation of power, right? And speed, what is power? It's your ability to display your strength quickly. So if we could keep that foundational strength while we are playing soccer, again, she's sprinting, changing direction, kicking, she's doing explosive work, almost five days out of the week. So if we can maintain the muscle that and that in turn helps her maintain her strength, which is the foundation to her power/speed, that's just going to help us not only perform better throughout the year, but reduce the risk of injury. That's like the snowball effect for the athlete. So that's the main work out there. Just real quick, I mentioned the the neural primer. It's like, man, you want to talk about looking like nothing on paper. But again, this is one of those things, not to pat myself on the back, but we were way ahead of our time back in 2001, 2002 when I started doing this with the honey Jones. Now you hear more about it. It's a little bit more. I still wouldn't call it mainstream, but more coaches will talk about like a primer, a neural primer, fire up the CNS the day before a game, those types of things. This is the workout for her. We're not going to do it every week if she feels she needs it. Or maybe if it's just a rough week, maybe she has three games. She's run down. She misses that workout that I just went through. If she ends up maybe not being able to get that in or she's just shot, maybe this becomes the workout because this I told her she could always do. It's literally 15 minutes. I have her go in the warm up quote unquote, just to do a little something before we jump right into the workout is just balancing on one leg. Look left, look right. Just again, you know, a little little primer addressing the ankle and foot complex. So important for athletes and especially soccer just to prime that again, barefoot balance on one foot. That's one rep. Do that slowly 10 times without touching the opposite foot down. Repeat on the other leg. Then we do a 20 second set of pogo jumps. Wake up the CNS a bit. And then an ISO hold lunch. We spoke about isometrics longer duration isometrics last week. I don't just talk about shit to have something to talk about on a podcast. I incorporate this stuff into my training, into my clients training, into my own kids training. So we practice what we preach around here. In fact, the that's how I come up with content. I'm unlike most people online. I don't make my living creating content. I make my living coaching and then out of the goodness of my heart. I share the valuable lessons and things I learned via coaching that work really well. I share them via my social media content. If I'm not doing anything cool or new or beneficial training wise, you ain't going to see me online posting anything. Like I don't sit down and say, I need to post this week. Let me try to come up with something or let me scroll Instagram and steal someone else's idea. What's gone viral this week? When people say, Hey, how do you come up with content? Very simply. It's what I'm doing all day. I'm coach. I'm not saying I still coach people all day, but I'm still on the gym floor coaching 15-ish hours a week. Other people plus my own training. And I share the shit that's actually working with real people. So anyway, this is an example of that. I still hold lunch. Now it's in season. So I'm not having her do two max rep or max time sets, just doing the bare minimum that I found tends to help with the tendinitis and the little bit of knee pain. She'll complain about every now and then inflammation. 30 seconds. I so hold each leg on her toes. We do these to finish this little warm up. That gets her leg just those three exercises. Legs are pretty fired up, warmed up. Then the workout is just a quick three exercise circuit to fire up the CNS. It's two dynamic exercises and one extra for the upper back as almost like an active recovery. Very simply a bench plyo push up for three reps. She's got her hands on the edge of a bench, lower down, explode, push as hard as you can to your hands, come off the bench and then kind of catch yourself on the way down. All we have is three reps max speed and intent. Then she rests 10 seconds, grabs a pair of 7.5 pound dumbbells and does four squat jumps as high as she can, puts them down, rests about 10 seconds, grabs the micro mini band and does 10 band pull-aparts. One round, once she completes a full round, she rests just between 30 and 60 seconds and then does another round and does that four times minimum if she feels good after the fourth round she will do a fifth round. But four or five again that whole workout we're talking 15 minutes and that is coupled with the full body mobility routine that she just does whenever she feels she needs it. That is my daughter's in-season training program. I know a lot of this was review if you've listened to my in-season podcasts in the past but I feel like this was a good little different spin because every other one I've ever done focused more on football which is a little bit different because it's just one game a week and the template I use for football players is a little different. I would have them train the day after the game it's more predictable like I said with with Adriana she's got two games a week mostly their Tuesday and Friday but for example this week we had one it's Wednesday and Friday and then next week there might be three games but then it's back to the Tuesday Friday so it's more unpredictable and there's more games with football when it's one game and 99% of the season it's on the same day it's a little bit easier to say okay day after a game we come in and I always spoke about some kind of a light dynamic warm-up just to kind of help the soreness you know and get some circulation get the blood flowing maybe do a couple tempo runs and and that kind of takes care of the lower body and then we go in for a full upper body lift just basically one exercise per body part and two sets and we're out of there and then midweek that's where we would do the full body strength workout where you have you know something heavier a main upper and lower body movement and then a couple accessories you choose what you think is most important starters would do the lower volume you might have the backup players who didn't play as much doing a little bit more maybe they do a couple more sets train at a higher percentage of their one rm whatever it may be and then famously I spoke about if you train a meet head like Brian Cushing someone who like likes training and just psychologically feels a little bit better doing something the day before a game after practice on Friday if you have Saturday games let them come in and do some bicep curls some arms it's not going to hurt it's not going to fill the glass you know I talked about that three sets of biceps ain't you know overflowing your cup so don't be like a super anal coach like I was very early in my career know that those things aren't going to fill the cup in fact they might give you some room in the cup they might pour out a little bit because it's just one of those things they you feel better you you look good you feel good you feel good you play good you know that type of thing so the psychological component of that I think outweighs any you know stress that it may impose on the body so that's my quick little recap of like my football template has still remain the same you know throughout all these years because it freaking works so that's all I got for you guys I went way longer than I wanted to but I hope you found some value in all of this real quick before I go if you are not on my email newsletter I know the last thing anybody wants is more emails but trust me I'm not spamming you I send out two I think either valuable or very funny emails a week I have been consistent with it since I started you guys can't say I haven't I don't know I don't even know how long it's been since we got back with the the emails it's it's got to be if it's not a year it's got to be pretty damn close to it but anyway we're consistent Tuesdays and Fridays if you're not on it it's totally free just go to my website defrancoastraining.com which if you haven't checked out my new site yet I'd love for you to check it out and let me know what you think but right on that homepage you will see if you put in your name an email not only do you get my free busy bastard program which is great to have I actually I didn't even think of this but very in line with today's episode for the adults what I talked about if you're going through a a season in your life where you're just like man I I still want to train but I cannot invest you know three or four days an hour plus a day like I need something quick simple to the point maybe I could do at home the busy bastard program is just great to have so you get it for free no strings attached and you'll be on the newsletter list which you could unsubscribe at any time but I'm bringing up now because this Friday we will start 30 days of delts which we did a poll well first off it started on team forever strong in the forums a bunch of guys said hey we need to bring back some of the specialization courses and specifically most guys were saying I'd love to do something a little extra for my delts specifically my lateral delts I want my shoulders to pop I want bolder shoulders but I don't want to wreck my shoulders either can we do a little bit something extra on top of our current programming then I did a poll on my on my email list hey if I were going to write a new specialization program something simple that it only takes two extra minutes a day that you could add on to whatever program you're on you don't have to be a member of team forever strong you don't have to be on any of my programs whatever program you're on if you want something you could do that's going to make your delts pop it or I'm sorry I'm giving away the final answer but I said if you want something you could do to make any body part better which body part would it be we got over a hundred responses in the first day and the overwhelming majority said delts on my email list as well so on Friday in your inbox free of charge we will start 30 days of delts I will not be revealing it anywhere else but on the email list so if you want it it is ridiculously simple anyone can incorporate it without it overflowing your glass you see how you like how I I incorporated the theme of today's show into the closing here it's not going to overflow your glass at all yet it will produce some new found gains to those not so bolder shoulders right now but will be more bolder shoulders in 30 days from now so sign up for the email list check your inbox on Friday if not what you know I'm not going to beg you to give you free shit but if you like this free shit I guess I'll just talk to you next Thursday all right have a great week check your inbox on Friday if not I'll talk to you next Thursday peace! 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