School has just started. New classes. New friends. New schools. Maybe even new sports teams. This can be a very stressful time for students and managing stress for student-athletes is crucial for their success in life.
Think about it:
These kids have to juggle going to school from 8-3, actively participate in classes and practices. They have workouts they need to attend. Then they have homework, chores, maybe a part-time job. That can add up to a lot of hours and a lot of stress for a young adult.
Student-athletes are required to excel in all facets of their life, while juggling a ridiculous schedule. Just writing about all those has me feeling a little anxious. So how can we as strength coaches manage our athletes daily stressors? Here is my top 4 list for managing stress with high school athletes.
1. Create a positive and fun environment
As a strength coach, you want to create a place where kids want to come in and feel comfortable, and excited to be there. They have so many things in their life that they absolutely don’t want to do, the last thing you want to do is create an environment where they also don’t want to be at.
You want to create a place where athletes are excited to show up, excited to work hard, and excited to compete and perform with their friends and teammates. You can do this by being demanding of your athletes, but also by giving every athlete a “win” when they are with you. Compliment them. Be their friend. Congratulate them on hitting a PR, or nailing a technical exercise. Kids need wins in order to feel fulfilled and you as the strength coach have one of the most impactful opportunities to do this.
Another thing that you can do to create a positive environment is to integrate the older athletes with the younger athletes. This will allow for some team bonding, but it will also help grow a sense of family and community between all of your athletes. No one wants to be little Jimmy who struggles to do bodyweight squats, while Eddy is squatting 405 with ease. Create a culture where Eddy wants to help Jimmy and encourage and motivate him to succeed.
2. Manage workouts around exam time
Teachers love to band together and find out how they can make students' lives hell for 1-2 weeks. This is called midterms, and some athletes get bombarded with projects, papers, and exams like no other.
It is your job as a strength coach to understand when this is happening with your athletes, and reduce the intensity and volume of your workouts, in order for your athletes to cope with the increased stress outside of the gym.
Stress is stress. The body does not know how to differentiate maxing out on a squat, or having to give an oral presentation the next day in front of your high school crush.
As a strength coach, you need to be cognizant of when these highly stressful events are occurring and teach your athletes how to manage load, and how to cope with stressful situation appropriately.
Encouraging them to sleep more, eat more, maybe load the bar a little less, will help decrease the amount of stressors that they have in their life in order to optimize recovery.
3. Impromptu recovery sessions
Touching on the last topic a little bit. Impromptu recovery sessions can be a real treat to athletes who have been busting their ass in the classrooms and on the field.
I am going to paint a scenario for you… Kaitlyn walks in to your session and she is totally defeated. Regularly very chatty, Kaitlyn, is slumped over, not even on her phone… her body language would suggest that she just got chewed out by her parents for not taking the garbage out the night prior. However, in all honesty, she is just totally burnt out. School is getting hard, city finals are next week and she didn’t play well in the semi-finals. Her boyfriend dumped her etc..
There are so many factors that can go on here, but you have control over her next hour in her day, and you can either build her up, or tear her down.
We as coaches need to have an audible planned at all times. An audible to help make our athletes better through recovery sessions. Sometimes, less is more, and in some cases it most certainly is.
Breathing drills, foam rolling, stretching, some light activity can do wonders for Kaitlyn’s nervous system, and help her recover and decompress from a rough couple of weeks.
4. Belly Breathe
I wanted to leave this one till last because we are going to get a little sciencey here.
Breathing is so simple, yet so difficult. At some point in our lives we moved from a very efficient way of breathing (diaphragmatic breathing) to a more of an intercostal breathing technique.
We have two nervous system states: sympathetic, and parasympathetic.
When we do shallow breaths, or breathe into our chest, or breathe with our scalenes and intercostals, we create a stress response in our body that shifts our nervous system to more of a sympathetic nature. We feel stressed, we feel anxious, we recover a lot slower than we would if we would belly breathe, or breathe using our diaphragm.
When we breathe into our belly and use diaphragm we reduce the amount of stress that we feel, we can recover quicker, we can focus a lot easier, and we have an easier time performing at physical and mental tasks. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Before and after your workouts with your student-athletes, have them do some belly breaths to get their nervous system in check. I usually have my athletes do 5-10 before the session, and more importantly, 20-30 while laying down after the session to get them into a parasympathetic state quicker, to help promote recovery.
Using these skills above will help you better manage your student athletes stress levels in order to have them perform better on the field, in the weight room, and most importantly, in the classroom. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose.