This is easily the biggest opportunity for a S&C coach during the season to contribute to future success. The idea is to help players that are underdeveloped in certain areas get a leg up for the future off season. But that may not be necessarily the case, as we will break down in this blog post. 

Taking non travel players through workouts in season is a badge of honor for S&C. Crushing scout team guys with brutal protocols is a right of passage for the program. S&C coaches have to maneuver workout times around busy football schedules, determining with FB staff who is traveling or not, and convincing the non travel guy this is good for them. But is it worth the effort? 

A really important question is what is the likelihood of someone that is non travel actually making it to the travel squad in their time at your university? In this day and age with the transfer portal, if a guy is not playing year one they will almost certainly transfer. So you are investing a lot of time and headache into fighting for something with very little ROI. At Army we had 10-20% of an incoming class make all four years. If they were not on the travel squad as a freshman, it was almost 100% they would quit within a year. Again, what is the point? 

The more important aspect to consider is that a scout team practice week is brutal. Running scout for special teams, inside run, tackling dummies for individuals, and just getting mauled in team periods is awful practice. Taking into consideration that if that scout/non travel gets injured or cannot do something they will be considered soft and selfish. It is a very unforgiving and incredibly challenging experience for ‘developmental’ guy. 

So what do we do? To me the idea of having them train 25-50% more than travel could easily be considered punishment. There is most certainly a case to have a more specific program to guys not playing Saturdays. Increasing lean muscle mass during the in season to get to ramp up into the off season to work speed/power/strength is just smart. The question is can we integrate seamlessly into the practice week without making them feel less than travel. 

This will be an unpopular opinion but the easiest thing to remove would be Friday AM lift. All it ends up becoming is punishment workouts anyway. How many times someone was late or missed entirely and we end up just punishing the entire team makes it questionable to do in the first place. Not only that, this would be following three days of practice that is the equivalent of playing a game each day. Taking that away is a huge relief off everyone. 

The rest of the week is not trying to add to their week, relatively speaking. If you train to travel two to three times a week, try to mirror with non-travel. If possible, have separate times so you can implement a specific program to each group. If you have to train together, clearly lay out objectives and come to an agreement that a specific program is in the best interest of everyone involved. 

The final aspect is to build success for them. They are constantly getting yelled at for not being good enough or doing something wrong. It can be extremely defeating to a guy that was incredibly successful in high school being told how bad they are at everything they do. It is so easy to build success in the weight room, this is a huge opportunity to gain confidence for the athlete. Imagine going up in weight and performing better at something for four months straight. how much would that do to gain trust and possibly push through and stay on the roster as long as possible. 

In season training is tough on everyone. We have some aspects as a program we need to evaluate what we can contribute to. Crushing the players on your team for not being big enough or fast enough, or being buried on the depth chart may not be worth it. Taking care of the guys on your team that help the program each day by giving a look of the opposing team’s offense/defense is a good thing. It may get them to year two, which could be the difference between them helping your program or not.