Creating a Training Calendar

Welcome inside another edition. This is Cross functionality, the show connecting coaching, baseball, softball, male female hosted by former college baseball and softball players episode 18. And of course, if you're just stumbling upon our show, thank you. We do greatly appreciate it. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Apple Google Spotify and of course, watch the show on YouTube. The softball strength Academy YouTube page. Let's give

a warm welcome to newly married friend co host national champion at the University of Alabama. Current day renowned coach, Cassie Riley Bocha. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Welcome back. Of course. And then decided to go back on that and return to the university. And he mentioned that one of the biggest reasons as to why he did that was your senior class.

That has to make you feel pretty good, by the way. Knowing that he came back for your senior class. For sure. And it was definitely. It was neat because we were. I don't think any of us thought it that way. I don't think any of us was like, oh, how could you leave this senior class? It was just we had been. You know, pretty tight knit.

We had formed some pretty cool leadership roles. And I think everyone was excited about that year because. We thought, okay, we have all the leadership factors, all the team chemistry factors in place for it to really happen this year. So it was. Almost like a little bit of a blow to think like, man, are we. Would we still be able to do that if he wasn't

at the helm and the answers, you know, probably not. Right, right, right. And the thing that surprised me. With him when he talked about that and he made the decision a big port, a big chunk of his decision was based off of girls who were 21, 22 years old and your senior class. And the impact that you had just on his coaching career in general, but

also to. It seemed like there were some unfinished business. We've talked about it on this show before. Did a whole episode on the 2011 season. How much of a struggle it was for you. So a part of him, I think, was thinking. And I don't know. Let me just just what I've gathered is that there were some unfinished business there. And we have to go in

2012. Go ahead first and try to win this thing. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I've alluded to as well that. We wanted to be the first in the SEC. And I think so there was this little extra incentive and almost like a little bit more of a race to be like, okay, we don't want. You know, it's not just that we want to win

one or two national championships. We want to be the first. So it was like. They really was a race. And I think every coach in the SEC kind of felt that, especially. Murphy would have been there from the start. I'm sure Tim Walton at Florida. I'm sure the weeklies were at Tennessee. They had been there since. Really the beginning of the program's history. So everyone wanted

to be the first. And so there was not only that. But we had unfinished business, but the also a little bit of pressure there. Yeah. Well, be sure to. And again, he was at your wedding last weekend at Murphy. Great guy. So we do appreciate Pat filling in for you last week episode 17. So please go back and listen to that. Watch it on the sample

strength Academy. You two page as well. It follows on social media. Add Jim Tara and at coach underscore Cassie R. B on Instagram at coach Cassie R. B on Twitter for some great content. All right. Let's get into today's show episode 18 talking about creating a training calendar throughout the year. And I'm going to ask a question to your cast that I think a lot of

people are wondering what kind of software do you use to create a training calendar? Excel, Microsoft Word, Adobe products, which charge you an arm and a leg monthly to use. Okay. So functionally, I will use Google Sheets because I become very familiar with using a lot of functions, getting a lot of automations to run there. And then visually, I will probably represent that. To a perspective

athlete or a team of athletes on something either called Figma, which is an online software. It's a that helps you kind of create workflows. Just a very simple way to make something look nice. Or keynote, which is the Mac version of PowerPoint. So it's a way again to display. Hopefully important and sometimes convoluted information, make it seem really simple and clear to someone. So like I

said, it would be both of those. Okay. So when we talk about creating a training calendar for athletes, let's let's be clear about this too. When I add full context, we're talking about baseball and softball players. Right. I mean, that's when we talk about creating a training calendar, creating that that training plan for them throughout the year. And really that offseason begins October, November, December. But

I'm guessing that you see a lot of athletes who also play other sports, you know, a football, for example, male on the male side soccer on the male and female side. So how do you create a plan around that when they're that offseason is beginning October, November, December, time depending on when you played or if you played football? Sure. Yeah. And I think that is that's

really difficult is when does that offseason officially start? And I should also meet you to like you're not going to be creating a training calendar for someone who is kind of hoping to train one time a week. This is someone who is very serious, very committed. They're looking to play very high level high school eventually go on to play college. And they are really saying, okay,

I'm committing myself to a full year calendar of this. So not only does football for another sport complicate things a little bit football for the current like sports. So people, you know, just about every softball athlete is going to be playing football. Baseball, it's not as of an important recruiting time as it seems like it is for softball. But and I would say too, if you

are a pitcher in baseball, this would be the one time if you're trying to pitch at a division one level, you're probably not playing other sports come your junior in high school. It's probably too much of a demand for you to not be training. Again, if you want to be a division one baseball pitcher and potentially go on further. So that is the couple of like

caveats I'd say to that. But yeah, we're it certainly when you start that clock is tough. I have girls that are playing still this weekend. So that means they're offseason when we can really start doing some strength training, really start diving into rewiring their swing. We can't start that until their fall season is over. So typically we can get that month of the year. November in,

but sometimes we lose it, but November, December is really when we want to start going, going strong with their offseason training. Okay. So from a coach's perspective, when do you begin to create that that training calendar for them? Because every athlete's different, some are not playing fall sports. Sure. I think you can have a template. And I think every coach has been doing it for a

while has some type of template of, okay, this is typically what I'm doing with a maybe a high level athlete come fall season. And once you get an opportunity to sit down with that athlete in a way, that probably August. And the reason I say August is they play their spring softball baseball season. And when it's that start. So April, May and then a little bit

of June will be their spring season. Their travel season usually overlaps that and goes June, July and the beginning of August. And then there's either a two to three weeks, sometimes even four weeks. Stint where the athlete has off from softball in August. That's when you want them to decompress. Take a second to get away after they've just had their biggest. You know, rot of their

season and then come back and say, okay, let's reflect on the last season. Let's create. Where we want to be based off of our what we're going to train for this season. And then let's start to create some milestones. Let's start to create some pockets of training. Let's figure out what you're upcoming schedule is because again, two triads are happening. So depending on what travel team

you're playing for that also dictates your calendar. So August is a big month for prepping for that. Okay. So then you go from August to September. September to October into October. How do you deal with players who are coming off being injured? Yeah. I mean, yeah, an injury can happen right at any time. So just like anything else, it becomes like you kind of scrap what

you had or you crumple up what you had. And you start to figure out, okay, how bad is this injury? How much attention does this injury mean? Because sometimes, you know, an injury can of like, let's say. Something I'm trying to think of something typical like a. Let's say. Okay. Yeah. Something is nagging that nagging you exactly nagging. It's not it's not an acute thing that

necessarily is a break or or like a torn ligament, whatever it may be. So something it's nagging, they can still do most of their training with modifications. So really, we just need to modify the current plan. We have something that is very like serious that require surgery that requires time off whatever for whatever that may be. Honestly, I think concussions are probably the hardest thing to

come back from. Because it is so difficult for an athlete themselves to be like, all right, am I just kind of a little bit tired today? Or am I extra tired, extra fatigue because my brain isn't healing? You know, that's that's the hardest thing for us to manage coming back. But what you do is you say, okay, do I need to completely scrap what we've had

or do I need to just modify? And again, you do this long enough and you work with professionals long enough. We have a tremendous sports chiropractic individual, Dr. Brett, Ponyeros in our building. And if I ever need a guest talk, he'd be another phenomenal guy where he has made it his job to be like, okay, how do we take the current plan and just and hear

the exact modifications we need to do in order for him to or him, this female or male to get better, but also still continue on their training plan. So again, it's, it's just adapting. So what about, okay, when we're talking from the offensive side, from the hitting side, both baseball and softball, when are you starting to look at certain mechanical adjustments within that, or at least

putting it in to your training calendar to then being able to progress to other little things like the mental side or small other mechanical adjustments that you need to tune up for the beginning of the season. Sure. So I really do feel like if there's something to rewire, if there's something that we need to make a significant change on, we want to try to get that

done before February. We want to try to really make sure that is fleshed out, but we also have to identify why that's happening. If someone's not achieved something really good connection, right, they're losing their hinge pattern throughout their swing, that might not necessarily be corrected in the batting cage. That might be something that we need to correct in the weight room. And so we need to

identify that. And depending on the reasoning, some people are just have grown really fast or don't possess enough lower body strength to hold themself in certain positions. That might take a little bit longer than, you know, a cage time or two to correct. So you don't, you try to go through those rewire mechanics early on. You try to address them early on, try to figure out

why and follow on the plan because here's the other thing too, as a coach, you want to trust your professionalism and you want to say, okay, this is what we feel it is. This is the plan we think it's going to work, but we need to retest pretty frequently to make sure we're right too. And we're not going down the wrong path. So that's usually the

time frame of when I'm really trying to focus in on that because I don't want to get to right before season and have their, you know, hey, we have all these issues with our swing. But then we're also trying to build speed and power at the same time. It's the one we'll run into each other almost too often. Well, when do you, when do you go

over your templates? What's a good time and to go over those templates and kind of make adjustments if needed? Yeah, I mean, you could argue that you're kind of always evaluating and adjusting, you know, to say like, okay, I'm completely revamping this. It's, I think one, you get an athlete that you've never had before. So I'm probably working with one of my highest level athletes out

of the Northeast in Ava Papalayo. She's a freshman who's got ranked fourth in her class. As far as her dedication and her talent level and her strength levels as a freshman, this is certainly something where I'm like, okay, I get to go and create a new template for this because she's an outlier. That's going to be fun too, right? Oh gosh. Yes. It's one. And it's

also like, you know, I always think of the, the quote where it's like with much responsibility or with what's the smart man quote where he says with I know you're talking about. Yeah. Anyway, it's a big responsibility. It's great power comes great responsibility. Yes. So it's like, Hey, you're afforded this ability to train an elite level athlete who has a dream of playing high level division

one who has a dream of winning championships. And that's amazing. But at the same time, you say, okay, well, I want to help them get there in the, in the best way possible. And at any time you do have those athletes, you're looking for the tiniest of improvements because they're already at such that high level. But in the same breath, you get someone who comes in

and really wants to make their JV team as an eighth grader. And that can be equally as rewarding to see them work just as hard and, and follow along a similar plan with, with appropriate adjustments. So to answer your original question, I'd say right before those meetings happen in August, probably throughout like, you know, end of July, beginning of August, I'm like, okay, what did we

have to change? Maybe is there like the fall season get expanded? Did you know what we tried this last year and my athletes really didn't, didn't feel that great going into their, their high school. What do we have to change to adjust that? You know, so that's usually when I'm asking those questions. Okay. So I've heard before from strength and conditioning coaches that they love making

out workouts. It's one of their favorite things to do in the entire job and their tire career. Do you enjoy creating a training calendar? As much as you enjoy creating these type of workouts and then executing having the acts athletes execute these workouts? Okay. I think it seems like it seems like it's, it's a 10 hundred wide-angled web of stress, but it could be fun at

the same time. Yes. Okay. So I love creating the overarching outline. Okay. And then I love going into a day to day. Having like a template, and then getting really creative. Like on the day of the workout, hey, how are you feeling? How's our power level feeling has this? And then getting really creative with, making adjustments to what that workout might be. What I don't love

is trying to get really detailed long term. Like let's say you're trying to figure out this is what the athlete's going to do on day one. And then exactly what the athlete's going to do on day 100. Not like, hey, this is the overarching look of the category, but like really try to get in the details that that becomes cumbersome. And I almost get frustrated doing

that, which, because you know, hey, whatever happens on between day one and day 20 is going to affect day 100. But I at least have to have some type of template of what I think might be going on. So sometimes the nitty gritty, like trying to plan out the future gets much more interesting because it is impossible, obviously. But yeah, the overarching plan is fun. And

then I think getting creative within day to day with each athlete is a lot of fun. But I don't, you know, I do know some strength coaches who will take 365 days and have a workout plan for almost every single day in an Excel spreadsheet. And it's so impressive. But that's probably just not me. Well, you know, there's apps for that now too on the training

side. I'm sure you know about that work coaches plan out the workouts the years and years. Sometimes it's not going to be a lot of fun. But it's years in advance. It's pretty incredible. Anyway, so looking at when an athlete enters their certain phase of their training calendar. Right. So let's say like after the holidays into January, let's talk about the mental side a little bit.

How do you get that athlete prepared mentally? And how do you work that into your training calendar to get their mental side tuned up for the beginning of the season? Sure. So especially come January, we talk a lot about delayed gratification. And we talk about the marshmallow experiment, which I don't know if you're going to be able to do that. I'm not pleased to explain. Yes.

Okay. So this was another coach Murphy thing. You see these toddlers. They're sitting in a room and they can hand it one marshmallow. They say, okay, listen. If you eat this marshmallow before I come back, they're going to, you know, the lab, the person in the lab coach is going to leave and come back. They're like, that's the only marshmallow you get. But if you can

wait and not eat this marshmallow by the time I come back, I'll give you another marshmallow. And you can have two. So you see these little toddlers like sitting there. Some of them are like sniffing it. They have to look away. They're like pushing it to science. It becomes becomes a very cute video. But what, and you know, and then other times you see some toddler

at the second, the lady leaves, she, he just pops it in his mouth right away. And what they did over the next 15, 20 years was track these individuals. And it's crazy to see that delayed grant like the ability to believe in delay gratification. How much that affected grades that how much that affected their earnings, how much that affected so many different things in their life.

And it's really training is delayed gratification. Training in the Northeast for spring sport when it's, you know, 20 degrees outside, you haven't been outside in two months. And you have to try to be like, all right, I'm going to go to the wait room again, make myself feel sore and not, you know, tired again. Work on this tiny little thing with my swing again in order

for me to just play in the net, you know, outside maybe in the next 70 days, you know. So you really have to hone in on, okay, I'm doing this now for a reward later on. So that's really the biggest piece of the mental game that we're working on. Okay, so then we get into the season here. And physically it's pretty much working on maintenance, which

is kind of a. It's a tough thing at times, right? Working on that maintenance, trying to figure out where do we need to maintain? Where do we need? What, what quick adjustments do we have to make? To get better and to get to our main goal on the field? Yeah. And you know, it's, it's funny. It really does depend high school ball, at least it depends

on the athlete's schedule. I've, we have some athletes who come in early in the morning during season to get their lift in. And, and again, I think people think like, oh, the lift's going to make them sore. An eccentric portion of a lift is going to make an athlete sore. So the way down of a squat, the way the, from the top down of a deadlift.

When you train concentrically, that's really training your power. And that's not going to make the athlete sore. That's not going to break down your muscle fibers. So that's maintaining your, your strength and power output without compromising how they might feel for a game later that day or a game in the next day. So there are certain primer workouts and, and, and quick, like fast twitch, if

you will movements that we can incorporate it to an in-season program that a lot of athletes miss out on. Come season. So they'll either do that first thing the morning. They'll have a free around lunch and they'll come for, you know, a 30 minute quick tune up. And then they'll hide back out. But the best athletes that do the best in spring and then are going

into their summer seasons most prepared have found the ways and found time for those pockets to be able to effective for them throughout the season that they can get their training and still. Do you, do you work, do you like to work on fast twitch fiber muscles in season? I like to get the athlete moving fast in season. I don't want them going slow. And the

only time we would maybe incorporate that is if they need, they just lost a feel of their swing and maybe we have them going ice closed slowly moving through their swing. Yeah, they don't need to be moving slow come season. We need to be priming their body to move fast. And the slower movements really should have been happening. Or the heavier movements that caused you to

most slow should have been happening earlier on in the off season. Okay, so let's shift gears now. As you get into the flip the calendar to the next training year. Creating that training calendar for the next year for the athlete. How do you do that based off the results that they may have had positive or negative from the previous season? Sure. I'm going off of a

lot of the feel of the athlete because again, you could feel great going into a weekend and you just run into. Some of the top pitchers in the country and you're ending up over 12 or one for 12, whatever it is. And so I'm not really going off of batting average. I'm not, you know, what I'm looking at is, hey, how did the athletes exit velocity

look like during their off season, during their spring season, during their summer season? Did we see a massive drop off? Did we see some injuries pop up? If so, when did we see them pop up? When did the athletes start to feel like their confidence was dropping? That's another thing I try to track a lot of is, hey, I think I've talked about this. What's your

confidence right now? Scale a one to 10 camping? It's a really interesting thing to see when it starts to drop a little bit and it's sometimes due to like, well, you know, and here's the other thing too. If we inherently think that working out helps us be stronger and more powerful and then we don't have time to do it. Something in the back of our head

is going to be thinking, well, am I getting weaker now? Am I getting less powerful? So when athletes schedule gets really busy, when they all of a sudden don't have as much time to train, when they're flying from one place to the next, all of a sudden they're confident. Sounds like you have some classroom study built in deer training calendar. Yes, we try. We try. I

think any coach or at least maybe has struggled with their mental performance while playing the game. Hopefully tries to fill that gap for their athlete. Because I do think especially in as a hitter and baseball or softball, it's needed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially in those. The hard arguably two of the hardest sports to play. Skill sports, I guess. The right word. I think so. Because I've

always said baseball and softball players, along with hockey players, are probably the most skilled type athletes on the war in the planet in the planet. In the world, probably the most skilled athletes in the world where football and basketball players are probably probably the best athletes in the world. But it's a little bit different with baseball and softball. I think low cross too is has phenomenal

athletes. But it's neat too. Because you typically see soccer really good athletes. You start to see what sports like kind of cone side like you have like people play football or in the fall and then go into play. Let's say like soccer in the summer. You know what I mean? I feel like those sports kind of go hand in hand sometimes across the summer in the

spring. Yeah. And I've heard from somebody before that if you're a baseball player and you're a position player and you play football in the fall. Your bat speed. I've heard that before. So I think if you've maxed out your strength, right? Like if you are an athlete who's like, you don't need to be lifting any heavier. So because there's a point where you're like, okay, I

don't need to be lifting any heavier. I need to get better at my specific power specific movements. Then yeah, you're going to go play football and you're not going to do anything rotationally like swinging a bat. So of course that's going to go down. But if you're an athlete who's like, has this massive gap and just base strength like they and maybe football is introducing you

to some of those base strength movements. Your bat speed might get faster just because you got stronger. But that's not going to be the case for every athlete. A lot of high school guys that go and play football. They probably need to be working on again, they're like starting their off season plan maybe sooner rather than later. But that's to each their own. We've kind of

the athlete we're not going to be able to give you as specific of a or as we're not going to be able to give you the best plan that you could have. And it's almost like you can lay out like if you did not play basketball, this would be what you'd have. And this is you could see how you're progressing from this phase to this phase

to this phase. Because you're in here four or five six days a week. Really working on your your whole off season training plan. And then when you have basketball or you know anything else. If you have something else going on in there. Well, that now you can't be doing this. This training we're not going to even get close to the same level same phase you would

have been at had you been training with us. Now the other side of that is you're going to have some athletes who cannot stand the idea of just training the entire off season. And they're going to need mentally to go do something else. And that's completely fine. And that there's nothing wrong with that. It's just like I said again. It's it's really what what do you

want your end game to be if you want to be a high level college player. You're going to have to eventually at some point get used to what it's like to train you around. If you're like you know what I'm really just I want to enjoy my four years of high school. I have my friends I've played with since I was younger on this basketball team.

This is what's going to be best for me. That's a completely different story. Yeah, that seems like to me. That's where it gets a little bit convoluted. Yeah, it just especially because schedules change. It's not like hey, here's your basketball schedule. Here's one games are. And this and we're going to go from there. I mean, it's a little less with an outdoor sport, but courts change

practice times change things change the last minute that you it it does become a little bit difficult to to plan out for an athlete what we're doing. Well, email us Jim podcast 21 and Gmail.com if you have any questions and again reach out to us on social media at Jim Tara and at coach underscore Kassie RB on Instagram at coach Kassie RB on Twitter. My Jim

Tara on the dying apparently the dying Twitter. Still working. You know, I woke up the other day. Thinking Twitter is going to be dead finally. My my wish will finally come true and it's still there. So reach reach out to us on the the apparently the dying Twitter Instagram is not dying apparently. That's thriving. Striving Jim podcast 21 though at gmail.com is probably the best way

to reach out. If you have any questions any further information on creating a training calendar that coaches and players and or prospective coaches in the future should know about. Yeah, you know, I'm I'm very fortunate that I get to train in a building with other professionals that I can talk to another strength coach. I can talk to the throne coach. I can talk to a chiropractor

and a PT. All in one building and as a hitting instructor that is so rare. And so if I want to if I want to just you know. There are certain times I oversee all phases of it, but there are certain times with athletes where I'm like hey they need something way more specific. I'm sending them over to here. They need a more specific speed program.

Whatever that may be. I think it is so important for coaches to communicate even when they're not the same building. So if you're working with an athlete in the bad end cages and you're trying to work on something and then you know that there's another coach working on with that athlete on something completely different. You guys should probably get on some sort of same page that

you don't hurt the athlete. You don't want the athlete going from a high intent program where you're really pushing their central nervous system on Monday. And then they're going to a speed coach on Tuesday who's also pushing their central nervous system. And then they show for their strength coach on Wednesday. Who's good who has this plan in mind right they have a completely separate plan to

really push their central nervous system Wednesday. That athlete hasn't recovered at all. And now they're about to go play maybe Thursday Friday Saturday. So you really want to be able to get on the same page so that you can have the stressful days be on Monday followed by some type of recovery day followed by another stressful day. Whatever that may be so that they're not stressed

every single day of the week. And taxing their system because that's usually how injuries happen when it's miscommunication among coaches because coaches are getting better. The coaching industry as a whole you have all this information available to you at your fingertips. It's not that what any one of those coaches was doing was wrong. It was just not knowing what the athlete was doing before after that

that becomes tough. All right. What do you got coming up at Zopolstrand Academy? Cool. Our hitting library or hitting vault really. It is days away. It is we are actually just waiting on our website server to tell us we're officially live. And you'll see it on so hopefully I'm bearing no like internet explosions by the time this podcast airs that vault will already have been out

on Wednesday. Yes. Yes. So it's Saturday right now. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But that's that's the main focus. And then just a lot of people are finishing up their fall season. So I get to officially start this off season that we've been talking about with a lot of my athletes starting next couple weeks. So this is like a prime time for you. This is like this is

time on our building is busting up the seams. It's a good time. Yes. Busting at the scene. I'm going to talk to app about that on the lab Epstein knitting podcast, which I think everybody should subscribe to as well. Actually on the lab Epstein knitting podcast this week. We're talking about off season. And hitting prep plans. So coincides the two podcasts coincide perfectly. See how I

did that right there tied all in. Thanks. Giving everything else. All right. All right. Coach CRB. Talk to you next week. Everybody be sure to subscribe. Apple Google Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the show. So post rent the Academy YouTube page. And we will indeed talk to you next week. Bye.