MorlandSTRENGTH.com is excited to announce our first GOLD member Teambuildr, a game changing partnership for strength coaches.
Click Image above to learn more about Teambuildr!!
I have had the privilege to grow the new Gibbons STRENGTH program these past two years. This has been a team effort requiring many coaches and supporting organizations, including Teambuildr online software.
My discovery of the ideal online software for strength coaches began 5 years ago through advising some professionals seeking to build an app for coaches to plan, design, and monitor their strength and conditioning programs. I invested many hours communicating with computer engineers about what a coach needs in a software program. This process grew my knowledge and understanding of how to bridge the gap of personalities and programming to build an application that serves the strength coach well.
Being in the profession for 12 years (10 at the collegiate level and 2 at the high school level), I’ve mentored 40+ young coaches from some of the top sport science programs in the US. This has given me the opportunity to observe how strength coaches solve the problem of using technology to design their programs (Picture 1).
Picture 1: Training the girls tennis program using Teambuildr during the Fall
Strength coaches need an easy-to-use, intuitive, customizable software program that can monitor their athletes’ progress and share the results visually.
I started using Teambuildr as a pilot study in the summer of 2014 and after investing a little time getting things set up, I quickly surpassed 250 members by the fall.
Practically, I currently manage 600 students from 40 groups and as many as 200 students daily, 3 strength and conditioning classes, and use the application for e-mail and text communication. I have two mounted screens on the wall that are run by two different laptops for the students to view the workout (Picture 2). On the wall I have a simple percentage chart for them to figure intensities on exercises (picture 3). At the end of class or a team training session I have students use their Smartphone to plug in the weights from the entire workout. Once they get used to the process it takes only a couple minutes! For my classes, I require students to fill out their Teambuildr account to receive 25% of their grade. This helps with accountability and monitoring the their awareness of increasing or decreasing intensities for the exercises.
Picture 2 & 3: Using the two monitors on the wall to post the workouts and % chart.
The application helps set approximate maxes to get them into the program quicker. I tell them that the more information they enter the better I can monitor their progress. I showed a student the monitoring data, who was not being diligent in filling out his account, compared to a student who had been diligent and the progress over two months was obvious. My high school freshman students have made tremendous progress since the summer! Teambuildr allows the coach to send programs to students wherever they are during summer or other school breaks.
These are some of the reasons I’m excited to partner with Teambuildr in 2016 and desire to see this technology make it into the hands of more coaches who want to build an excellent program. To learn more contact me at: chris@morlandstrength.com
Chris Morland, MS, CSCS
Director of Strength & Conditioning/Teacher
Cardinal Gibbons High School
Stayed tuned as I’ll be posting an article I wrote more than two years about about “Trends in High School Strength & Conditioning!
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