Amanda Berg is well known within high school strength and conditioning circles, and for good reason. Currently the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Dassel-Cokato High School (MN), where she also teaches physical education courses – including regular and college-level courses – Berg is a consummate educator. She’s also an armed forces veteran, having served in Iraq, serves on the executive council of the National High School Strength Coaches Association (NHSSCA) and is co-host of the Big Time Strength Podcast.
When she reflects on her old programming, Berg realizes that they used to do a lot of unnecessary exercises like shoulder and leg complexes. They ended up incorporating too much volume and it wasn’t effective for teaching. They were just doing squats and upper body presses in different ways, for example, without focusing on their function as a teaching tool.
Berg’s approach to educating those in her weight room has evolved over time into a training method that utilizes lifting progressions for all levels of students in an effort to teach them along the way.
For instance, to teach a beginning posterior chain progression, Berg starts with a basic squat pattern, and then introduces other exercises like Romanian deadlifts and bent over rows with lightweight equipment, focusing on cues related to hinging, squatting, and other movement patterns. This approach can be adapted for junior high students or any other level of student to help them learn proper lifting technique and form.
“Today, it’s a teaching mechanism, yet we’re also using the early methods with all of our varsity programs as a warmup progression,” she says. “The training is the teaching for all levels. I’m at a mid-sized school, so I work with everyone. We even have access to strength and conditioning for kids. But in that 4th-, 5th-, 6th-grade level, we’re already working with barbells and everything because we’re lightweight and we’re using those progressions to teach.”
Ultimately, Berg’s training philosophy focuses on training movements and doing lifts. She believes in the concept of training, as advocated by Dan John, where athletes focus on the squat, hinge and other essential movements, including the seven basic human movements.
“With the help of tools like our TeamBuildr platform, we can use regressions and progressions to adjust the training to different levels of students,” says Berg. “By using tags and other features, we can provide a standardized training pattern for all groups, such as a bilateral vertical pull. For example, we might use a kettlebell deadlift for junior high students, turning it into a teachable moment that helps them learn the right movement pattern. We could get all the way up to the barbell deadlift, and that would be our ‘middle.’
“All kids, 7th through 12th grade, have access to our TeamBuildr,” she says. “They get that dropdown menu and their guide of what lifts they should be doing. If it’s somebody’s in-season, they’ll be doing that kettlebell deadlift. That’s all we need that day. We just have to move well and get back out there. So that’s how we train those movements to do those lifts, and then we base the type of lift on the individual lifter.”
She says that one of the greatest advantages of using TeamBuildr is the fact that she doesn’t have to write this out. In the past, she used to have a literal “box of workouts” with bilateral vertical pulls and another box for horizontal pulls. She would manually choose from those workouts and provide them to students.
Now, with the help of dropdown menus and instructional videos on TeamBuildr, she trains her students much more effectively. Rather than just showing them how to do a lift, she can teach and train them to perform movements with greater precision and accuracy first, thereby maximizing the effectiveness and impact of a given lift once weight is added.
“The training of movement is crucial, as it teaches students the proper technique for movements – like the hinge – from an early age,” says Berg. “This technique should remain consistent, regardless of the student’s skill level or the type of lift they are performing. When it comes to training kids of different abilities, we focus on training the movement before – and in addition to – the specific lift. This allows us to adapt to the student’s abilities while maintaining the integrity of the movement pattern and technique. That’s where teaching the progression really shines through, but even as they progress, they can still take a step back and do some of the lifts from earlier in their progression as a warmup.”
The Value Of TeamBuildr
Now in her 16th year at Dassel-Cokato, Berg holds the positions of Strength and Conditioning Coach and Physical Education teacher, providing an array of PE and strength training courses. She is responsible for organizing training programs for athletes, off-season trainees, and non-athletes in grades 7-12, while also supervising the youth “Charge Up” initiative aimed at students in grades 2-6.
It’s an enormous amount of information to track, and it’s even more imperative that her TeamBuildr platform align with her preferred methods for coaching. Berg favors the TeamBuildr platform for a variety of reasons, but ultimately, it boils down to three major areas of importance.
“As a beginner using Team Builder, there were a few features I found particularly useful,” says Berg. “First, the attendance feature, which also serves as a team filter, is great. Second, the whiteboard feature acts as a timing system, which is incredibly helpful when integrated into training. While these two features can be found elsewhere, their integration into the training process is fantastic.”
Third, the programming aspect of TeamBuildr is absolutely crucial for a high school strength coach, says Berg. The ability to create custom programs or adapt existing ones to suit specific needs provides a collaborative and flexible training environment. Berg is currently working with as many as 18 different sports at Dassel-Cokato, so a fluid programming environment is key. The ability to create useful calendars is of particular importance.
Many coaches currently using the platform resort to creating multiple calendars for different sports, but in a mid-size school dealing with multi-sport athletes and those attending strength and conditioning classes, Berg finds it more efficient to use a single calendar and leverage TeamBuildr’s tagging functionality for movement progressions and regressions.
“If needed, I can add a session break for specific groups,” she says. “For instance, if the basketball team is deep into the playoffs and needs a different routine, like just four lifts and some foam roller recovery, I can add a session break and label it as ‘in-season’ or ‘basketball.’ This approach allows for flexibility and adaptability while using a single calendar.”
Along with that flexibility comes enormous time savings. If you’re a coach who’s still using pen and paper or Microsoft Excel for programming, the efficiency you can obtain is second to none, says Berg.
“By saving hours of time, this approach gives me the confidence to experiment with new ideas, which was challenging when I had to create everything in Excel,” she says. “Now, I can quickly introduce new elements to the training, gauge their effectiveness, and determine if the students enjoy them or if there are any mistakes. The added benefit of having a video to accompany the training makes the whole process even more seamless and efficient.
“The ability for students to add their own videos into the journal feature is incredibly useful, even if it means just keeping those videos for four years and showing them to a student when they’re a senior so they can see their progress. Uploading the videos is simple, and the highlight screen makes the team feed an excellent feature. I can display it at the end of a workout, showcasing personal records and any uploaded videos. The team feed adds an engaging and motivating element to the training. It’s a valuable addition.”
While there’s no question that Berg has evolved her training method to use lifting progressions for students of all levels, thereby incorporating training as teaching into their learning environment, she couldn’t do it as quickly or effectively without the right tools. By using tools like TeamBuildr, she can adapt the training to suit different student abilities and manage her programs effectively, helping kids from elementary through high school maximize their potential in the weight room and in life.
Details
Whether you are programming phys ed, weights classes, or sport-specific workouts, students and athletes can input workout data via their mobile devices or by using our weight room view tablet feature. This feature allows 4-8 athletes to receive their individualized workouts, including prescribed loads and intensities, using tablets in the weight room. Our reporting features help coaches view student progress over time, identify strengths and weaknesses, and visualize the effectiveness of the strength and conditioning program.
