The Background 

‍

‍

Located just 25 minutes from St. Louis, MO, Triad High School (THS) is one of the most prominent high schools in the St. Louis Metro East region. THS is ranked in the top 1.7% of all Illinois schools, earning the Exemplary Summative Designation by the Illinois State Board of Education. Approximately 1,200 students from three different towns (Marine, St. Jacob, and Troy) attend THS. Triad has been part of the highly competitive Mississippi Valley Conference since 1993. Starting in the 2026-2027 school year, the Triad Knights will move to the Southwestern Conference. This move will allow the Knights to become even more competitive, as the conference is filled with talented teams that are placed in larger playoff classes than Triad. The Southwestern Conference is rated among the top conferences in the State of Illinois.

‍

Bailey Stack, MEd, CSCS is the head strength coach and physical education teacher at Triad High School. She is assisted by Jesse Bugger and Jack Edgar, ATC, MEd, CSCS. Coach Stack and Coach Bugger deal with many of the same issues that a lot of high school strength and conditioning coaches face. This includes:

‍

Time

Athletes have 50-minute time blocks to work out during their strength and conditioning class hour during the school day. This gets immediately compressed when you add time for changing on the front and back end. Not to mention, there is the constant competition for young athletes' time from other obligations like homework, sports practices, and skills training. 

‍

Number of Athletes per Workout 

Group sizes can regularly range from 30 to 60+ athletes per group. As many coaches have experienced, this can make it challenging to implement a high-quality warm-up, let alone a fatigue monitoring or VBT protocols. 

‍

Athletes Sport & Season 

In a perfect world, each sports team would train together in a session by themselves. Making it easier to design, implement, and modify their training program. But this isn’t the reality for most coaches. Bailey’s groups regularly include athletes from different sports & different seasons training together at the same time. 

“Within our groups, we have off-season athletes training with in-season athletes who competed the day before or who will compete the day after.”

‍

A Desire to Implement Technology in the Weight Room 

In the past 10 years, the field of strength and conditioning has moved forward at lightning-fast speeds. With the era of sports science upon us, many coaches want to include technology in their programs. But this desire often comes with its own practical and budgetary limitations. This can often leave coaches feeling frustrated because, at the end of the day, they only want what’s best for their athletes. 

‍

With all of these constraints in mind, it’s easy to get discouraged and have a defeatist mindset. But Coach Stack inverts these “issues” entirely and lets the constraints that high school strength coaches face breed creative solutions that positively impact her student athletes. 

‍

Training at Triad High School

So, what does a week of training look like at Triad High School? Let’s unpack it: 

‍

“Regardless of training season, athletes will lift 4 days per week (Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday) with Wednesday being a “bonus day” with the potential to work on speed endurance, sprints, mobility, or recovery. This is for a typical 5-day school week. There are often times we will only have 4-day school weeks in which the “bonus day” gets eliminated. If it’s a 3-day school week, which is rare, Lift #3 gets eliminated from the weekly plan. For all 4 days of lifting, I write an in-season, pre-season, and off-season program and then assign sport groups based on their season. Recently, I have been writing extra programs on Thursdays and Fridays to accommodate track sprinters and baseball/softball pitchers. This is due to some of the movements we do on Thursday and Friday. In the fall, I had 2 in-season programs, one for athletes with multiple competitions throughout the week (boys soccer, girls tennis, volleyball, golf) and one for athletes with single competitions on the weekend (football, hockey, girls club soccer). Over the summer, we also have a Block Zero program for athletes who are new to the program and/or need to improve their overall technique building strength. 

On Day 1, most athletes have a lift centered around Bench Press (or other bench press variation). After they pair their sensor, their first task is to complete a CMJ to assess fatigue/readiness to train. If they see a significant decline in their jump (down 10-20% compared to their past measurement(s)), they know to decrease their training volume. If the decline is over 20%, we switch the individual to a mobility and recovery day. Once athletes have their CMJ measurement, they start working on their lift for the day. This includes mobility, activation, and grip work at the beginning, then they move into their warm-up and working sets with accessory lifts.  

On Day 2, athletes use the 10-5 measurement to assess fatigue/readiness to train before beginning a lower body lift centered around squat variations as the core lift. If we have a normal 5-day week, we use Wednesday as a speed endurance/timed sprints/recovery day, it just depends on how numbers look and what we think kids need most. 

On Day 3 we start the lift with either zone 2 cardio, threshold conditioning, or controlled mobility with sprint prep and short max effort sprints. We currently do not use the sensor to assess fatigue/readiness to train, we just use the sprints and power clean data after each set to determine total volume load for the day. Besides the clean variation for the day, we complete a press variation (currently we are working through incline bench) making it a full body lift. 

On Day 4, we go through a dynamic yoga complex for our warm-up. To assess fatigue and readiness to train, athletes do a 30 second plank and compare their stability score to their baseline. After they analyze their score, they move into activation/isometrics/acceleration work before moving into their deadlift variation accompanied with upper and lower accessories for a full body lift. 

When it comes to programming, in-season athletes typically have more power-based exercises that will accompany their core lifts and we monitor their fatigue closely using their beginning assessment scores and their velocity during core lifts. Off-season athletes have more emphasis on hypertrophy for their accessory lifts. 

For mobility testing, sensors are used to determine range of motion in degrees for each joint action. They are given normative data sheets to compare their values to, which helps them identify areas of improvement for mobility. On their Output app, I have created workouts for them to complete on their own or on Wednesdays to help improve these areas with below average range of motion. For example, normal degrees of motion for hip internal rotation is 45 degrees. If athletes score lower than 45 or have an asymmetry between each hip, they are assigned hip internal rotation corrective and mobility exercises in their app. On some occasions, we recognize that poor mobility scores may not actually be the result of poor mobility of that joint and it may be something “up the chain” but using the data from mobility testing has helped a significant amount of athletes identify issues with their movement. We do Overhead Squat Assessments (OHSA) on all of our athletes every 4-8 weeks, which also allows us to identify issues with their squat pattern that could potentially translate over to the field/court/ice/etc. Once we analyze their OHSA, we “prescribe” corrective exercises for compensations the athletes demonstrated during their assessment and areas to foam roll before squatting. This is delivered via the Output app and has been extremely beneficial.”

‍

A major unlock for Triad High School was having an intuitive platform to deliver workouts to their athletes. Previously, they were using printed-out Excel spreadsheets that could easily get destroyed or lost. Output’s Capture App allows students to pull the workouts up right on their phone and follow along. This feature also makes it easier to manage multiple “groups” of athletes within the same session. In one workout, Coach Stack can easily deliver a program to in-season track athletes, in-season pitchers, and off-season football players. Streamlining the programming process and increasing adherence. 

‍

This is done even more efficiently because of the number of sensors they have. THS has 68 Output sensors, allowing them to issue one sensor per athlete every session throughout the day. Each athlete has a number specific to them. When they come in for the workout, they simply grab their sensor and place it back in the charging port at the end of the workout. They also use the wrist strap to keep the sensor on their arm throughout the entire workout, even for exercises that aren’t tracked. This ensures no sensors get lost or broken throughout the day. 

‍

Implementing VBT has been a success for both the coach and the athletes. The athletes get a fun target to shoot for, driving intent on every exercise. The coach now has a means of putting guardrails on training, keeping athletes from trying to constantly max out. This has led to rapid improvements in athletes' performance in the gym and on the field. 

‍

Take Home Principles from Coach Stack 

Learning by doing often leads to learning rules of thumb that coaches from all sectors of the industry can benefit from. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Bailey’s time this year. 

‍

Implement Change One Piece at a Time 

Similar to quality program design, it typically makes sense to start lighter than you think and progress slower than you think. The same thing is true for implementing change at any level of your program. 

“I remember being extremely anxious about implementing the sensors. When we first rolled this out, during the month of June, we just had them follow the workout on their app, and that was it. The Athletic Trainer (Jack Edgar) and I were like, Hey, let's just have them figure out how the app works for the first month. In July, we'll start using the sensors.”

Slowly rolling out Output allowed both her and the athletes to get familiar with the software, establish best practices that worked for them, and build on this success over time. Now they’ve gotten to the point where they use the capture app for every workout and use the sensor for multiple movements throughout the day. 

‍

Inclusive Assessment Builds Buy-In 

“When I took over, everything was super old school. For example, all the football team all had was the thousand-pound club. That was their only measurement…  Well, what about the other kids who are freakishly strong for their body weight or are just freakishly good athletes in general? They're not in it. So what's a good way to measure up, which I'm still trying to come up with, a good way to showcase everything. 

We've started doing better. I have the normative data for relative mean force for each lift laminated and posted on the wall. They can compare their scores for each lift and see where they're at percentile-wise, which helps. We measure CMJs and 10-5s now too, which they can also compare their score to the normative data on the wall. For leaderboards during the lifts, I can distinguish between male and female, which is huge.” 

‍

While our testing battery can be motivating to some athletes, it can also unintentionally demotivate others. Leaving them feeling frustrated or worse, negatively impacting their view of training. By including tests outside of heavy strength metrics like the CMJ or 10-5 RSI test, you can create a more inclusive testing battery that highlights a more complete spectrum of athletic abilities. 

‍

Speak Their Language 

The human body is complex, adaptation is complex, sports performance is complex… but that doesn’t mean our message to our athletes needs to be complex. 

“Before this, I was teaching science during the day and doing strength conditioning after school and over the summer. When we rolled out the sensors and Output app in July of 2024, I tried going over the scientific equations in depth for power and for force to all of my athletes. Finally I realized the in-depth explanation didn’t click with most kids; they still weren't getting the main concept. Recently, I started distinguishing between seasons on the leaderboards. For the most part, athletes who are completing offseason and preseason lifts are looking at their placement on the relative force leaderboard. Athletes who are completing in season lifts are looking at their placement on the relative power leaderboard (sometimes this goes for preseason lifts too). Last month, I started regularly using the “relative” option on the leaderboards, which requires athletes to meet or surpass their metric from last week or last month. This has been huge for athletes’ growth. This gives kids another opportunity to rise to the top even if they don’t lift as much as the guy to rack next to them. It also prevents guys who are already the strongest in the school from getting complacent. Now they will only get to the top of the leaderboard if they perform better than they did last week.

Here is how the program is communicated:

• Off-season we’re focused on building muscle
• Preseason we’re focused on force/power
• In season, we’re focused on power 

‍

In reality, the program is more complicated than that and includes all qualities year-round. But this simplification in communication for the athletes helps them understand the goals of the program and focus on what matters most. 

‍

Give Your Athletes Autonomy 

Data analysis can be challenging regardless of the number of athletes that you’re working with. Empowering your athletes to be curious about their own data puts the power in their hands and makes things easier on the coach's end. 

“I can analyze some of the data, but with me being by myself, it's really hard… We have athletes who are really into it and truly want to get better. They analyze the heck out of their own data”. 

‍

Sport Science Simplified with Output Sports 

Output is truly a sports science lab in your pocket for high school strength and conditioning coaches. Giving you the ability to test:

‍

• Jump Height 
• RSI 
• Barbell Velocity 
• Medicine Ball Velocity 
• Range of Motion 
• Stability & Balance 

‍

Our workout builder and group dashboards feature also allows you to easily program workouts your athletes can follow on their personal devices and visualize your group's data all in one convenient web platform. 

‍

It is the perfect solution for the common challenges of the high school weight room. 

‍