Following spring season, fall sports teams will continue their work inside the weight room and on the track, preparing for next season. However, the types of workouts will differ.
Soccer
Improving speed and strength will be the main points of emphasis for Ohio this summer as the team aims to make a strong return to the pitch. During the players’ time away from Chessa Field, they will adhere to a packet of suggested exercises.
Coach Stacy Strauss listed a few goals for the team to keep in mind.
“Maintaining the strength, aerobic and anaerobic fitness level that they have gained in the offseason,” she said.
The team will undergo a series of fitness tests upon its return to Athens on July 31. Strauss said that those tests will determine which players have put in the necessary work over the offseason.
“Fitness tests are required to pass to get a uniform are more sprint workouts,” Strauss said. “It’s a series of sprints that they have to achieve in a certain amount of time, then active recovery rest also needs to be accomplished in a certain amount of time.”
Strauss said Ohio does not overlook the importance of long-distance running, but the coaching staff works more to emulate game-like situations during its fall examination.
Volleyball
When the Bobcats return for preseason action on Aug. 7, they will have already undergone a rigorous training schedule. In a sport where a solid vertical leap can make a huge impact, the players must frequent the weight room to gain an edge.
“We’re an explosive sport, so the majority of our lifting year-round is geared more toward Olympic-style lifting,” coach Ryan Theis said, meaning Ohio will focus on cleans, jerks and squats.
Because the team has such a wide variety of players, benchmarks are set on an individual basis. The tests differ for each player, but are explicitly stated before the summer.
“Everything is based on individual betterment,” Theis said. “We don’t have many generic tests. That just doesn’t really exist in our program.”
Theis will not be able to contact the team before it returns, as NCAA rules restrict coaches from monitoring summer conditioning. But the players are able to work with the strength coach.
Field Hockey
Coach Neil Macmillan and the field hockey coaching staff will also put together an extensive conditioning packet for the team before the players leave for the summer. Whether the packet yields the expected results will be determined by self-accountability.
“It’s just a case of finding the motivation and desire to start it when you leave and continue to do it throughout the course of the summer,” Macmillan said.
The team aims for an equal focus on strength and conditioning, but the players often spend more time on the track then they do pumping iron. Macmillan said his ultimate goal for the players is to have them return for the preseason in the best shape of their lives.
“We do the same running test every preseason, throughout the season and throughout the spring,” Macmillan said. “We can see, based on those, how players are progressing.”
With the institution of the stop-start rule, field hockey has become a faster game. As a result, the team will place as much emphasis on speed as it will on improving endurance.
mm938910@ohiou.edu
