General Guidelines For Beginners or Injury Prone Athletes

The number one goal for this group is to build as much fitness and general athletic ability as possible.  If you have not seen the Girls Progression, please follow the link and check it out.

Right now, you should start to experiment with running, push ups, lunges, sit ups, and any other basic conditioning activity you feel you'd like to do.  We don't start practicing for another two weeks, so this is a good opportunity to gain a little bit of fitness prior to meeting with all of your teammates for the first time.

If you can do a 3 mile run comfortably, you should do some of those.  If you can run only 1 lap around the track comfortably, you should do that.  Do not feel the need to rush into any specific level of fitness.  You have the summer to build up and get stronger. However, DON'T WAIT to start.  If you wait, then you will feel like you are behind the rest of your teammates when we start practicing in a couple of weeks.  If you wait all summer, then you will be far behind and you might feel like it is impossible to catch back up.

If you wait all summer and don't run, you will be prone to injury once we start training.  Your body needs the summer to prepare for the hard training in the fall.

A week for a beginner might look like this early in the summer

• Monday (Practice): 1 lap warm up, extensive core and drills, bleacher runs, 1 lap easy, short sprints, 1 lap easy
• Tuesday: On your own: Push Ups, Sit Ups, Lunges, 1 mile easy around your neighborhood
• Wednesday (Practice): 1 Lap warm Up, Ramp Sprints, Game Day, Running drills, Core, 1 lap easy
• Thursday (Practice) 20 minutes of continuous running, go as far as you can without stopping.
• Friday: Take a day off or do some sort of other activity
• Saturday: You might go to the hills with your more advanced teammates, but focus on running uphill without stopping then walking back down.
• Sunday: Day off.

Totals 10 ish miles for the week.

Later in the summer, your weeks might be creeping up to 20-25 miles total.  Don't rush to get to bigger mileage totals.  Make sure your body can handle what you are doing before increasing.