5 Tech Essentials for the Weight Room

As technology moves forward and advances, it’s important to utilize tools to help improve our teaching/coaching and make our lives more efficient. This is especially important in terms of data collection, which gives us as coaches concrete evidence of the benefits from the work that we do. Here are 5 game changers in my opinion: (Additionally, I’ve included an option for tight-budgeted programs.)

1. Monitors or televisions to display

Having an area to display workouts, videos, and announcements has been huge for me. This is where we congregate at the beginning of classes and workouts. Before having TVs in the weight room, I spent countless hours writing workouts DAILY on the whiteboard (This will date myself, but also the chalkboard!) Having the ability to have workouts on the screen allows me to spend more time programming and analyzing workouts. The opportunity to show videos for more complicated lifts (i.e. - Olympic lifts) has also been quite helpful, especially when we keep it on a loop. Lastly, announcements and achievements are a great display option because students just love it when they have material to share on their social media.

Tight budget option: Whiteboards - Self-explanatory.

2. Tablets/iPads

Fortunately, we have 15 iPads in our weight room, 1 for every rack. The number one reason I LOVE our iPads so much… they remove the need for phones in the weight room. In my opinion, phones are an absolute killer for weight room culture. I like to use the analogy: that’s like putting a steak right in front of a lion's cage where they can reach it at any time. In our setting, we have iPads available for our student-athletes to access their workouts, in addition to having the workout displayed on the TVs.

Tight budget option: Notebooks - You can always go old school with this one and have students write out their workout AND track the sets and reps here. The most important thing is to KEEP those phones outside the weight room.

3. Jumpmats

Recording data, and more specifically improvements from training, is an essential piece of your program. This adds further validation to how you are increasing athletic performance, as well as adding insight into the effectiveness of your training programs. What better than to measure lower body power? Jumpmats provide a quick, repeatable, and validated measure of vertical power. I can easily test 40-60 kids in a given class period. 

I have been using Plyomat, which was created by a former high school strength coach, Rich Burnett. The only downside of the Plyomat, and it happens almost every time, is that the class will tend to shut down and watch the athletes perform. Especially the big jumpers! I used to use a Vertec Vertical Jump Trainer. I found that it took too long to conduct (testing 40 kids would take multiple class periods) and there was a lot of variation from tester to tester. A jump mat solves both of those problems.

Tight budget option - Worst-case scenario, and I’ve done this before: use painter’s tape, grab a meter stick, and mark off your heights. Have your students stand and reach (take that measurement) then have your students perform a vertical jump.

4. Timing Systems

Another measurement that I’ve recently been using is timed 40-yard dashes. Speed kills, and kids are always competing to see who’s the fastest. I’ve been using SimpliFaster to conduct this test. I love its ease of setup and the ability for anyone to conduct the times in the same exact way. I have played around with other systems and lasers and I feel that there are too many inconsistencies.

Tight budget option - Stopwatch or phone. I understand that timing systems can be pricey, so if need be a good old stopwatch can get the job done. If it’s the same coach or teacher timing, then you’ll have way more consistency there.

5. Training Software

I would be remiss if I didn’t include this last bit of tech which has made a huge difference in our weight room and that’s having software to write programs, record data, and display both. I’m biased toward TeamBuildr. However, they have proven to be the best software that I have used. From the bullet points above, I used to write my programs on a whiteboard but once they were erased they would be gone forever. With TeamBuildr, I’m able to revisit programming from several years back if need be. I typically keep my programming consistent for 3-4 weeks. This allows me to track if progress is being made AND develop some consistency for our athletes.

Tight budget option - Excel or Google Sheets will certainly get the job done and I know several strength coaches who still abide by this.

All of the above have made our great room a place to train. They have saved me and my staff countless hours and we have been able to focus our attention on areas of need. I will eventually look into velocity-based tracking technology, we just aren’t there as a program yet.