Day 52: (4 hours)
Continuing with the organization of the Moodle page, after completing the first portion of the course, the next focus is going to be exactly what we covered in this semester. This is where some of my organization was different compared to what the course was laid out already. For this portion, I am going to organize chapters 17 & 18. Each of these deal with program design. I was to designate two weeks to these chapters where I will implement smaller portioned assignments in order for the students to go more in depth with the information and have more hands-on experiences and different ways of comprehending the material. Another aspect that I want to bring to this portion of the course is involving other strength coaches. I would enjoy inviting Coach Maddy back for more of her input on things and for students to be able to hear information and details from other strength coaches with different perspectives. During this section is where we will begin one of the bigger projects that I will plan out and that is a full program design. Once again, we did this during the last semester, but I want to implement more detail to the project. Some of these details will come from the smaller assignments that I want to incorporate. Carrying on with program design, I will plan to use week part of week 10 to introduce chapters 19 & 20 and use week 11 to fully cover these chapters. These chapters are part of program design, but chapters 19 & 20 deal with speed and agility training as well as Aerobic Endurance Training. This will help us wrap up some program design information leading to the next major chapter that we would cover in chapter 20, Periodization. This is another section that where I implemented some of my own things to the course based off where it current was. Beyond this, I want to define this section by providing more material to the students such as different programs from different strength coaches. This will give them an assortment of different ideas to be able to research and understand because the strength and conditioning world is not cookie cutter, and many coaches have different philosophies and goals for their teams. Wrapping up the final weeks of organization for the Moodle page, I want to use week 12 as a test week. We will cover the material of chapters 17 – 19. After testing and reviewing the answers, I will then plan to cover chapter 22 which is rehabilitation and reconditioning. This is a very important chapter to understand for real life situations as a strength coach. In order to make this chapter stand out, I am going to create and assignment that gives them a scenario within their program design of an injured player and to have them create a recovery and reconditioning program for that situation. This assignment will be another small assignment that will be added to their full program design at the end of the semester. Once this chapter and assignment information is covered and complete, I will utilize week 13 to cover the last two chapters of the book, 23 & 24 discussing facility design and layout. For me, I will not change much to this portion of the class, and I will share the same or moderately different assignment to the class. This was a fun and interesting assignment as it allowed for the students to challenge themselves and their imagination as to how they would design their own facility. Week 14 will be to recap and finalize any missing information with their full program design. I want to offer this time to the students to ask questions and to utilize the time to complete this major project. Yes, I want it to challenge them but in the world of strength and conditioning, I want them to connect and discuss ideas as well. This is my goal for the following week and redesigning Moodle for the course.
0 Comments
Day 51: (8 hours)
For Wednesday of next week, my plan is to finalize the grades and any other information necessary for the course whether it be for the students and or myself. Another major thing that I am going to get started on for this day is redesigning the Moodle page. I anticipate having help from Dr. Fantini and or Dr. McCabe when it comes to finalizing the grades for the students. I am sure that this will take a little time to get used to and familiar with, but I will figure it out. On the major end, as I anticipate continuing to move forward with the course, I want to continue to redesign the Moodle page to where it fits my comfort level and understanding as we move through this portion of the textbook. As I worked through Moodle during the semester, some of the information and assignments seemed to be out of order for my standards and understanding. Yes, each week I worked through them and created some of my own assignments and organized each week by itself, but there are more things that I want to do to be able to make this process happen more smoothly and efficient for next time around. Some of the major things that I am going to work on while recreating the Moodle page is to continue to provide more information for the students. Understanding that they are supposed to be reading through their textbooks and taking information in on their own, I wanted there to be more resources available. Another thing that I am going to focus on during this process is to organize the weeks accordingly to the chapters in the book. For me, this was a difficult task to fully develop each week although I did get the necessary information available to the students that I discussed throughout the semester, it can be more organized. I also want to share more documents with the students and notes and information that I gathered from this year to be able to help this entire process. For the reorganization of this Moodle page, I anticipate doing this over the course of a couple days but based off the information that I have and want to create and implement, this will certainly take some time. For the first portion, I want to focus on weeks 1 – 6. For weeks 1-2 I want to cover the first two chapters of this portion of the book. These chapters include test selection as well as lab tests such as height weight and BMI. These are going to be quality chapters to focus on first because early in the course, we are going to create a selected athlete profile like we did this year. There was most of the information regarding these chapters early in the course, but I want to share all of this basic information sooner as this will allow for us to get moving on the athlete profile project. The next chapters I want to correlate to the weeks are chapters 14 & 15. These are the following chapters in the textbook, and I want to correlate them to weeks 3-5. This would give me two weeks to complete chapter 16 which is exercise technique for alternative modes and be able to admit a test during week 7, the week before spring break over this material. The course was set up fairly similar to this already, but I want to define it more as I feel it would fit how I would go about the course and teaching to the textbook. Day 50: (5 hours)
For next week Tuesday, I am planning a big day to complete all of the assignments that need to be graded and finalizing participation points as well. Due to the busy schedule, we have had as well as the last two projects that we have had in the course, there is a great amount of work that needs to be graded on my end. The two projects are the facility design that the students performed and submitted as well as the major program design project that we had worked on for the last 2-3 weeks of the course. The facility design and layout assignment will take me some time to grade. Each group worked differently and had laid out and designed their own facility based off what they saw efficient and that would work. I need to make sure that these ideas not only make sense but pertain to what we talked about regarding that chapter. As for the program design, this will take some time for me. There is a lot of information that the students were assigned to share in this project. It is to be a very detailed project and I want to work through each of them to make sure that they are taking the right general steps of programming and also to be able to comment on some of their creation within the program design. Lastly, I have been recording participation points. This is something that all students have been a part of but I want to make sure that they are distributed appropriately. Day 49: (3 hours)
Next week is a major week for me. There is going to be a ton of information that I am going to have to learn and handle very quickly. By starting off the week, it is my goal to meet with Dr. McCabe to go over how the class went. Other details to focus on for the meeting for me is completing final grades and discussing what my next move is for next year. For this meeting next week, I will take time to prepare for exactly what I just discussed. I am going to take time to write down what my goals are for this course next year and whether or not I want to take it on again. This also comes with conversation with my coaching staff and whether or not these things will work out again, which I am sure they will. Other things that I am going to take time to prepare for this meeting is to continue to familiarize myself with moodle and the Tiffin University home page. I have constantly been working with Moodle but there are still some certain things that I need to learn and understand better moving forward as a potential professor. Another bullet point that I am going to focus on for this meeting is finalizing some of the grades or what to expect for my final total point. There are still some things that I need to get set straight in order to be able to submit in the end. Day 48: (3 hours)
Today was the final class that we were having. It was a great, relaxing time to be able to enjoy with the students in attendance. Though I did not have a lot planned for the class, we were able to finish up a lot of tasks and were able to discuss some more information about the strength and conditioning world in general. In class today, we took time to cross the T’s and dot the I’s for our full season programming that the students were working on in their groups. I opened it up for full discussion and for the opportunity to complete the assignment in class. Nearly every group was able to fully complete the assignment and get it turned in. I took the time to answer any last-minute questions that the students may have had. There was much more conversation to be had outside of the project that related to the strength and conditioning world. I wanted them to continue to challenge themselves to branch out and make connections. I hope that I can serve as a resource for them as they move forward with their futures and hopefully in the coaching world. I also offered some information regarding the CSCS test as many of these students are getting ready to take the difficult test. One of the big things that I shared is that yes, it is difficult but if you trust your reading and understanding of the course, you can think critically through each question and hopefully that will help them out. Day 47: (2.5 hours)
Today was a very important day for me. I was able to communicate with my mentor, Dr. Ana Paula Fantini about some important information moving forward. We had a decent conversation about some important information, and it started with wrapping up my mentorship time. I was filling her in and sharing details about some information for her to fill out about my evaluation as well as what my position looked like moving forward. She shared with me to communicate with Dr. McCabe about whether or not to take the position for next year again which I will be setting up a meeting with him next week. The conversation also included a student in the class who had missed a number of classes. Being new to this position, I wanted to make sure that I was making the right decisions and the right moves on the situation. Dr. Fantini walked me through how to go about it in the right way because I did not want to get myself into a tough situation. The student will earn what they got. After this conversation, I started to do some planning ahead. I created a check list of things to do regarding the class as well as things I need to complete for the class moving forward. Some of these things included a meeting with Dr. MacCabe and also when to have final grades in. This is a major task for me to handle in the following week and it will certainly take some time for me to figure out and handle. Day 46: (4 hours)
Today was another great day to take advantage of the weather. Unfortunately, the weather was brutal outside today which limited our practice and was a lighter day but on the bright side, it allowed for me to prepare for the final week as well as continue to organize some things in order to be ready for some change. Today I spent some quality time reviewing a lot of the recent material that we were working on. The material that I wanted to focus on was more of the program design information. As I mentioned previously, there are so many avenues that you can go with program design. I looked back through the textbook to take time to read more in depth on some key notes and ideas that I had highlighted. I was reading through the text to be able to provide some more in depth real life scenarios for the students as they continued to work in their groups to create a full program for their athlete profile and that sport. Some of the more important information that I focused on was in season training. Though the textbook did not cover all the information regarding in season training it had some. Most of the information that I explored on was through social media and another book that I looked into from a strength coach by the name of Zach Duchant. Duchant is the strength and conditioning coach at TCU for the baseball team. Reading through his book, I wanted to find more ideas to share with the students in order to provide them with more details as to how to go about their in-season programming. Again, there is no exact right or exact wrong in this industry, but it was my goal today to be able to provide them with more information for the next class. Day 45: (3 hours)
Class was great today. As I planned out, we were able to zoom in with Ball State University’s strength and conditioning coach with the connection of Coach Maddy, cover the information pertaining to chapter 23 and complete the facility layout and design assignment that was scheduled to complete in class. At the beginning of class, we were fortunate enough to be able to zoom call with one of Ball State University’s strength and conditioning coaches. This coach was Coach Maddy’s former strength coach when she played softball at Ball State. Within the zoom, their coach took us around their weight room and explained to the class what their set up. She covered the general layout of the facility and why certain equipment was where. Beyond that, she shared some certain protocols and safety standards that were present in the weight room. This is something that is very important because although you need efficiency in the weight room, you also have safety protocols to follow as well. We were very fortunate to have this experience with the zoom call and to be able to see another facility and hear some of the details that go into facility design elsewhere beyond out weight room here at Tiffin University that these students are familiar with. After the zoom call, we then dove into the information from chapter 23. This was a fairly quick slide show presentation. The emphasis on the slide show was more so about the efficiency and layout of the room and more importantly what the safety protocols are and the standards that must be followed in order to create and design a weight room facility. After the presentation the students were given a document through moodle to look over and to recreate how they would design that workout facility. They also had the ability to change or implement certain things within that design as well. Coach Maddy and myself walked around the class and shared ideas and thoughts with the groups regarding facility design. Day 44: (3 hours)
Today, I had spoken with Coach Maddy, our head strength and conditioning coach here at Tiffin University. I had been in conversations with her about what we have doing throughout this course. Today, I mentioned that we are covering facility design and layout this Wednesday. She made the comment about how she really enjoyed this kind of information so I extended the offer to her to come help teach class with me this Wednesday and to share her insight and any additional information or ideas that she may have. After conversing with Coach Maddy, I then finished up some planning tonight as far as how I was going to present the information and ways to allow coach Maddy to share her insight. One great thing is that Maddy had texted me and said that we may be able to zoom call one of her former coaches from Ball State University and be able to see their facility design and layout and be able to hear some insight from one of their strength and conditioning coaches. This would be a great opportunity for all of us and something very exciting. My goal is to introduce coach Maddy to the class although most of the students know her from being an athlete. Then we are going to cover the key points of chapter 23 so that we can get into the assignment. Although it is still an important chapter, chapter 23 is one of the lesser important ones that pertains to the CSCS test at the end of the year. That is why I wanted to implement something new and different with the assignment and inviting Coach Maddy to join us. Day 43: (4 hours)
Another series affected by weather provided the opportunity for me to look ahead and finalize nearly all the information that we had to cover in the remainder of the course. I took time throughout the day today to briefly reflect on some of the material and ideas that was shared during class on Wednesday. There was not a whole lot of new that I came up with I was just more so solidifying what we covered and making sure nothing was missed. After doing that, I began to look ahead to the following week as well as our last class together in 2 weeks. For the next class, I had planned to continue to discuss the groups’ program design. I want to provide the opportunity for them to share some thoughts and ideas as well as to be able to communicate with me, other classmates and more importantly, other strength coaches. Some of the other strength coaches that I know these students have been in contact with are Coach Maddy and Coach Dave. Each of these coaches serve as strength and conditioning coaches here at Tiffin and I am extremely happy that I can see these students asking them questions as well. This is what this profession is made of sharing thoughts and ideas with other coaches and seeing and interesting things that may lead to great ideas for them personally as they move forward in their careers. The next process to my day was getting the lesson plan together for the next class. After taking some time to discuss more in-depth with their program design, we were going to shift gears and talk about the next chapter in the book, chapter 23, Facility Design, Layout and Organization. Along with this chapter, there is an assignment where the students will be presented a workout facility that is unorganized. It is their goal to recreate and organize the facility to work efficiently and effectively based off the information that we cover in chapter 23. |