Weight Training Story

THE OLD MILL SENIOR HIGH WEIGHT TRAINING STORY Edtitor's Note: Ron Evans is an Upper Limit Coach and organizer. After retiring from football in1983, Coach Evans channeled his energies into the recruitment and development of girls for the Old Mill High School weight program and track teams. In addition, over 1000 students participate in weight training at the high school which must be a national record for participation. Old Mill High School is located in Millersville, Maryland and the following is their story as told by Ron Evans.

Old Mill Senior High Weight Training Story Old Mill opened its doors in the fall of 1975 with no seniors, no traditions, and nobody wanting to be there.

Coming from 11 different schools, the student body was happy in the schools from which they came. The situation was pulled together, in my opinion, by the emphasis on the Countys all-sports trophy, an outstanding staff under the Coach Ron Evans with Polly Thompson on left and Donna direction of James Dillon (a nationally renowed AD.), and Zubalik. a strong weight program. Incidentally, Old Mill has won the all sports trophy 7 or 11 years. The new school had huge gym space, a great gymnastic room, a large wrestling room, a small wieight room with two universal gyms and a couple of bars.

After abouta year of negotiations I was able to convince Mike and Jack Bliss, our successful wrestling and gymnastic coaches, that they could co-exist in the large gymnastics room. We then removed the wall between the weight room and former wrestling room, and we uncovered a 3800 square foot room. In the next few years we equipped this room with 20 olympic bars, a plethora of equipment, and a free weight emphasis based primarily of BFS influence. The program exploded and became a very popular elective physical education course that was so outstanding that Old Mill was soon to be named Maryland State Demonstration School, with its weight program listed as the strong point.

This essentially means that any physical educator in the state can visit our school to see what the selection committee calls a model program.

Unfortunately, the success had a bittersweet effect, as the county engineers decided our weight room floor was not suited to the effects of dead lifting, and moved our room up the hall to the tune of a loss of 1,000 square feet. At the same time, the number ofstudents electing weight training has grown to: Girls Power Club: 9 out of 14 are track athletes. Over 1000 kids are in the total program!!

Number of Students Electing Weight Training at Combined total 1041 Several factors along the way proved to be significant in the program's outstanding growth: A. The Sheet ... This amounted to a combined ranking of everyone in our program from top to bottom as soon as maximums were over. Students would stare at the sheet and do some serious goal setting ... Students on top wanted to stay there, the ones on the bottom wanted to move up.

B. The Shirts... The Power Club was originated with students in the art departmet drawing logos for our shirts (we went through quite a few). As our numbers grew, it became an unwieldly task to buy the shirts, get them printed and out to the kids. We soon sent the art work to Champion and went commercial. We now give $1200 worth of power club and liftathon shirts away each year, that the students can wear with pride in class and the community. Boys earn a power club shirt by accumulating 1200 lbs. in the four lifts or by being in the top 15 by body %. Girls earn a shirt by being in the top 15 by body % only.

C. The grading program . .. The grading program has a double dividend in that it gives us objective pre-set standards that could be used for grades. Kevin Bowen, a student athlete, worked with me over a two-year period developing a computer program that would calculate totals, figure body % based on the Schwartz coefÏcant chart, lookat the four standard charts and figure points for grades ina matter of seconds. The results of this effort was the neat print-out that could be ranked instantly by any of the headings, e.g., bench, total, points, body ~%, dead, clean, squat, or alphabetically to coincide with the grade book.

This program was so sophisticated that I sold about 6 and gave the money to Kevin to say thanks for the many hours spent programming. The double dividend came when the other instructors wanted to use the disk. They could not grade something they were not doing, so the disk in effect had all nine instructors following the same program. This unification produced great numbers of students who became successful, which in turn has us now wondering where we will put the multitude.

D. The major emphasis on girls ... About four years ago retired from football after 18 years. For9 years I worked as the defensive coordinator for Jerry Mears at Arundel ina program that won 70% of their games and moved to Old Millin 1975 to assume the head football job. For nine years, Continued on Page 66 Power Clean of 155 pounds. playing basically muscle football, Old Mill won 65% of its games. Though rewarding, the two sports covering 3 seasons proved to be a physical and mental drain, which prompted me to retire from football in 1983. At this time, I placed a lot of renewed energy on the recruitment and development of girls for our weight program and track teams.

This has proven important for several reasons: 1. They deserve it. . . If muscle is good for men it must be for women. Our power club is by body %, consequently only the lean well-muscled will get the shirts. Kind of a marketing of an image, so to speak. I have made about five presentations, to other counties, and two conventions at Ocean City for Physical Educators, and my slide shows have been spectacularly popular. This year I took four students and left a strong impression. Our best lifters had tostay home because of homecoming, soccer, and a county cross country meet.

Stephanie Hinton, State Champion 100 Meter Hurdles. Dead ... We were not getting a lot of lifted 300 lbs. at a body weight of only 117 pounds. girls in team sports ... Dance and gymnastics were the only other places where girls were signing up. The 258 girls represent 2 1/2 teachers who might have been reassigned to other schools had they not registered for weight training.

You only have to pass through our room and watch a 100 Ibs. girl dead lift 300 pounds and experience the resultant pandemonium, to know that we are on to something.

3. Our program has been visited and scrutinized many times and the number using itis really unknown. However, Meade High School sent Chuck Markievicz to visit for the day and he cloned our program. They are now seeing the same excitement at registration. Asa footnote, since we use the same computer program, Chuck sent me his data disk and we had a little postal competition to spark interest. CYCLES We use 12 and 14 week cycles (enclosed) on the dead lift, maintaining interest in sustained training. We check body fat percentages three times a year in the most practical manner for a high school program, namely the skinfold calipers.

We use the fat-o-meter tables and sites, with 5 sites per age group. This had proven more reliable than about 5 other systems that used fewer sites and/or expensive equipment. Since the calculations are lengthy and unwieldy we developed a computer program to assist in this regard. (one class results are included in In conjunction with the body fat checks, lectures are given 4 times a year representing the 4 marking periods.

2. Muscle Identification 3. Goals and Visualization 4. Terminology of Weight Training Students are tested on this information, with those getting a B or better allowed a bonus point toward a better grade. Test questions are stored on a computer data base program that swing any combination back on a moments notice.

Old Mill student working on BFS Glute Ham Machine.

MORE ON OLD MILL'S PROGRAM IN NEXT ISSUE!

From BFS Magazine — March/April 1988. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).