For most of the 2024 school year, MC senior Zander Gorman has had a brutal schedule. Most days, he wakes up at 3:30 a.m, a time in which most students are still asleep, or maybe even awake from the night before discovering the perfect Instagram reel.

He then gets ready, drives to school, gets some caffeine in him, and begins one of the greatest struggles he will face in his four years of high school: sweating through his shirt on a workout bench at the crack of dawn. 

According to him, though, this challenge is integral to not only his personal health and success but also the health and success of the varsity football team.

Year-round lifts do not just build the body, but they build the team as well. They keep athletes in check, keeping them consistent with their health and athleticism but, most notably, their mentality.

“Waking up at 3:30 in the morning builds a lot of grit, determination, and work ethic,” said Gorman. “Those are really important aspects of playing on a winning team. Big part of our success.” 

Gorman isn’t the only one working hard this early, and the football program isn’t the only sport. Basketball players also face the same challenges and strive to get the same benefit of building team chemistry through the shared struggle of year round lifts.

“When you’re sore, it’s really a mental thing,” said senior Grant Best, who recently committed to play collegiate basketball for the United States Air Force Academy. “But it’s all a mental thing. It’s all in your head. Pushing through that makes you better and makes the team better.” 

Those who have played on a team before know coaches say that kind of thing all the time. But it’s true. The value brought by being forced to persevere and do something that is difficult is unmatched.

“At the end of the day man, we’re trying to breed great, hardworking champions,” said MC’s strength coach, Joe Kubik. “I like to think that all that dedication, all that commitment starts in those early morning workouts.”

 These year-round workouts are meant to get rid of laziness and replace it with the kind of mentality that wins championships. 

Beyond that, there are so many other factors that play into creating a good athlete in the weightroom. The obvious one is strength and athleticism. 

“My main focus is to try to create the most explosive athlete that we can,” said Coach Kubik. “I just want to produce athletic and explosive young men.” 

This creation of an athlete is not built in a few months and then kept throughout the year. This is where the consistency comes into play, the value of these workouts being a year-round endeavor. 

“Science tells us that if we are not continuing with a great volume, after about a week and a half, we start to decrease,” says Coach Kubik. “My philosophy here at MC is that a lot of schools do these offseason workouts, and they like to use the word maintain. I don’t believe in that. In season, I want our guys to continue to improve, I want our guts to continue to build strength and power.” 

The bottom line is that working out all year makes one stronger. The key to being strong and athletic is being pushed all year long, going to one’s limits and doing the right thing for their body without letting it all go to waste for months at a time.

Part of health is athleticism, but the overlooked part is avoiding injuries. Everyone has seen it, a great team with great talent having their year ruined by the top players going down with injuries. Season ruined, everyone is disappointed, scholarships rescinded, the same old song. Not the fun kind either. So do year round workouts help with this? 

“One-hundred percent they do,” Gorman argues. “Coach Joe [Kubik] not only does strength workouts like bench press and squatting and all these other workouts, but he does specific workouts to help us strengthen our tendons. In previous years we’ve had so many shoulder injuries, and we do these little shoulder stability workouts after practice, just for 10 minutes, and it makes the difference between a torn labrum and being healthy.” 

This kind of stability training is part of Coach Kubik’s “prehab” program. Instead of doing rehab for injuries, guys that do year round workouts do prehab to prevent them. That is how a healthy team is kept.

Year round workouts are a staple of most winning teams. A winning team has a winning mentality, a mentality that teenage boys will only get if they are forced to roust themselves at ungodly hours to push themselves to their physical limits together. Winning teams have strong, athletic players. A body built for back-to-back state championship titles is built with consistent, frequent training of power and mobility. A winning team has its best players on the field, players that will stay on the field if their body is trained specifically to withstand the wear and tear of a season. 

A winning team is gritty. A winning team doesn’t sleep. A winning team works year round. 

“The team chemistry starts in the weight room,” said Best. “Then that’s how it starts on the court.”