“Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like This”

Like many teachers, when Covid-19 hit, and Remote Learning became a reality, we felt unprepared to deliver instruction, in part because “nobody told us there’d be days like this.” While Social Media had already been a daily part of PEAK Performance in order to promote and share what our kids were doing, the platforms of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram became educational partners and not just places to share pictures and videos, or to garner “likes” and “favorites.”

Similarly, the industry leading Strength & Conditioning software, TeamBuildr, which we had been previously using in our weight room to collect data and organize our workouts, became an essential tool that enabled us to program workouts and push content in a remote environment to our students.

Our kids downloaded the free app from TeamBuildr, used the message feature to communicate with their Teacher as necessary, and clicked on the pre-installed videos for descriptions of unfamiliar exercises

“Remote Learning was certainly a different experience for all of us, but the software and free app from TeamBuildr made it easy for Coach J to program a workout for the equipment that I had at home.” - PEAK Performance Student

Bringing Tech Into The Weight Room

The core of McHenry’s strength and conditioning program is a platform called TeamBuildr. With more than 2,200 students at McHenry split between two campuses, collecting all of the training data in one digital location and allowing them to avoid the paperwork that’s typically involved in writing up individual training programs was a huge win for Beerbower and his team.

A great deal of performance data is collected in TeamBuildr over the course of a semester. The strength staff, PE teachers, and sport coaches can all have access to this data and run reports based on what they are looking for. Beerbower said he recently discovered an interesting correlation between the data collected on TeamBuildr and the district’s academic data, noting a positive relationship between strong academic performance and students who performed well in the strength and conditioning program.

Beerbower’s use of TeamBuildr for McHenry’s strength and conditioning program is helping lead the way for schools when it comes to integrating technology into PE and athletics.