Pre-Measures / Class Maxes

With school starting up soon I was wondering what everyone did for pre-measures in class. We use our maxes to ability group the students. In other words, we have three groups- clean, bench and squat. For the clean group we do hang / power cleans, hang / power snatch, clean pull, high pull, etc. For the bench group we bench, towel bench, close-grip, incline, bent-row and standing press. For squat we... well squat! (and deadlift, r.d.l.) After starting off very, very slow (some of the dirtiest looks I get are from strong kids that lift the bar for a week) we max on bench, even though we teach everything else. A week later (about mid third week) we bench again and clean. Then, about four weeks later we do all three. So, at first we only have one group, but a week later two and after weeks four all three. Then, each time they max again they have a new group(s). Take note, our weight room has no bells and whistles- 18 racks and 6 platforms. Every spot is numbered and they are assigned three numbers. We train three days a week total body. Anyway, that's another topic. Just wondering if everyone maxes on the big three and if so, when.

I do not let the beginners, anyone who has not ever been in weight training or anyone who has not been in a wt class in over a year, max until mid term. We test 40, vertical and pro shuttle at the beginning of the semester, at 9 weeks and at the end of the semester. I will let them perform a 1 RM on the bench, pc, and squat at 9 weeks and at the end of the term. I think other good tests for beginners would be broad jumps, pull-ups and/ or chin ups and push ups. I like what you are doing Zach, I need to read that again and I might shoot you an e-mail with some questions.

I'm definately going to add vertical this year; maybe 40 and pro agility. Don't get me wrong on maxing out- we usually have two groups of four with guys that don't bench 100 lbs.! We use maxing as a tool for grouping.