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Conditioning…What’s best for the athlete?

Most strength coaches and sports coaches think the word “Conditioning”, basically means RUN until the athlete gets in shape or promotes faster recovery. But we may be missing the BIGGER picture. Hopefully this post can shed some light on that.

If you really think about it, all team sport athletes are sprinters of some kind. They all have to accelerate, maybe not all in a linear fashion but there are key components that relate. Let me start by quoting speed guru Charlie Francis, “Enough power-related work must be done during the early years, preferably between the ages 13 and 17 to maintain genetically determined levels of fast twitch muscle fibers.” He further says, “Endurance training must be done in limited to light or light to medium volumes to prevent the muscle fiber transition”.

So as strength coaches we must ask ourselves, are we aiding the characteristics of slow twitch transition? Are we compromising what we are trying to accomplish by inputting too much aerobic oriented sessions in our early off-season programs? Are we being lazy instead of really studying what it takes for developing speed and power? Monitor the sport teams training camp you are training and see how many nagging injuries pop because the sports coach wants to RUN them to death, or maybe they are already TOASTED from running to much in your program or on their own time.

Mike Boyle makes a great point in his book Advances in Functional Training, he states:

“Injuries usually occur during training camp because the program ignored three vital components of the conditioning process.

  • Acceleration
  • Deceleration
  • Change of Direction

The ability to tolerate the muscular forces generated by accelerating and decelerating are the real keys to conditioning. Deficiencies in these components are often why athletes feel out of shape.”

So instead of running your FALL SPORTS into the dirt during this time frame, try incorporating the following fundamentals into your early off-season programming.

  • Proper Body Positioning (posture)
  • Balance
  • Stability
  • Mobility
  • Proper Acceleration Mechanics

Remember when developing a conditioning program, its important to go watch practices and games. This will give you an idea of the demands being put on the athlete, plus build great relationships with your sport coaches and athletes you are training.

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Power, Speed, Explosiveness!

The Foundation for Power?…STRENGTH!

Strength is very simple: it’s the amount of force that someone can produce. Newton’s second law of motion teaches us that force is created when you accelerate a mass (mass x acceleration = force). When your body creates enough force it allows you to accelerate your body’s mass fast!

Your body cannot produce force if it has no force to produce. Force production is the foundation of all movement. I will use surfing for example because I appreciate the sport and the skill that it takes. To be able to perform a skilled maneuver such as the cutback, or an air maneuver (see videos below) one must generate incredible force and acceleration to perform these with POWER and EXPLOSIVENESS. If we train our muscles to be strong enough to produce a certain maximum force in a given athletic situation, that means we can accelerate our bodies or an external object similar in mass faster and with more power.

 (Professional Surfer Kelly Slater- Top, Professional Surfer Gabriel Medina- Bottom)


For those of you who are more experienced with weight training, you’re probably thinking “many of those qualities are affected by different training stimuli,” and you’re definitely right. Explosive Strength (power) and Reactive Strength (plyometrics) are used to fine-tune your neuromuscular abilities by focusing the Maximum Strength that you have just built.

Explosive Strength focuses on increasing the Rate of Force Development (RFD), or how fast your muscles are able to produce force. This type of strength is especially important for power lifting, Olympic lifting, shot put, weight throw, baseball pitchers, javelin, and discus, as these sports are expressions of maximal explosiveness. If you can create the same maximal force that you have developed through your Maximal Strength phase faster, this will translate into performance. This is expressed through high-load speed strength (moving heavier loads, like a snatch) and low-load speed strength (moving your body weight, or lighter loads such as in discus).

Reactive Strength qualities are beneficial to athletes who are dynamic in their sport. This applies to most team sports and individual sports, including hockey, rugby, football, baseball, golf, tennis, squash, etc. Reactive Strength is the muscle’s ability to apply force quickly, after completing a Stretch Shortening Cycle (SSC). The SSC is the transition from, yep… you guessed it: being stretched, to being shortened. If you’re a soccer player running one direction and the ball zips by to your left, you want to get there as quickly as possible. Instead of stopping, turning left, and starting to run, we simply crossover and push off with our right foot, propelling our body to the left. We don’t do a full squat and jump to the left. We plant and push off, wasting no time at all. And if your SSC is faster and produces greater force than the defender, I think we can figure out who gets to the ball first.


References
Hales, M (2011) Evaluating Common Weight Training Concepts Associated With Developing Muscular Strength: Truths or Myths? Strength and Conditioning Journal; February; 33 (1); pp. 91- 95.

Hori, N; Newton, R; Nosaka, K; Stone, M (2005). Weightlifting Exercises Enhance Athletic Performance That Requires High-Load Speed Strength. Strength and Conditioning Journal; August; 24 (4); pp. 50 – 55.

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“Understanding Sport Specific Training”


Is your program specific to the sport? How does your exercises mimic what the athlete does in his or her sport? These are questions that often Strength & Conditioning Coaches get asked by parents, athletes, and sports coaches. But a weight room is a facilitator to movement not an area to practice your specific skills, and a Strength & Conditioning coach’s job is to train athleticism not to work on sport specific skills. A strength program can only get so sports specific before it becomes an actual sports practice. As an athlete you need more strength and power in some sports, but the way you build it doesn’t change from sport to sport, it changes from athlete to athlete.

The problem is that what works for most athletes isn’t a good choice for every athlete. That’s when you have to make specific adjustments for individual athletes, or types of athletes. Sometimes this means adding targeted exercises to address imbalances and help prevent injuries. But more often, training specificity is defined by what you shouldn’t do with those special cases — avoiding exercises and movement patterns that create problems or that make existing problems worse (Michael Boyle, 2008).  What Coach Boyle is trying to say here is why as Strength Coaches would we input movement patterns in our program that the athletes constantly mimic in their sport? This will only cause more imbalance within the body.  Here are some examples I have personally encountered:

 

(These pictures are examples of what NOT to do) 

Female Basketball Coach asks: Our basketball players seem to have trouble catching the ball, could we work on grip strength or practice catching heavy medicine balls?

 

A: The coach needs to realize this problem has nothing to do with the weight room, and maybe spending more time at practice with specific ball handling drills. And catching medicine balls your looking at an injury risk and possibly messing them up even more


Professional Surfer asks: I practice a lot of body movements that mimic what I do in the water. I also use an indo balance board to help with my surfing as well. Will this help me become a better surfer?

 

A: What this surfer is doing will only help to a certain extent. What they have to understand is that you can only gain so much practicing in the water, doing body weight exercises, and throwing around some medicine balls. An Indo-Board wont get the job done, LIFT WEIGHTS!


Soccer Coach: Is there anyway to add soccer balls into the workout? This will make the workout more sport specific.

 

A: FALSE, adding soccer balls will not help with what they are trying to accomplish in the weight room. Kicking, jumping for a header, soccer balls are all things that need to stay at practice.

 

As Strength Coaches we focus on developing the trainable attributes (Speed, Power, Strength, Endurance, and Agility), which can only be held together by setting a solid foundation (Flexibility & Core). Without having a strong core and good flexibility an athlete cannot progress.