Sports performance training is focused on developing the needs of an athlete. To improve your sports performance on the field, on the court, or in the water, you’ll need to build up your conditioning, power, strength, speed, sport skill, and mental fortitude, amongst others.
Let’s jump into a few aspects of sports performance training:
Hitting the Weight Room
One of THE most common skills a personal trainer or performance coach focuses on is to get the athlete stronger. While I’m all about that, in my opinion strength is generally an overrated attribute for off-season training. The balance of power, flexibility, skill set, strength, and conditioning is the key priority for an athlete. From there the focus will be distributed based on the needs of an athlete. Meaning, if the athlete is already relatively strong but has horrendous running mechanics, the focus and time should be geared toward those skill sets, while still trying to maintain the strength we just built.
This is a great example of strength vs. skill set:
Understanding the needs of the athlete is critical for the overall development and success of any athlete.
Power and Speed
Whether you’re a swimmer, golfer, or sprinter every athlete needs power and speed. How we develop this will also be determined based on the athlete’s needs. In most cases, I believe every sport athlete needs to have some sort of plyometrics and sprint drills within their training.
Drills such as:
Plyometrics:
- Med ball chest passes.
- Bounds.
- Vertical Jumps
Sprint Drills:
- Prowler pushes.
- Resisted band sprints.
- Lateral change of directions.
Flexibility and Mobility
One of the least talked about amongst the fitness world is working on your flexibility and mobility. Not sure if it’s because it seems to be a mundane exercise or because it’s not “tough enough”??? Who knows… the truth is EVERY athlete needs to focus on their flexibility/mobility via regeneration days.
Increasing your flexibility and mobility can help you sustain a tough season and potentially become more powerful and stronger. I know it sounds weird but it’s true. Take for example sprinting, the the athletes hip flexors are super tight that may limit their back side extension and leg height during the recovery, this will then limit the height they can raise the leg up to push down and back. The higher your leg can go up, the harder you can drive down and the stronger you propel yourself forward = faster!
Another example is golf, the better your mobility the greater degree of torque you can develop = bad ass drive!
Bottom line, respect flexibility meathead!
Here a few other band stretches you can easily implement into your warm up or during recovery days: CLICK HERE
Sport Skill
In my experience working with athletes of many ranges from NFL players to world U15 soccer athletes, there doesn’t tend to be a middle ground with this focus. A lot of athletes and parents seem to think that you should specialize within your sport all year long or stay completely away from it and focus only on weight training and sprint work.
I can somewhat see their logic for both sides. My suggestions are varied- if you’re a youth athlete (8-15) you should be exposed to many different sports and challenge your body in as many ways as you can. By doing so you’re developing yourself to be a better overall athlete that can adapt to various challenging movements. After a period of time you will need to specialize but that still doesn’t mean you should ONLY focus on your particular sport all year long. Even in the NFL, our guys played basketball or various sports to not only clear their heads away from football but to challenge their bodies in a different manner. In short, it’s a balance of off field work (weight room and sprint training), specific skill work, and non-specific work- (other sports or games).
*Keep in mind that each athlete has different needs, this will determine how the off-season training will be focused. I.e. baseball players off-season may look like this-ping pong for hand eye coordination and development, weight room, sprint, swimming- to unload joints, yoga – for mobility, etc… as it gets closer to the season the baseball player will do more specific work.
Mental Strength
Developing mental strength and focus is another attribute most people don’t really take into consideration. The mental aspect of an athlete can help them push themselves to the next level or quit. This is why it’s so important to really work on this during the off-season and even the in-season. Most good coaches give out required reading throughout the year to keep their athletes on point and to help them learn about developing a specific attitude to win. I particularly like to give out Coach K’s books “Leading with the Heart”, this and others reinforce my constant message of working together as a team and never quitting despite how difficult the challenge maybe. This is specifically important for the incoming freshman’s, as they are thrown into a very busy academic, practice, and training schedule, to add on top of this the adjustments of a new environment without their formal supportive structure (family and friends).
Even if you’r not a freshman it’s very important. Every summer, I talk to my collegiate athletes to explain the importance of balance again. These summer interns have to balance out the life of working like a New Yorker, training and eating like a division 1 athlete, learn to navigate the streets of NYC, and (let’s be honest here) the night life scene. Every year there this talk and of course there will be ups and downs but I do my best to mentally prepare them for the pressures of working in Manhattan. Waking up at 5am to goto work, training at 8pm at night x3 a week, sport practice x2-3 a week, sight seeing, etc… it can easily become very overwhelming for anyone, especially a collegiate student athlete!
Bottom line, don’t take this for granted. As a coach and personal trainer, it’s important to have an open line of communication and for the client or athlete to understand what is expected out of them.
That’s it for today 🙂
Stay strong and train smart!
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