photo by greg robbins
As a sports performance coach and NYC personal trainer, my goal when training an athlete is to help them excel as much as possible on the field. This means the athlete MUST be well conditioned, stronger, powerful, and fast. It may not sound like much but it’s a lot of skills to increase and needs to be planned accordingly! Below are few reminders when working on your off and in-season training.
Maximal Strength
While our goal as a strength and conditioning coach, sports performance coach, or NYC personal trainer is to help you increase your general strength, we also don’t want to injure our athletes. This is where positioning and technical maxes are key. My philosophy when training athletes in the weight room is speed out of the hole, I don’t like guys struggling too much. Remember that we aren’t building power-lifters and we aren’t just focused on developing absolute strength but also speed-strength (how fast) and strength-endurance (how long) too. While I believe pushing heavier weights does help increase mental toughness, I do NOT believe an extra rep or a few extra pounds is worth sacrificing my athletes health. Keep in mind that as coaches, our #1 goal is to keep our guys healthy to perform on the field, not just in the weight room.
Drills
Photo by student sport
40 yard sprints, resisted sprints, 100 meter repeats, zig-zag runs, bounds etc… are all fine drills to develop speed, power, and running mechanics but does this transfer to on the field/court speed? For some it may, for others it may not. As a coach you’ll need to decide what the athlete needs based off your assessment. Keep in mind that you will need to work on change of direction movements that are relatable to your athlete’s sport too. Don’t ignore deceleration movements, this is CRUCIAL for any change of direction sport.
Another mistake many new trainers and coaches make is to focus too much on getting their athletes prepped for the tests and not so much on-field performance. Some of these test may translate while others may not, this is where a veteran and qualified strength and conditioning coach, NYC personal trainer, or sports performance coach will come into play. Balancing on-field performance while also increasing test performance, hopefully how you develop your athlete will build the two up- while favoring the on-field.
Rest
Photo by oliver kendal
I kind of talked about this throughout the two points above, but managing stress is something that we need to take into account too. This can mean your total work intensity/volume and also your stresses throughout the workout.
I.E. Sprint training- sprint training is very unique because most correlate running with conditioning. But if you’re focused on developing running mechanics, the goal is focused on good positioning. If the performance coach has you run 20 meter repeats with 20sec rest x5 rounds, will your sprint mechanics be sharp? Probably not, this is where programming is key, the athlete will need longer rest periods for movements that are technique focused and then down the road the focus will shift away from that as the athlete has become efficient.
Final Points
These points are just the tip of the iceberg on developing an athlete, BUT they are very important aspects that the athlete, parents, and performance coach must take into consideration. An athlete does not have much time on their hands, especially at the collegiate level, so choose your performance coach or trainer wisely.
Stay strong,
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