Ask anyone who plays in sports like AFL football and basketball how tough it can be to train for speed and power, yet at the same time try to improve your fitness endurance capacity. Many sports demand that you have high levels of strength and power and be able to sustain these repeated bursts in games that last between 2-3 hours. Physiologically the two processes of building strength, power, and speed versus endurance are completely opposed to each other and training both methods at the same time cancels out their effectiveness. This is the equivalent of trying to be a 100m sprinter and a marathon runner at the same time! All good strength coaches and elite athletes are aware of this principle and know that to improve performance these two opposing methods are best trained on their own which is known as periodization. Unfortunately, sporting codes that run for several months of the year do not allow for this perfect recipe to be adopted. Compromises must be made, and usually, it is strength, power, and speed sacrificed for fitness and endurance. But is there a way you can minimize the losses of strength and power by adopting smarter implementation of your fitness training? This is the question we explore in this article and provide you with some simple ideas you can implement into your training that could be a real game changer.
8 Key Abilities You Must Use In Your Training If You Play Sports
One of the misconceptions in the sports world is that to become great, all you need to do is devote endless hours of playing your chosen sport. While it is true you need to put in lots of practice and dedication to learning the skills needed to excel at your sport, just playing the sport and not working on the finer principles of movement will not take you to your full potential. All of the greatest athletes from every sport, even golf (Tiger Woods) attribute their conditioning as a key part of their success. If you just want an average level of performance, and be good at completing a few limited skills, then just playing your sport will achieve that. However, if you want to be the best you could possibly be as an athlete and become great, then you need to design and implement a “specific to you” conditioning program. This requires more than training strength and aerobic fitness and in some cases you may not need to be all that strong! In this article, I will explain the 8 key abilities you need to consider and help you understand what sports conditioning really means.
Power Training – Why It Is So Important & What Are The Best Exercises?
Power training is a very unique training method that is often misunderstood, neglected and even abused in many strength programs. In simple terms power is the ability to exert maximum muscular contraction instantly in an explosive burst of movement. Most sporting and athletic activities require a fair degree of explosive power, whether it is needed to move explosively to hit a golf ball or tennis ball, jump, sprint, break away from an opponent, react to an opponents offensive tactic or handle an open-field hit, the need to produce power is an essential component. However, it is not limited to sports with many daily activities also requiring this ability. We need power and speed to complete simple tasks like getting out of a chair, walking up stairs, starting a lawnmower or crossing a road quickly. When you understand that we lose this ability very quickly if nothing is done to prevent it, you begin to see just how important power training is to ALL of us. In this article, I will explain how to not only preserve it, but improve your power no matter what age you are.