There are certain God-given abilities that elite athletes possess that simply cannot be coached. Natural talent is likely the primary factor that separates great athletes from good athletes. Therefore, It is important for the non-elite athletes to focus on the physical and mental qualities that they can improve to continually develop their abilities. An important …
All too often we see athletes train hard in the weight room all off-season and pre-season in effort to get bigger, stronger and faster for the upcoming season. Then, training camp rolls around and the weight room becomes a distant memory. Much of the hard-earned gains made slowly start to dissipate, and as a result, …
In order to develop appropriate strength and conditioning programs for our athletes, it’s important for coaches to understand how certain exercises carry over to sporting movements. We must use the exercises that have the greatest dynamic correspondence to field play in order to support performance outcomes. For example, it’s quite clear that squats and power …
As coaches, one of our primary objectives in the training facility is to select and utilize exercises that have the greatest transfer or carry-over to sporting actions. Dynamic correspondence is a term used in Siff and Verkhoshansky’s classic text, “Supertraining”. This term captures the essence of the SAID principle where training must be specific enough …
Traditional resistance training protocols are often criticized for not being specific enough to sporting movements. This has lead to the growing popularity in “functional” training that some believe provides superior transfer to sport skills. More recently, incorporating Strongman movements and implements into training has anecdotally been reported to improve physical performance in athletes of various …
Many high school, amateur and even some professional organizations do not or cannot enforce adherence to an off-season training program. As coaches, we know that what the athletes do during this down time can make or break the upcoming season. Having out-of-shape athletes report to pre-season training can impact how training camp practices are structured …
The two primary reasons why we want our athletes to take part in strength and conditioning training is to; Limit injury potential Increase performance A lesser known or discussed benefit of strength and conditioning training may be its positive impact on recovery following competition. When comparing athletes with a higher level of strength and …
When testing the physical qualities of athletes to determine on-field playing potential, it’s important (and logical) that the assessments correspond to match play and sporting movements associated with the chosen sport. For example, it would likely be unnecessary to test aerobic capacity in American footballers given the highly anaerobic nature of the sport. Determining which …