“What should your training do for you?”
This question can be answered with many different responses. If you are trying to lose weight, then it should help you do so. If it is trying get you to gain size, then it should do so. It is a question that needs context to it, or there are many different methods which will work. Because we are in the business of training athletes we are going to speak from a sport performance perspective.
So, let’s ask this with some context:
“What should your training do for you as an athlete?”
Now we are talking!
Before I get into the answer(s), let’s talk about what everyone thinks of when they think about preparation for sport or training all together. That’s right; Weightlifting.The Iron Game. We must remember what popularized lifting weights. It was bodybuilding that made training with weights famous. Guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger made lifting weights look cool and everyone wanted to look like him. Many gyms nowadays are designed around the bodybuilding methods with all of the machines. Now, I am not putting down, or forming judgement on bodybuilding, but athletes need a different take on the process, rather than just doing bicep curls until you get a nose bleed.
*There are other methods to be employed and needed when training athletes, by implementing training such as speed, jumps, etc. We are talking about using the weight room for strength and power for the sake of this particular blog.
An athlete’s training needs to be a prescription of multi-joint and multi-planar progressive movements. The loads must progress and vary along with the speed of the movements. Approaching training with this definition in mind allows the best approach and will render the best results.
Yes, athlete performance training should be a sport and athlete specific prescription, but NO, it doesn’t need to be performed just like the sport. Training should focus on strengthening movements that help achieve the sporting goals.
When we think of our training for athletes we think of 2 main guiding points and we will go into some details of each.
Number 1: Training should ultimately reduce the injury potential. This is very important for us and should be for you too. We know you can’t eliminate the ROI (risk of injury); however, but it can be reduced through proper training. Athletes need to be made durable if nothing else. It should always get them to the finish line, and not impede them from making it to the starting line.
We see all of this high performance training going on right now in the industry. The big thing recently is creating these human force producing machines and, of course I am all about this; however, at what cost? High performance training does not mean athletes will be durable. If anything, we see the opposite. They are more prone to injury. Force production is great, but you must be able to absorb it as well, and that in and of itself will help reduce ROI.
Now don’t think for one minute training sessions need to look like physical therapy sessions, because what I’m about to say for Number 2 seems contradictory.
Number 2: Training should increase performance. We can’t be afraid to increase performance for fear of injuries. I believe if a sound approach is taken in training, you can achieve both: injury reduction and increased performance, and that is the ultimate goal. As long as we focus on training that strengthens movements to help achieve the athletes’ goals.
How do we do this?
Go back to our description here:
An athlete’s training needs to be a prescription of multi-joint and multi-planar progressive movements. The loads must progress and vary along with the speed of the movements. Approaching training with this definition in mind allows the best approach and will render the best results.
- 1)Multi-joint movements:these are exercises that occur over multiple joints while performing them. In sport, you don’t isolate any particular joint or muscle so why would you in training. This is why bodybuilding methods aren’t a good idea for sports. Exercises such as bicep curls won’t provide a lot of benefit for an athlete, but movements such as hang cleans, squats, deadlifts, etc. occur over a multitude of joints similar to the bio-mechanic demands of sports.
Quick Story: We trained a team this past winter and one player in particular wanted to go to the local gym to do his own thing. His training was bodybuilding movements to look good. The very beginning of the season, this athlete hurt himself and hasn’t played yet this season. I can’t say for certain if he had trained with the team this wouldn’t have happened, but I do know this team doesn’t have any other injuries right now.
- 2)Multi-planar movements: sports are chaotic environments which causes athletes to move in many different planes of motion. The body is being demanded to rotate, accelerate/decelerate in all different planes of movement. Many people get stuck in just the Sagittal Plane, living on exercises like squats, bench, deadlifts, i.e. powerlifting movements. These movements are good, but training needs to take athletes into the other planes as well: frontal, & transverse.
Unless the sport an athlete is preparing for is weightlifting, then they don’t need to become bodybuilders, or powerlifters, they just need to be efficient at weightlifting. Their sport is there sport, weightlifting is just a means to help increase performance.