Athletic Performance

"Personal Training at its Best"
Athletic Performance

The search for athletic excellence isn't just about skill. Whether you're an up and coming professional athlete, or a weekend warrior, proper physical conditioning can help move you to the next level and prevent injuries. The physical requirements of every sport are different. Just going to the gym and doing a bodybuilding type of workout will not necessarily enhance your performance in your sport. In fact, it may even degrade it.

Every sport has different requirements of speed, strength, power, explosiveness, flexibility and agility. Each sport also has different requirements for each muscle group.

Examples:

Golf: This sport requires strong shoulders, arms, and trunk. Speed and flexibility are top priorities, and maximal strength and size are not advantageous. Injury prevention is a high priority, especially for repetitive stress injuries of the shoulder.

Tennis: Similar to Golf, this sport requires strong shoulders arms, and trunk. Speed and flexibility are top priorities, and maximal strength and size are not an advantage. Injury prevention is a high priority, especially for repetitive stress injuries of the shoulder. Tennis also adds leg strength to the mix, as well as agility and the ability to utilize the energy systems necessary for interval endurance.

Football: Walk into most high school gyms, and watch all the football players doing bodybuilding workouts. This is fine for a JV program where the students need to acquire a basic level of fitness, but for an experienced athlete a bodybuilding workout will make them slow. This is not what's required in a sport such as football where power and speed strength are everything. Many high school programs are lacking from a strength and conditioning standpoint. If you're the parent of a young player, or if you played yourself, remember when the coach used to make you run miles around the track to "toughen you up" or "build an aerobic base". Football, which is entirely un-aerobic, uses completely different energy pathways. Not only is this type of workout useless, but it is actually counterproductive, as studies have shown low intensity aerobic work to be detrimental to power athletes.

Running/biking: Studies have shown that working out with weights will not hurt the performance of endurance athletes. In fact, it can help with injury prevention, and increase performance in sprint finishes and breakaways. In biking, leg strength can greatly increase climbing ability.

Hockey: These guys have to have it all. Interval cardio training, strength, power, muscular endurance. Weight training was foreign to hockey players up until very recently, but now all the successful players know they have to "hit the weights". "Bodybuilder" type workouts are definitely out. Explosive training is where it's at.

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