Athletes of all types can benefit from fitness training. It improves their strength, speed, agility, balance, and coordination.
Often, gym rats focus only on pushing exercises like the bench press, but football players use the inclined to improve their blocking strength. Athletes also do conditioning drills to increase their endurance. Click https://dynamicpersonaltrainingnj.com/ to learn more.
Endurance training refers to exercises that increase your heart rate and breathing so you can perform an activity longer. Athletes rely on their endurance for nearly every athletic endeavor, including running long distances, playing tennis or soccer, and lifting weights. It takes a lot of practice and commitment to build up your endurance. While increasing your endurance sounds daunting, it can be accomplished with simple changes to your workout routines. By gradually adding one rep, a few miles, or five minutes to each week’s or month’s fitness schedule, you will begin to see results.
You can also enhance your endurance by practicing drills that help you move faster while in motion. For example, you can incorporate ladder or dot drills into your conditioning workouts by setting up markers on a field or court and running to them without stopping. This helps you work on cutting, an essential skill for any athlete.
While most people consider cardio workouts such as jogging and biking endurance exercises, these workouts only improve your measurable cardiovascular capacity. You can also build endurance by performing more challenging tennis, soccer, or basketball activities. However, it’s important to note that a sport requires more than endurance; it also requires strength and agility.
Another way to increase your endurance is by incorporating circuit training into your workouts. Circuit training combines high-intensity cardio exercises and resistance or strength training to give you a complete workout in a short amount of time. This exercise effectively increases your cardio endurance because it forces you to push yourself harder during each set.
It’s also important to remember that endurance training is a form of targeted fitness, so you should only work on your specific goals. For example, if your goal is to become a better sprinter, it would only be productive to spend some of your endurance training time improving how much weight you can bench press.
Athletes who are serious about their performance goals often incorporate various training methods to maximize their potential. This can include corrective and restorative exercises, specialized strength training, plyometric and dynamic exercises, endurance and conditioning training, nutrition guidance, mental and emotional support, and constant accountability and monitoring by a qualified trainer.
Athletes need to be able to perform explosive movements at high rates of speed and for long periods. Strength training can help improve these qualities.
A strength program must be well-planned, individualized, and integrated with all other training components. An athlete’s strength development is highly influenced by the type of exercises used and their specificity to the sport. It is important to consider several factors, including planes of motion, movement patterns, exercise equipment choices, single-versus double-extremity movements, and the amount of rest between sessions.
Unlike bodybuilding programs that focus on increasing the size and appearance of muscles, athletic strength training focuses on developing explosive power and muscular endurance (2). Regardless of the sport an athlete plays, an effective strength training program should develop all five strength qualities: cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
Most athletes spend much time practicing the skills necessary to perform their sport. This practice can take two forms: technical proficiency and the development of maximum strength-to-weight ratios. The latter is achieved through resistance training and metabolic conditioning sessions.
As with the other elements of fitness, an athlete’s training must be individualized and based on the results of a pre-season screening. This will allow for identifying weak points and imbalances in the musculoskeletal system. It also gives the coach a starting point for the preparation period.
Imbalances often occur due to overtraining and the inefficient use of an athlete’s energy resources. As a result, one side of the body may become stronger than the other, and agonist muscles can become overly strong in comparison to their antagonists. This imbalance can lead to injuries if left unchecked.
For many athletes, a simple approach to strength training will be adequate. However, for athletes seeking to increase their level of competition, a more focused and intensive approach must be taken (3). This may involve a period of basic strength training that is progressively intensified and broken down into phases. These may be based on a percentage of an athlete’s 1RM or, more specifically, geared toward the desired adaptation (2).
When most people think of fitness training for athletes, they think of activities that improve strength and endurance. However, another important element of fitness training for athletes is flexibility. From a volleyball spike to a rugby drop kick, the body’s muscles and joints need flexibility to perform sports movements properly.
Flexibility training helps improve a joint’s range of motion by mechanically stretching the muscles and ligaments surrounding it. There are two different types of flexibility training: those that involve movement and those that don’t. The ones that involve movement are known as dynamic flexibility, and those that don’t are called static flexibility.
The benefits of flexible training include an increased ability to perform sports movements, decreased risk of injury, and improved posture. It is also believed that a lack of flexibility leads to greater muscle fatigue, which can reduce performance. In addition, studies have shown that women tend to be more flexible than men because of structural, hormonal, and anatomical differences.
It is recommended that both dynamic and static flexibility be included in a training program to train effectively. It is also recommended that the program incorporate the full range of motion stretches, as this will help prevent muscle damage and injury.
A trainer should supervise stretching just as they would with any other aspect of a client’s workout to ensure the proper technique is used. It is also recommended that the trainer encourage clients to take the time to warm up and stretch, as this will not only improve their workout but will also help them prevent injuries.
NSCA’s Essentials of Personal Training, Second Edition, is the authoritative text for health and fitness instructors and personal trainers, and the primary preparation source for the NSCA-CPT exam. It is available in bookstores and online at the NSCA Store.
The book is the most comprehensive resource for fitness professionals on the topic of strength, power, and speed training in the context of sports performance. It includes a full chapter on training for athletes, as well as chapters on general conditioning and nutrition.
While conditioning, endurance, mobility, and strength are the foundations of an athlete’s fitness, coordination training should not be overlooked. This is the ability to perform different movements simultaneously without losing balance or speed. This is critical for athletes at any level of play, whether a football player running from one end of the field to another while avoiding opponents or a boxer dodging a direct hit.
Coordination is often viewed as a skill only serious athletes or Beyonce’s backup dancers need, but this needs to be corrected. Everyone should train their coordination because it makes day-to-day activities easier and safer. Good coordination can also help prevent injury and improve athletic performance.
Movement pattern drills, exercises, and games are the most common way to train coordination. These can be as simple as the daily CARs routine that stimulates mechanoreceptors at the end range to send input to the brain and bring awareness to where joints are in space. Or, the snap proprioception drill removes visual cues, forcing the athlete to rely on sound and how their body feels to find and isolate joint movement.
Combining multiple movements into a complex pattern can achieve more advanced coordination training. For example, a coach could set up an obstacle course combining balance, agility, speed, strength, synchronization, spatial orientation, and more. Athletes at a young training age can benefit from this type of general coordination training, while as they grow into adults and advance their sport, they will need more specificity in their training programs.
When training athletes, coaches should remember the concept of “training to the level of competition.” This means that all components of fitness must be trained at a high level, or athletes will need more performance to compete in their chosen sport. During this time, coaches should be flexible and adjust their program when needed to achieve these goals.
For example, an athlete training for a field event must focus on strength training that focuses on the imbalance between their left and right sides and agonists and antagonists to prevent long-term injury. In addition, this athlete will likely require training to increase their power output for the specific field event.