The Importance of a proper strength and conditioning program for athletes of all Levels

As an athlete you need to be able to perform at your peak, week in and week out, as well as have the confidence in your body to be able to perform at a high level.

A properly designed strength program will not only help improve your strength, speed and power, which are vital to a high level of performance in the sporting realm, but also reduces your chance of injuries.

Athletes need to move away from body building style program (splits, high volume, training to failure). This won’t optimise athlete performance.

Athletes need to learn how to activate their posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings) and complete this as a warm up not just before resistance training, but also before your on field training and matches.
By activating the right muscles you can reduce the chance of injury and improve performance.

Resistance training should focus on the posterior chain, glutes hamstring, calves, and training these muscle as a unit, not in isolation. This is the powerhouse of athlete development and performance.
By increasing strength in these areas (especially eccentric strength) you can reduce the chance of injures like hamstring strains and tears.

The stage of the season will dictate the focus of training, from pre-season, in season and post season, you should move through a periodised program in order to maximize performance and reduce injuries. Late stage preseason and moving into the season, your focus should be on maximizing power. A good saying is “train fast get fast, train slow get slow”. Power and speed training needs to be completed in order to develop the fast twitch muscle fibres and train the CNS (central nervous system) to fire rapidly.
When developing power, you need to focus on the posterior chain and lift explosively, there should be a focus on quality not quantity, and as soon as the movement becomes slower you are no longer training optimally.

By taking part in a well-designed strength program you will become stronger, faster, more agile and have better endurance.

Remember these key points, and if you are unsure of where to start, get in touch with us to find out how you can improve your performance.

Have a great day,

Tom Rock

MPT Transformations