In a world where athletic achievements are celebrated and revered, many aspiring athletes find themselves on a quest to achieve greatness. However, it’s ironic that so many of them make critical mistakes when it comes to training and recovery. These mistakes hinder their progress, preventing them from reaching their full potential and realising their dreams.
Here are a few examples:
1. Blindly following someone else’s training programme just because that person is successful
2. The same training programme being followed for far too long without challenging the body and mind
3. Simply performing your particular sport and exercise regime at a lower intensity and calling it training
4. Wrong exercise pattern or movements not specific to on-field transfer
5. Reading and reacting to the wrong end of the workload management data crunched
6. Not able to understand the exercise prescription for particular skill and sport
7. Wrong choice of exercise to the skill and sport and expecting transfer
8. Focusing on one aspect of fitness than taking a holistic approach on the need for sport and skill
9. Low on Laws of Diminishing Returns (SAID principle)
10. Not able to test themselves when it’s required to understand which component of fitness needs to be improved or maintained
‘One man’s food is another man’s poison’— Taking a cue from this, one needs to be intelligent enough to not follow someone else’s programme, especially if it is designed to take into account one’s strengths and weaknesses. Following someone else’s programme can move you ahead for some distance, but it’s never going to help you reach your goal and true potential. The key, therefore, is a programme.
There is another familiar mantra of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ There’s a time and place for this thinking, but I guarantee that the 18-year-old version of oneself is a very altered athlete when compared to the 30-year-old version of oneself, and if you keep pushing your body in exactly the same way as your younger self, you will break down, needing a lot of fixing.
In most athletes, particularly fast bowlers, soccer players, racers, etc., the energy demand is tuned to a particular energy system, therefore 95% of their training should involve only strength or running, sprinting, etc. One needs to condition the body to perform for hours at a time, but if the focus is not on weaknesses specific to a sport and skill, then what is the training actually about and how can performance be enhanced?
If your stamina is poor, you need an exhaustive programme to strengthen yourself, both physically and emotionally, for times of crisis.
If your explosive power is weak, you need plyometrics and full-body movements that ignite the muscle fibres in your body.
One does not need to deviate completely from the sport of choice. Training your movement with a multi-directional approach specific to skill and favoured sport is not rocket science.
So what do you need?
Sincere analysis and understanding of the programme are essential to see improvement from an athlete’s point of view. Set goals, and if they do not bring the desired results, scrap the programme.
As understood by all professional Strength & Conditioning (S&C) coaches and support staff, adaptable athletes have more chance of being successful. Adapting to the imposed demand is akin to gold in programme design.
Understand what sport-related success looks like and determine what qualities you need to train. Working backward from the desired results and taking a step back and analysing the goal would be a better choice than surging ahead mindlessly with the programme by seeing benefits only in the gym and not on the field — especially transfer.
How training can transfer over to performance?
While most of your training should be specific to skill, a certain percentage of your training can be devoted to general conditioning, depending on the need of the athlete and the season. However, this comes with a caveat in choosing exercises that can transfer over during performance potential.
Strength training might seem unnecessary for some sports, but it will strengthen certain muscle groups to reduce the risk of injury on the field and increase robustness. Here one has to be mindful in loads of parameters before embarking on a programme.
Each sport comes with its positives and defects. Here’s a simple example — athletes need to be aware of what their training and competition is doing to their body and correct any issues with appropriate training protocols that develop the anterior or posterior compartment set of muscles to reduce the risk of injury and prolong their career. Management of their workload with sensible data inference can boost performance and avoid injuries and extend their professional career.
High-performance athletes should inculcate a proper programme with correct energy systems and develop the most important muscle groups for their sport and skill movements.
For example, a fast bowler focusing on increasing the pace of the ball should use the training room as a golden opportunity to enhance performance with proper biomechanical analysis and net sessions. The training for pace bowlers requires a huge amount of force production/reduction training per delivery stride, back foot landing, front foot landing and post-delivery stride. Therefore, an athlete can focus on the posterior muscles diagonally on the back and shoulders to compensate the sport-specific demands.
At times, training agonist muscles in the field while training the antagonistic muscles at the gym is one of the ways in correcting any flaws and overcompensation that might occur.
Understand your sport, yourself and your position
Different strokes for different folks — players in the same sport can have different purposes and roles on the field. While teams enjoy the camaraderie of training together, all athletes need to train according to their purpose.
For example — a fast bowler has different styles of bowling based on unique skills, injury history, genetic predispositions and specific strengths and weakness.
It’s of paramount importance to create training programmes that accommodate all these variables with no scope for error or experimentation. I believe that technical skills belong on the field and are up to the discretion of their coach. But other mechanical skills such as strength, speed, mobility, flexibility, and stamina can be greatly improved with the right approach with strength and conditioning.
When all the physical metrics fire in tandem, the athletes know that the training works and feel confident of reaching a new shift.
The right training programme will always take your game to the next level, one need to find a great S&C coach to create this.
