New Conditioning Rules for Athletes!

            Athletic conditioning for sport is one of the most misunderstood areas of strength and conditioning by athletes, parents, and sport coaches. A large amount in this population still believe team sport athletes need to do long duration steady-state cardiovascular exercise to be ready to compete at the highest level. In this blog my hope is to help you understand and explain the needs and demands for team sport athletes and convince you that most of this thinking on conditioning for athletes is sub-optimal for performance.

            The reason why this thinking is wrong is that it goes against one of the oldest principles in strength and conditioning training which is the SAID principle or Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. Which really means the body adapts to the demands we inherently place on it, so to improve for our sport we need to mimic the demands that our imposed by our sporting environment. So, when we start to think about our team sport athletes, and the demands of their sport, do they ever sub maximally jog for long periods at a steady state? Is there ever period where they are not actively assessing their environment to make decisions? The answer to these questions should be a resounding NO! Team sport athletes are constantly changing direction, sprinting, accelerating, decelerating at ever changing velocities, angles and speeds. Whether it be soccer, football, lacrosse, ice-hockey, field hockey, and the list goes on, these athletes rarely even sub-maximally jog and if they do it is in a recovery period to get back to position, off the sidelines etc. So, you should understand now that steady-state cardiovascular exercise isn’t specific to any of our team sport athletes, or any of our speed or power athletes in general (besides our cross-country, triathletes and other endurance sport athletes).

            When thinking about conditioning for our athletes we need to think about the demands of their sport. The best way for athletes to condition and get ready for the demands of their season is through playing their sport. This should be something their sport coaches incorporate in their practices to help get them ready for the demands of the season. When working with our athletes we like to look at the work to rest ratios that are commonly used in their sports and use these to program their conditioning and workouts. Some sports may use a variety of work to rest ratios (soccer is a good example here) so making sure throughout their program they are targeting these different energy systems to maximize sport performance is important to us. This is where for most team sport athletes interval training can be a great tool to help target these energy systems (by manipulating work to rest ratios), as we can help to target the demands needed for their sport based on their position as well.

New Rules for Sport Conditioning

  1. Practice you sport at game intensity and speed
  2. Use interval training and work:rest ratios that best represent the demands
  3. Target different energy systems at different points to maximize development

Email Bskinner@sstcanada.com for a complimentary demo session to learn more about the demands for your sport and for us to help you get in the best shape possible to perform at your best!

How do you lift? Compound vs. isolation.

Hey Everyone! Hope you are all doing great and are enjoying this beautiful weather we are having in Southern Ontario right now! Get outside and be active, you will be amazed what this beautiful weather can do for your body and mind!

I have a cool little blog today. I’m going to talk about Compound Lifts vs Isolation Lifts! These are both very important to any well rounded program and they both serve a very important purpose! First off I am going to define each of these movements then I’m going to tell you what I think the benefits of each of them are!

Compound Lift

A compound lift is a movement that targets and utilizes multiple major muscle groups and joints at the same time. Every well rounded program should have a compound lift every day in my opinion. Your training session should be built around that specific lift that day. For example if Monday your program is built to hit heavy legs, then everything else you do that day should complement your compound lift. Basically your compound lift is the Meat portion of your dinner plate! 

Top Three Benifits of Compound Lifts

Below I am just going to touch on what I think are the benefits of compound lifts, and why they should be a huge part of your program!

1. They Make You Stronger – Simply put every program should have some variation of a squat, bench and deadlift. They are the biggest bang for you buck!

2. Coordination – Core Strength – Every compound lift makes you engage your core in some way shape or form. Most importantly they all will improve your coordination!

3. Burn More Calories – It is proven that you will burn more calories doing a compound lift such as a squat than going on a run! Compound lifts challenge your CNS and make you work!

Isolation Lifts

Isolation lifts are movements that target a specific muscle group and only use one joint like the triceps in a triceps extension, whereas a compound exercise utilizes multiple muscle groups and joints to perform that specific movement. The same can be said about isolation lifts as compound lifts, every well rounded program needs them! I personally think that isolation lifts are great for fixing deficiencies in the body. For example if someone has weak glute and can’t get them to fire, you can still have that person Squat (Compound Lift) but you can also build some single leg glute bridges in to target that specific area! Like I said before the compound lift is the meat, your isolation lifts are the veggies!

Top Three Benifits of Isolation Lifts

Here are my thoughts on what I think are the biggest benefits to isolation lifts!

1. Rehab – Being able to target a specific muscle group that has been injured to help recover it is key to getting healthy quick!

2. Fixing Deficiencies – Like I said above, some athletes have problems areas that need work. Isolation lifts can help get this done for you when building a program

3. Compliment To Compound Lift – I think the most important benefit is that you can use these lifts to compliment the big compound lifts!

Email Bskinner@sstcanada.com to book your complimentary demo session to talk to us about how we use compound and isolation lifts in your programming to get the results you need!