Stop Sacrificing Training Quality for “Toughness”
All of the issues inside the University of Maryland football team highlight a problem across the sports landscape. While football may be the worst offender in terms of sacrificing training quality in the name of training for “toughness,” it happens in all sports.
Coaches try to make their teams tougher by running their players until they puke or quit, so that late in a game or late in the season, their performance won’t suffer due to fatigue. This is a misguided line of thinking.
Football, for example, is a sport that requires speed and power, with conditioning as a relatively minor piece. It’s great if your football players aren’t tired in the fourth quarter, but if they run a 5.0 40yd dash, and their opponent runs a 4.6, they’re still not going to catch them, no matter how well conditioned they are.
As I’ve said before, intense conditioning work is a major competing demand for improving speed and power. You can simultaneously improve conditioning, while also improving your sport specific skills, by structuring practices to meet those needs.
Stop Showcasing and Start Training
Too many young athletes go to tons of showcases without having any skills worth showcasing-exposure is only necessary if you’re actually good enough to play at a high level.
Young athletes have a ton of room for improvement, as many of them are not very big or strong yet. The offseason is a great time to add some muscle mass and strength, but it’s difficult to make these improvements if they’re always in season. Most athletes would benefit from taking 3-6 months off from actually playing their sport, and just training.
This gives them time to work on hypertrophy, strength, power, and sport specific skills that they won’t have the opportunity to focus on when they have to always be “game ready.”
Check back later this week for more fitness related content, and feel free to reach out with any training related questions.