Just some thoughts I’ve had about training during the past week.
Rest Between Sprints/Jumps/Med Ball Throws
Too many athletes try to rush through their sets of sprints, jumping variations, and med ball throws without allowing adequate time for rest between sets. In order to get the desired benefits from these movements they need to be done at maximum effort, and in order to be at maximum effort, rest between sets is essential.
I’m not going to go into great detail in this post about each energy system, but a little bit of background is necessary to illustrate this point. There are three main energy systems: ATP-CP (phosphagen system), glycolytic, and oxidative. When you’re exercising you are never using just one energy system, but one energy system is doing most of the work to produce ATP, which is the body’s fuel source. In the case of short duration, high effort movements like sprinting or low rep, heavy lifts, the phosphagen system is doing the majority of the work. The phosphagen system can sustain maximum effort movement for about 12 seconds, but it requires a work to rest ratio of roughly 1:10. So, this means you need to rest close to 2 minutes between your high effort sets to perform at your best. If you don’t, you’ll be training at a lower intensity and you won’t get the speed or power adaptations you’re looking for.
Intent Does Not Clean Up All Mechanical Issues
A current approach by some coaches is to have all their pitchers throw with high intent, with the notion that their pitchers will then just naturally move better. For some athletes this may be true, but for a majority of them there are mobility and movement restrictions preventing them from getting into positions that will allow them to throw pain-free and with greater velocity. If these athletes never do mobility work to clean up their patterns and improve their range of motion in specific areas, no amount of intent will take them to an elite level.
Sleep Matters…Even During the Summer
Summer vacation means that a lot of young athletes now have a ton of free time on their hands, and this tends to mean they stay up later than they would during the school year. Staying up later isn’t necessarily a huge issue as long as it’s within reason. Sleeping 7.5-9 hours is still a must to support your training and recovery, and if you stay up until 5am it’s more difficult to stay asleep for that long. Not to mention that anecdotally, getting to sleep before midnight tends to lead to more restful sleep. It’s difficult to show up and train at a high level if you haven’t gotten enough sleep the night before, or if you slept so late that you woke up half an hour before you showed up to the gym. Moral of the story: go to bed!
Keep these ideas in mind and improve your training quality. For training inquiries send me an email or find me on Instagram or Twitter.