THE KEY TO STAYING INJURY FREE!
There is a belief in some athletes, coaches and even parents that strength training stops when the season starts. This belief is actually a big reason why you could be getting injured! Let me show you why!
In season training is crucial to decreasing the risk of injury and maintaining your capacity to perform (e.g. power, speed, endurance).
In-season your body is subjected to high volumes of training and playing. Your body is just like a car tyre. Let me explain. The more miles you drive with your tyres, the more it wears down. Tyre experts state that to get more millage out of your tyre, you need to ensure that it’s at the right pressure on a consistent basis. By not looking after the tyre by consistently checking its pressure, the tyre will wear down and get less millage. Simple right?
In-season training is no different. Your muscles are exposed to lots of repetitive use, which weakens them. As muscles weaken, power and speed output decreases and your risk of injury rises exponentially. Just like the tyre, your risk of being ‘out of action’ increases if you don’t look after your body. So what should we be doing in-season to stay fit and healthy?
I’m glad you asked. It’s quite simple. You need to train your body to maintain power, speed and build enough resilience to withstand the demands of your sport. However, in-season training is a little different. We don’t want to compete with the sport. So our training focus shifts slightly.
A good Strength & Conditioning Coach will know how to individualise an approach to allow for the athlete to get the right amount of training and the right type of training. Depending on the sport, we need to identify what the athlete is getting from the sport and then program what they aren’t getting.
For example; a cricket bowler may be getting lots of exposure from the deceleration of the bowling arm from high bowling loads. Over time, your chest and lats become tight and upper back musculature lengthens becoming weak. So to ensure the shoulder stays healthy we need to ensure the athlete gets consistent stimulation of upper back to be able to withstand the millage of the bowling demands. Just like pumping up the tyre of the car to the right pressure. Without upper back training, your ability to generate power, therefor speed decreases and your the risk of injury skyrockets.
By not training in-season, you’re placing your availability to play week in, week out in jeopardy. Is this a risk you can afford to take? Hopefully you can see the importance. Now let’s chat about training frequency.
How often should each athlete train?
As always, it depends. To see the best results, we recommend our athlete to train 2-3 x per week. We see a great return in high frequency exposure with smaller training volumes each session. As the sessions lifting may take less time, we can shift our focus to other important things such as mobility, release work, stability and even recovery.
Speaking of recovery, all athlete’s now have access to our Massage Guns and Normatec Recovery boots. In-season is a great time to make use of our recovery technology. We’ve seen a great response from our athletes, who get free access to this service as a part of our membership. I could speak tirelessly about the benefits, however I’ll save it for a further blog.
To reiterate our message. In-season training is crucial for staying healthy and maintaining your performance capacity. Don’t blow a tyre and not be able to complete your journey.
Happy training…
