Wednesday, September 7, 2011

What Every Athlete Needs


1976 was a great year for sports movies, featuring the first Rocky movie and the original Bad News Bears. The Bad News Bears enhanced my expansive vocabulary while the Rocky movie made me want to "eat lighting and crap thunder", as Rocky's legendary trainer Mickey put it. We'll get back to the impact Rocky had on me in a moment... When we were kids we played every sport, mostly on our own, and once we got older we would play organized sports. We had tryouts, not "evaluations", and if we weren't good enough we got cut. If our team didn't come in first we didn't get a trophy. I remember in the Fall after football season was over, before the ponds froze for hockey (and before "chauffeur" was added to every mother's resume), I'd ride my bike over to my buddy Paul's house and we would play basketball all afternoon. About 3 or 4 times a week we would lift weights. This is when we were 10! He had his brother's set of those old plastic encased concrete weights and I had my father's set of barbells, dumbells, and a bench. I remember one afternoon in my basement lifting weights by myself when I got the idea that I would drink some raw eggs, because if it would help Rocky go the distance with Apollo, then it would no doubt help me dominate on my Pop Warner football team (the Pepperell Tigers!). I cracked 4 eggs into a glass and just stared at it for a good 3 minutes, similar to standing on the 40' cliff at Mason quarry looking down at the water trying to get the balls up to jump. Finally, I got up the nerve to drink it, took a couple big swallows and immediately chucked them up across the basement. I decided Rocky was tougher than me, and I really didn't need to go the distance with Apollo anyway. 
If I had only known then what I know now about how Rocky got so strong I could have saved myself having to clean up raw eggs off the cellar floor. 

Regardless, the point of this story is that I was 10 and I was lifting weights so that I could get stronger, because I knew that if I was stronger, then I would be better at the sports I liked to play. At 10 years old I knew one of the most fundamental aspects of what it takes to excel at sports. For some reason this has changed and now kids are encouraged to play their sport year round and maybe go for a few runs once in a while for "cardio", instead of spend any time in a true strength and conditioning program.. I don't know why that is. Let me ponder that for a second as I watch the founder of one of those residential lacrosse camps hook his boat trailer up to his Cadillac Escalade....

The building blocks to elite athletic performance and reaching your maximum potential are, in order, General Physical Preparedness (GPP), Specific Physical Preparedness (SPP), Sports-Specific Preparedness (SSP), and Mental/Emotional Preparedness. Each block is a foundation for the subsequent building block, like in a pyramid. GPP is the foundation of general strength and conditioning that translates to all sports. In the GPP phase, the athlete works on absolute strength, speed, conditioning as well as joint mobility and flexibility. Power and speed are expressions of strength and are required in all sports. Not having met certain standards of strength, insufficient power and speed will be developed which leaves the athlete not only well short of his or her potential, but also at an elevated risk of injury. It is vitally important to understand that playing your sport does not make you stronger, it makes you more skilled at your sport. Doing strength work makes you stronger. 



With a solid foundation in GPP developed, the athlete will benefit from SPP training. SPP is strength and conditioning training that is specific to the athlete's sport, essentially preparing the athlete to perform the specific movements of their sport with more precision, power, and speed. This leads to SSP, which is sports-specific skill training, essentially practicing and playing the sport. The top of the pyramid is the mental and emotional preparedness. As important as an athlete's conditioning and skill levels are, it is often an athlete's mental toughness that will determine the outcome at crucial moments in competition.

It is no coincidence that a pyramid is chosen to illustrate the building blocks. The lower the point on the pyramid, the bigger part it plays in providing a solid foundation for everything above it. The weaker the athlete is at any point in the pyramid, then the building blocks above it will also be limited by that weakness. 


An athlete with an inadequate amount of General Physical Preparedness will never reach his or her true potential.

An athlete that spends all her time playing the sport and no time on the strength and conditioning falls far short of her true potential and sets herself up for a higher risk of overuse injuries. Each of the building blocks in the pyramid are essential for an athlete to reach maximum athletic potential. None of the building blocks are stand-alone entities and there is overlap depending on which training phase the athlete is in. For example, an off-season strength and conditioning program will be heavy on GPP. As the athlete moves into pre-season, the volume of GPP is reduced and the SPP is increased while also introducing the SSP. Even during the competitive season there is a maintenance level of GPP strength and conditioning work in an athlete's program to maintain strength levels during the season and set them up for long term strength gains in subsequent training phases.

The biggest problem we have today in the era of the year round competitive athlete is that they either spend little or no time on GPP, or they just flat out do it wrong. If you are doing a bodybuilding routine, or some program focused primarily on conditioning whose specificity is that it lacks specificity like P90X, Insanity, or Crossfit, then I am talking to you. GPP is a comprehensive strength and conditioning program with progressive overload and structured programming with the singular purpose of increasing all strength and conditioning qualities needed to achieve your goals. It is not 20 muscle-ups, 40 handstand pushups on rings, 100 kipping pullups, run 400m, do 30 thrusters with an 85# barbell, puke in a bucket, and writhe around on the floor because you just worked so hard for 13 minutes.
If you look like this at the end of your workout then you need to get on a better strength and conditioning program, and more importantly, stop being a drama queen and act like it's not the first time you've worked hard.

If you are a competitive athlete or if your son/daughter is a competitive athlete, it can't be stressed enough how important a solid strength and conditioning program is to performing at maximum potential. At Dynamic Strength and Conditioning we develop individualized training programs for every athlete. Every athlete that trains with us receives a comprehensive Functional Movement Screen and a customized training program focused on their goals, needs, and the requirements of their sport. We will create a program with exactly the right level of volume and intensity depending on the training age of the athlete and the time of year relative to their competitive season, whether it's in-season, pre-season, or off-season. Check out DSC Athletics for more info on our Athletic Development programs. If you (or your son or daughter) are serious about being the best you can be, then Dynamic is THE place to train. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great read...and spot on!