These days most athletes have a decent enough understanding of S&C. In my experience unfortunately they often forget/ignore what they actually know and don’t implement it well into their training.
Here’s some key points that as an athlete you should remember:-
1. The point of training is to become better at your sport not better at training
The take home message here is if it’s not improving your sports performance why are you doing it!?
2. It doesn’t matter how much you can squat if you’re slow as sh*t on the pitch.
You’re not a crossfit athlete, you’re not a powerlifter therefore it doesn’t matter what you can squat. You must train to transfer any strength gains into the sporting arena!
3. Your coach knows best
So you’ve trained for a number of years and have an idea of what’s best for you. Well sorry but you’re not special! In those years you’ve trained yourself your coach has trained hundreds of athletes and spent hours studying. Chances are they know a bit more than you!
4. Simple is often more effective
There’s no need to over complicate things when simple has proven effective. Especially in the early stages. Master some heavy compound movements, get mobile and move varied weights and your bodyweight at speed!
5. Olympic lifting won’t make you more powerful
You’re a 110kg rugby player who can squat 180kg and leg press half the gym. You’re clearly able to generate high levels of force yet you can only power clean about 80-100kg. Unfortunately the technical complexity of the lift is limiting the level of force that can be generated.
6. Injury prevention is so important
Sounds obvious but if you’re injured you can’t train or play and if you can’t play you can’t get better! Stay injury free and increase your time to actually get better at your sport.
7. You don’t need to puke every session
There’s nothing wrong with hard work but working smart as well as hard should be the priority. Training until tired doesn’t equal a performance improvement. 1000 burpees will make you tired but it’s not going to make you run faster.
8. More is not always better
Sometimes less is more. You want to get stronger you need to do less reps. The weight will increase but overall volume will reduce. You also need to rest to allow the body to adapt positively to the training you’ve done. You can’t just train all the time!
9. Strength is the most important fitness quality
Strength improvements are the foundation for explosive ability and will help reduce injury. Get stronger. Enough said.
10. You’re an athlete not a bodybuilder so stop training like one!
No further words required…
