Strength
You could use almost any sport here, but since most of my time is spent developing lacrosse players (MS-College girls), we’ll stick with lacrosse. Anyone that’s been around me for more than 10 minutes has heard me say that strength training plays a huge role in increasing the ability to produce force, power and ultimately speed — this will also minimize the incidence of injury. By improving an athletes’ ability to produce force and capacity to do work, there is an increased potential for the athlete to carry over the force produced to the actual game which can translate into moving faster at a higher rate, becoming more explosive and making movement much more efficient.
Conditioning
Over the past few weeks I’ve talked to coaches, players and parents about conditioning and what the players should be focusing on. I’m not going to lay out a program, but more of a broad stroke of what not to do…LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING!
Here’s why:
• Long-distance running can lead to more over-use injuries
• Long-distance running will get you good at long-distance running
• Long-distance running will lead to a decrease in strength and power, which will hinder the ability to accelerate / decelerate in game like situations. AND…have a negative effect on speed, agility and quickness.
Pretty much, long-distance, endurance type training interferes with almost every physical ability we’ve determined to be essential for lacrosse. With that said, some athletes just enjoy running. The reality is, some will run regardless, if that’s you, make sure you plan accordingly…meaning, do not over train and make sure you’re getting the right amounts of anaerobic conditioning (interval type) in your plan.
With lacrosse season 18 weeks away, many are thinking they’ll get a jump on conditioning now (which is outstanding idea) and start putting the miles in. Do yourself a favor and find out what you should be doing…go to http://fit2play.com to the contacts page and under subject put “conditioning” and in the message box ask me your questions. I’ll point you on the right path.
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Coach Turner,
I could not agree with you more. I have been coaching high school athletes for over 5 years now. I have never made my players run longer then 800 meters for conditioning. I have stuck with the interval training and conditioned my athletes on what they would be doing in competition. I think what alot of coaches also fail to look at when conditioning their team, is where their team is at physically and emotionally. In other words on a scale of 1-5, if your players are at a 5 and can’t really move and you try to run them ragged, then the athletes are more likely to get hurt and could prolong their recovery even more.
With in those 5 years, I have only had 2 serious injuries to broken bones. I have yet to have any real injuries suffered with any muscle groups. I have noticed that by the end of the season, my teams are still playing as hard as they were in the beginning of the season, which allows us to be in better shape then most of the teams we play.
Thanks for the blog Jeff, you should really consider doing a coaching seminar on the proper way to weight train and condition an athletic team.