As a parent, you step into a training facility with the intention of having your young athlete meet with a sports performance coach. There can be many questions going through your mind such as, what is sports performance? What is healthy for a young athlete to do? Should my kid be training at such a young age? These are very valid questions and there are many more questions out there. In our next few blog articles, we are going to break down a few major questions that parents/guardians may have in regards to sport performance training. For this article, we are going to speak about what sport performance training is.
Sport performance can be broken down in a various number of ways. For the coach, it is going to have a completely different meaning that what the parent would think. Most parents want their athlete working on “foot speed” or better known as “speed and agility”. To the coach, those terms are almost meaningless. Athletes don’t need to work on “foot speed”. That will be covered in a blog article coming later. From the coach’s perspective, sport performance is to increase the overall athletic ability of the athlete coming in to train. To increase the overall athletic ability of the athlete, the coach needs to know details like what sport they play, what position do they play and what kind of training experience do they have.
Each athlete is going to need a general sense of skills when it comes to sport performance. These skills being, upper and lower body power, jumping and landing mechanics, sprinting work/power, core strength, general game style conditioning and based on the sport the athlete is playing, there will be some more specifics to their type of training. For example, volleyball athletes will need to work on different types of jumps compared to an athlete who played baseball where that baseball player will need to work on more lower body rotational power for pitching or hitting. Our next articles will speak more to the specifics of what one athlete will need versus another.
The last thing that needs to be touched on in regards to sport performance is that it is safe for every single athlete to do. Based on the needs that we discover from the parent and athlete, everything can be tailored and modified to help meet their needs. We have had parents ask about certain movements being unsafe for their athlete to perform and almost every time it couldn’t be further from the truth. Our job as strength coaches is to use our knowledge and education combined with tools in the gym to help every athlete gain the necessary strength they need to not only get stronger but to prevent injuries from happening in game/practice and to prolong their ability to play. Stay tuned for our next few blogs as we get more detailed and specific on sport performance based on what sport the athlete plays.