I’ve had a few colleagues write about this in the past, but since it’s my first official post on my website, I figured that I’d start with the essentials.  The reason is simple: you should know where to start and what to include when designing a training program.  So here is a list and description of what I feel like every training program should include.

 1. Soft-tissue work.  Every training program, whether it is for an athlete or a non-athlete, should include some form of soft tissue work.  It could be done with a foam roller, medicine ball, The Stick, a Thera-Cane, a Lacrosse ball or any other tool you feel will help work on trigger points and adhesions.  Soft-tissue work will further help improve tissue flexibility and muscle function, as a muscle with many trigger points might not contract in an optimal way.

 2. Mobility/Dynamic flexibility.  The point has now been made through research that dynamic and static stretching are totally different in nature, and in the way they affect the muscles.  Dynamic stretching is more specific to training and activities, as it improves range of motion during movements.  Dynamic stretching also improves stability in that newly gained range of motion, which is CRUCIAL in every sports.  For more information on mobility and dynamic flexibility, and also for a ton of great drills to include in your warm ups, you should definitely get Assess and Correct, which is an incredible resource made by 3 of the best in the business.

 3. Speed/Agility work.  Every athlete that competes in a team sport needs to improve his speed, transitional speed and reaction time.  Speed is improved mostly with sprints on various distances (usually from 10 to 60 yards) using different starting positions that will reflect specific positions of your sport.  Transitional speed and reaction time is usually improved through agility drills and plyometrics.  Agility drills could include sprinting, shuffling and back pedaling as well as changes of directions.  Plyometrics are generally more jumping based drills that focus more on improving the stretch-shortening cycle of the muscles.

 4. Power training.  Power is the ability to develop the greatest amount of force in the shortest amount of time possible.  In other words, power is the combination of speed and strength and is obviously of great importance in most team sports.  Power is usually developed through Olympic Lifts and medicine ball throws.  Power development exercises usually include whole body movements and are great at improving the force transfer from the lower body through the core to the upper body.

 5. Strength training. This is something that is essential to developing stronger athletes.  Strength is a very important component of athletic development.  Strength development improves muscle coordination and helps recruit more muscle fibres within each muscle.  This will later transfer to more power and more speed, as more muscle fibres are recruited when sprinting, throwing, jumping, etc.  Typical strength training exercises include lunges, chin ups, chest press with dumbbells, etc.

6. Core training.  Let’s make one thing clear: crunches are worthless and won’t do anything for you, from an athletic standpoint.  If you’re still not convinced, let me ask you this question: when in any sport activity are you lying on your back and crunching up? You already know the answer.  Core training should include two components.  The first one would be to develop the ability to resist movement through anti-flexion, anti-extension and anti-rotation exercises.  The first function of the trunk musculature is to stabilize the spine in all three planes of movements to prevent it from shear forces applied to it by going in too great range of motion.  Let’s put it this way, the lower spine is pretty much the only joint where you don’t want range of motion.  So it would make sense to limit the torque forces applied to it.  The second component of a good core training program would be to improve the rotational movements.  As I just mentioned, you want to limit the range of motion at the lower spine, but rotational movements are inevitable and even essential in many sports like hockey and baseball.  So what’s the right thing to do? You want to teach the body to rotate from the good regions.  And that would be from the hips and thoracic spine.  So, you would want to include in your programs rotational core exercises that will reinforce the pattern to rotate at the right joints. 

 7. Injury prevention exercises.  Whether that is to reinforce good movement patterns, to activate weak muscles at the hips or at the shoulders or with simple stretches to improve posture or range of motion, injury prevention exercises are one of the most important components in a training program.  Keep in my mind that if your athlete is injured, he cannot improve his performance; this is why reducing the risks of injuries should be your number one priority as a strength and conditioning coach. 

 8. Specific conditioning.  I wrote here specific because I feel it is very important that your conditioning program reflects the demand of your sport.  Conditioning, for most sports should be in the form of interval training BECAUSE IT IS THE WAY SPORTS ARE PLAYED.  Pretty much every team sports are played in some sort of interval based effort where a short to moderate effort period is followed by a rest period of some sort.    Depending of the sport your athletes are playing, you should play around with the work/rest ratio to match the specific demand of the sport.  Pretty much no team sports are played in a long continuous effort for many minutes.  That is way I feel aerobic training is completely retarded for most sports.  The only reason people are still doing it is mainly because their coaches or trainers used to do that when they were athletes 20 or 30 years ago and have not been educated on the true functions of the aerobic and anaerobic systems.  If you are still doing that, you need to realize that you have far better options to condition your athletes that will bring you far better results.

 9. Static stretching.  I do think that dynamic stretching is more specific to sports training than static stretching is.  But that is not to say that I don’t believe nor use static stretching.  In fact, I think that static stretching is truly valuable when used appropriately.  Static stretching is great at restoring muscle length after a training session.  I also think that it is great to use to stretch an antagonist muscle before using an activation drill with an agonist muscle.

 There it is, the 9 key components that I feel should be included in every training program.  I hope it helped some of you, and feel free to post your comments below!

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