The strength and conditioning field is still in its infancy. It’s hard for people growing up in my generation to realize professional sports teams and colleges haven’t always had strength and conditioning coaches. In fact, strength training in general has only been recommended in sports over the last 50 years or so. Despite making great strides during that period, there is still a lot of misinformation out there regarding what athletes should be doing to prepare them for their seasons.
This article is not really talking about the organizations and colleges that have qualified strength coaches. At the top there is some great information being presented and athletes are getting stronger and performing better each year. However, a large majority of athletes do not have access to qualified coaches to help them train. For those people, here is a list of 5 common mistakes to avoid in your training.
*Note- If you are a wrestler or combat athlete and not sure what type of training you should be doing, check out my Offseason Wrestling Training Program. I wrote it back in 2011 so it’s definitely nothing revolutionary but it will get you started in the right direction!
1- Training Like a Bodybuilder
This is by far the most common mistake athletes make when training for a sport. Don’t get me wrong, I would much rather athletes be training like bodybuilders than sitting on their couch playing video games but I’m here to help optimize.
In my opinion almost everyone starts out training like a bodybuilder. The reason is two fold. One, bodybuilding information tends to be a lot more main stream and available. You can walk into any Walmart or grocery store in the country and pick up countless bodybuilding publications – Flex, Muscular Development, Muscle Mag, etc. Also, people (especially young athletes) are drawn to aesthetics. It’s not how well you perform, it’s how well you LOOK like you perform. Well at least that’s the logic in a sixteen year old boy’s mind – I know, I’ve been there.
Unlike bodybuilding, strength and conditioning information is lacking.The purpose of a strength and conditioning program is obviously to improve performance in a given sport. All sports are different but generally speaking the body never performs in isolation. Your body works as one unit. If your workouts are split by body part and your strength and conditioning routine is nothing more than curls and side raises, chances are you need to re-think your program.
2- Training to be “Functional”
The functional fitness fad seems to have come and gone. The days of seeing people doing unstable surface training is just about over. However, it’s still around.
When I was in college, the school’s hockey team used to train around the same time as I did so I got a first hand look at their offseason training program. At the time the school did not have a strength and conditioning coach so I am not sure where they got the program. Most likely it was from their hockey coach because the whole team seemed to be following it. One of their signature workouts involved barbell squatting on a bosu ball pretty much as soon as they walked into the gym. Despite the unfavorable risk to reward ratio, it wouldn’t be so bad except I NEVER saw them actually squat without the bosu ball!
There have been a couple studies on unstable surface training and they all pretty much show no benefit over standard resistance training protocols outside of a rehab setting [1,2,3]. Besides, when in your sport are you going to be squatting on a rubber disc? People put to much thought into defining “functional”. What exactly does it mean to be functional? All training can be functional. This leads me to my next point.
It’s very hard to replicate “sports specific” training in a gym setting. Most of the time when “sports specific” training is done, instead of actually training the athlete it ends up altering their sport specific movement pattern. For example, you often see baseball players or golfers using a cable machine with an attachment mocking a golf club or baseball bat handle. Instead of helping the athletes swing, all the exercise is doing is installing a different motor pattern. There is no way you could use a cable machine to 100% replicate the same motion as your swing. To improve your swing you would be better off just training lower body power and rotational strength.
Bottom line: If you strength and conditioning room looks more like a physical therapy office you are doing it wrong. Also, if your “coach” is more concerned with how you stand on a wobble board than improving your hip or ankle mobility, run the other way!
3- Lack of Mobility Work
Although mobility work has gotten a lot more prevalent in recent years due in large part to Kelly Starrett of MobilityWod.com, it is still vastly undervalued in most strength and conditioning programs. Mobility is a hard sell to athletes. Athletes want to get stronger and perform better in their given sport but they don’t realize improving mobility can directly translate to improved performance. In the process of training for stronger muscles or improved aerobic capacity you also need to be thinking about movement quality. No athlete has perfect motor-control, mobility, and biomechanical efficiency. The problem is most athletes and coaches take a “wait until it breaks” approach when it comes to this kind of stuff. Instead you should be proactive and get ahead of the game and start implementing mobility work to prevent injuries.
Like I mentioned earlier, I understand this can be a hard sell. The importance of injury prevention can be hard to explain to a 18 year old kid who doesn’t have any aches or pains and has never been injured. I know, I’ve been there. Improved performance is much easier to sell. If an athlete is not performing the movements in the gym correctly due to mobility restrictions, they are leaving performance on the table.
Another thing, mobility is not just hitting a few stretches and spending five minutes on a soft foam roller. If you want more information on mobility and optimized human movement I highly suggest checking out this book: Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance
4 – Spending Too Much Time on Low Intensity Cardio
I have written about this issue in the past. See Top 4 Fat Loss Mistakes. Spending too much time doing low intensity cardio is not just a fat loss mistake, it is a conditioning mistake as well. Now before you get the wrong idea, there is a time and a place for low intensity conditioning work. It’s not on the list because its inherently bad, it’s on the list because it is highly over done.
If you played a sport there is a good chance you were made to jog, and jog a lot. The problem is, what sport actually requires low intensity cardio? Most sports require short bursts of speed and intensity followed by rest. What does that sound like – High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
Besides the obvious closer relationship to sports, there are a few other reasons why athletes should focus on higher intensity cardio. One, low intensity cardio takes up more time. With HIIT you can get a more effective workout done in half the time investment. For an athlete who is already in the weight room lifting and on the field practicing daily, being able to cut down on the time required for conditioning is a huge benefit. Another, benefit is reducing the amount of stress on the joints. Long distance running/jogging causes a lot of unneeded stress on the lower body which could lead to overuse injuries. I hear about wrestlers having ankle and knee issues all the time, long running sessions in wrestling shoes on hard surfaces is definitely not helping things. I know, I’ve been there.
Lastly, and most importantly, HIIT compliments strength training better than low intensity cardio. It’s important to remember strength and conditioning are closely connected when it comes to performance. Low intensity cardio causes what is called “interference” with resistance training. Interference refers to a reduction in strength, power and/or hypertrophy when cardio is added to a resistance training protocol. A meta analysis conducted back in 2011 by Wilson, J.M, et al took a look at 21 studies where resistance training was combined with endurance (cardio) training. They found there to be a negative relationship between frequency and duration of endurance training on hypertrophy, strength and power [4]. With this being said, it would be advantageous to try and keep endurance training as short and infrequent as possible while still reaching ones goals. Since HIIT is more closely related to resistance training (than endurance training), interference seems to be avoided when HIIT is utilized.
5- Not Focusing Enough on Your Sport
This does not mean sports specific training. I am talking about actually practicing your sport. I don’t care what your strength and conditioning program consists of, if you are not actively playing you specific sport you are not going to be fully conditioned for that sport. Its call the S.A.I.D principle – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Basically this means you get better at what you do.
This is something your strength and conditioning coach may or may not be able to help you with. The best way to get better at a sport is to play the sport. If you take your sport seriously (high school, low college level) you need to be putting in time practicing your sport every week of the year to get better. What I am talking about here is in the offseason you can’t rely on your conditioning outside of your sport to dramatically enhance conditioning within that sport. Doing other conditioning (cross training) will definitely help but at the end of the day you still need the specific work. As a former wrestler, the old saying “there is being in shape and then there is being in wrestling shape” holds true…and I know, I’ve been there too.
Bonus: Who is the Fittest Athlete in the World? – Sports Illustrated recently ranked the top 50 fittest athletes in the world, you can find the article here. I broke down the list and gave my thoughts on the individual rankings. Check out the video below and let me know if you agree or disagree with SI and myself!
Referenced Literature
1. Cressey, E. M., West, C. A., Tiberio, D. P., Kraemer, W. J., & Maresh, C. M. (2007). The effects of ten weeks of lower-body unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 21(2), 561-567. 2. McBride, J. M., Cormie, P., & Deane, R. (2006). Isometric squat force output and muscle activity in stable and unstable conditions. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 20(4), 915-918. 3. Wahl, M. J., & Behm, D. G. (2008). Not all instability training devices enhance muscle activation in highly resistance-trained individuals. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 22(4), 1360-1370. 4. Wilson, J.M, et al., Concurrent Training: A Meta Analysis Examining Interference of Aerobic and Resistance Exercise. J Strength Cond Res, 2011.