Let me ask you a few questions. How is it that Tiger Woods consistently plays his last hole as hard as his first? How is it that Michael Jordan could consider returning to the NBA and playing successfully, at an age when most professional athletes are stuck in their easy chairs counting their pension checks? Three words.

Superior physical conditioning.

Compare two athletes in any sport. With the same talent and skill, the player with superior fitness will win every time.

If you are serious about your sport, you must know and live by these 7 principles that I call the 7 Secrets to Developing the Complete Athlete.

1. Identify the skills of the ideal athlete in your sport. The easiest way to start this part of the process is to imagine the best athlete in your chosen sport. Ask yourself what skills they possess that make them the best at what they do. Skills are things like flexibility, strength, endurance, power, balance, reaction time, coordination, speed, and agility. Don’t confuse skills with skills that are specific to your chosen sport. For example, a basketball player must be able to dribble as he runs down the court. That’s a sport-specific skill, not a skill. Skills are what underlies every skill. Now, take a closer look at each skill. Think about the extreme of each skill and rate that skill level a 10 on a scale of zero to 10. For example, if you are examining flexibility, who are the most flexible athletes in the world?

gymnasts! So gymnasts require flexibility level number 10 for successful performance. Olympic weightlifters would be a 10 in power. Weightlifters would be a 10 for strength and so on for each skill. Then take your chosen sport and compare it to extreme. Let’s use Lacrosse as an example. Does lacrosse require the same level of flexibility as gymnastics? Of course not! But lacrosse requires quite a bit of flexibility in the spine, shoulders, and hips.

So while it may not require a level of 10 in flexibility, we can estimate the ideal level of flexibility as 7 or 8 out of 10. At this point, don’t worry about trying to be exact when establishing ideal lacrosse skills. . player (or any other athlete for that matter) as your best guess won’t vary much from the ideal unless you really don’t understand the needs of a lacrosse player (or their specific sport). Repeat this process for each skill to create your ideal athlete, in this case a Lacrosse player.

When you’re done, you should have a graph that looks something like this. Please note that scores will be different for different sports.

Optimal Skills for Lacrosse; Strength – 6 Power – 8 Speed ​​- 8 Coordination – 8 Endurance – 8 Reaction Time – 8 Flexibility – 7 Agility – 8 Total Score – 61

2. Realistically assess your current skills. Here’s the hard part. Now you have to be honest with yourself. It’s time to compare your current skills with those of each end. May or may not be as strong as a weightlifter. No matter. BE HONEST! You gain nothing by intentionally overestimating or underestimating your own abilities, in fact, overestimating or underestimating your abilities will promote the outright failure of your sports conditioning program. When you’ve rated your own skills, you should end up with a chart that looks something like this.

Your current skills Skill your score Strength – 6 Power – 6 Speed ​​- 5 Coordination – 8 Stamina – 3 Reaction time – 5 Flexibility – 5 Agility – 5 Total Score – 43

Identify your weak points compared to the ideal. This part is easy. Simply compare your skills to what you’ve determined is ideal for your sport. Then simply highlight those skills that are below your estimate of the ideal level for your sport.

3. Now design an individualized training program to target your weak points. I believe this is one of the most common areas where athletes make mistakes in designing their sport-specific conditioning program. It is a waste of valuable time to focus your conditioning program on your abilities that are already at or above optimal levels. Look at the example. “Your score” for strength was 6 out of 10, but the optimal score only requires you to possess a strength capacity of 6 for successful performance. So how much time and effort should you put into the force? Enough to maintain your current levels. More than that will not improve your performance, in this case, as a Lacrosse player. However, “his” speed, stamina and agility ratings are below ideal for Lacrosse.

Therefore, the majority of your sports-specific Lacrosse conditioning program should revolve around improving those skill scores to optimal levels.

4. Identify any current muscle imbalances that you currently have. Muscle imbalances are the main culprits when it comes to injuries. Most injuries occur because there is a significant imbalance between antagonistic (opposing) muscle groups. To compete at optimal levels, there must be a balance throughout the body. For example, let’s say that the muscles that push (chest, shoulders, and triceps) are much stronger and tighter than the muscles that pull (upper and mid-back). That means you have a common imbalance between these two muscle groups and are likely to injure your rotator cuff (common shoulder injury). What you need to do is stretch the pushing muscles and strengthen the pulling muscles to create a balance between the two muscle groups, producing less stress on the shoulder joint and resulting in an INJURY-FREE Shoulder. Now this example is pretty basic, but you should get the point. It doesn’t matter how strong you are in a movement, it matters how strong you are as a whole unit.

5. Identify and train in the energy system used in your sport. This is probably the biggest flaw I see in training and conditioning programs. To do this correctly, you need to understand the physiology of the major energy systems and how they are used in your chosen sport.

Let me use two examples. A marathon runner and an Olympic sprinter. A marathon runner relies heavily on the aerobic energy system to provide power for 26.2 miles of running in about two and a half hours. A Sprinter primarily uses the ATP/CP system to provide energy to run as fast as possible in a very short period of time. So how much distance running and endurance training should a Sprinter do? Minimal, assuming our Sprinter has enough gas left in the tank after its short run. Get it?

Take basketball for example. Sure sounds like a lot of running, but now it’s not marathon-style running, is it? It’s really a lot of repetitive sprints followed by a lot of standing and occasionally some light jogging. Research shows that basketball actually relies more on short-term energy sources (85% ATP/CP and anaerobic glycolysis) and a bit on intermediate energy systems (15% aerobic glycolysis). In other words, if your trainer asks you to run laps to condition yourself, you’re wasting your time.

6. Identify and train the type of force used in your sport. Most athletes equate strength or being strong at maximal strength. In other words, how much weight can you lift? However, there are many different types of strength, such as maximal strength, starting strength, explosive strength, speed-strength, speed-strength, and strength endurance.

Focusing on the wrong type of strength training may improve performance in the weight room, but it does little to improve athletic performance. For example, you don’t need a 300-pound bench press (high levels of maximal strength) to drive a golf ball 300 yards, but you do require higher levels of speed strength and explosive strength than the norm. Therefore, most of a golfer’s strength training should be designed around increasing levels of strength-speed if increasing driving distance is to be the goal.

7. Hire a professional sports performance coach to design your individualized program. If you haven’t already figured it out, the proper design and implementation of a sport-specific conditioning program is not as simple as it seems. Each individual athlete brings a unique set of skills to the table, so “cookie cutter” programming doesn’t work.

Each sport has very specific needs for optimal performance. Only those who are trained to identify these skills and needs can truly provide you with an optimal training program. Without proper guidance, your conditioning program becomes a “roll of the dice.” Indeed, a poorly designed sport-specific conditioning program can reduce your ability to perform at your best on game day. If you’ve learned anything from this special report, consult with a professional sports performance coach or strength and conditioning coach to make every play the best it can be.

Best of luck
JZ