Congratulations to the ASAP Girls who made the All-Foothill League Team!
Most Valuable Player: Shelby LeDuff (Valencia)
First Team:
· Megan Lavo (Valencia)
· Christina Worth (Valencia)
· Allison Toledo (Hart)
Second Team:
· Katie Hank (Valencia)
· Casey David (Hart)
Honorable Mention:
· Jen Drake (Hart)
· Nicole Delange (Valencia)
Train Hard-Train Smart
These transverse plane (rotational movement) exercises need to be incorporated in every athletes training program.
Rotational training is not just important for baseball, softball, tennis and golf athletes. Those specific sports require an athlete to be efficient in the transverse plane and this is obvious to most people. What about other sports such as volleyball, soccer and football. Look at all three of these pictures and notice the amount of rotation taking place at the hip, core, and shoulder girdle.
Train and develop these movment patterns.
Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com
Here is a simple body weight workout that incorporates conditioning with strength training.
· 30 second interval of body weight squats
· 30 second interval of push ups
· 30 second interval of a front bridge matrix (email me for further description)
· Complete 6 rounds (continuous running clock) – Calculate the total number of repetitions
· *No rest in between stations – when you rest you are just lowering your total score*
It is not rocket science. This is a very simplistic idea of how to incorporate a blend of metabolic conditioning and strength training into a workout routine. Try this same routine in two weeks and try to beat your total repetitions. This is an easy example of how to monitor your fitness progresses.
Train Hard-Train Smart
After a doctor has diagnosed the injured knee (with an MRI or manual tests for ligament structure) and determined there is no structural damage, it is time to find out why there pain in the knee. The thing about this knee pain is that the knee itself is not the problem. It’s easy for doctors to say “Oh there is no structural damage, just have your son/daughter do some exercises to strength the knee like leg extension or hamstring work.” This is just trying to mask the symptoms instead of resolving the problem. In fact, those recommendations are terrible because you may be putting more stress on the injured knee – place shear forces on your knee by doing leg extensions or partial leg extensions and isolate your hamstring muscle by doing knee flexion exercises. First off, your hamstrings primary role in functional movements is not concentric knee flexion so don’t waste your time doing hamstring curls. You are training the body to do something that it would not normally do in a baseball game or volleyball match. Instead, let us start to look above and below the knee for what is causing the problem. Most times chronic knee pain is the result of dysfunction of the ankle or hip joint. We need to make sure the ankle and hip have the proper amount of mobility and stability. The pain may also be coming from the core, back or even the shoulder. That’s right – shoulder girdle dysfunction can cause lower body injuries. Once we have determined the weakness within the kinetic chain, then it is appropriate to design a program to alleviate this knee pain.
Train Hard-Train Smart,
Most athletes want to be strong and fast. You need to train to improve both variables – speed and strength. The ability to generate maximum strength and produce high speeds are different motor abilities. For younger athletes, they will likely see improvements in speed and strength when performing heavy strength training. This is the case because the majority of young athletes have no prior lifting experience and are relatively very weak – At that point anything they do safely will help. However, the same athlete will see greater performance gains if also training with high-velocity movements (training the rate of force development). It is important to incorporate Olympic lift variations, plyometrics and speed drills into a performance program. Exercises that enhance the rate of force development become even more important for athletes that already have a solid strength base. For stronger athletes, their speed will start to peak if they only continue to incorporate heavy resistance training. It is very important to incorporate high-velocity movements if an athlete is looking to improve their overall speed, quickness, and agility.
Take home message: Athletes need a balanced training program to improve their overall athletic development. They need to increase their relative strength (incorporating heavy resistance exercises) and improve their rate of force development (incorporating high-velocity movements and exercises).
Congratulations to Valencia Girls Volleyball for dominating West Ranch last night and winning league with an undefeated record.
Congratulations to Hart Girls Volleyball for dominating Saugus last night and hopefully securing a playoff spot with this victory (we’ll find out on Sunday).
The only time athletes (that require quick bursts of speed to be successful at their sport) should be doing low intensity jogging for an extended period of time is when there is systematic planning to put this type of workout in place. A couple examples of reasons to plan medium/low intensity “cardio” would include days of recovery, regeneration, or flushing (elimination of lactic acid accumulation). Essentially all three of these words are the same thing; however, different coaches have different terminology.
Too often, I see teams running laps around the track or the field for conditioning purposes. Unless your goal is to be the best jogger in the sport of baseball, soccer, basketball, etc. you should stop jogging around the track and start doing sprint intervals. Some people say that continuous paced jogging/running will increase your VO2 max (maximum ability to use oxygen – develop your aerobic system). It has been shown that intensity is the far more important variable for increasing your VO2 max. In addition, especially for sports such as basketball and soccer, you can only have a positive influence on your lactate threshold when you exercise at or above your current threshold. The lactate threshold is the point at which your lactate production begins to significantly exceed lactate consumption. (Everyone knows the feeling of lactic acid production – when your muscles become tight/stiff and it begins to affect your performance)
The bottom line is that your body responds to the type of stimulus that you provide it. Do you want to be slow or fast? Think about this and design your program with that in mind.
Train Hard-Train Smart,
www.asap-pt.com
“I’m going to do cardio at the gym.” What the heck does that mean? For most individuals it means flopping yourself on the elliptical or treadmill for 30 minutes while you read your favorite gossip magazine or watch Oprah. It is not efficient and certainty not effective. You are not going to melt the fat off your body if do cardio at a low intensity for a long period of time – you’re just going to waste your time. Start incorporating interval training, which is efficient and effective. It is efficient because you can accomplish more work in less time. Try doing 10 hard sprints for 30 seconds with one minute of rest in between repetitions. You will only be working out for 15 minutes (5 minutes of high intensity exercise and 10 minutes of low intensity recovery. It is effective because you will burn more calories in those 15 minutes than in your 30 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio that you are currently doing. You can manipulate your interval training by changing a few different variables
Interval training is even more important for competitive athletes that rely on quick sprints to be successful in their sport. If you are an athlete (except cross-country and long-distance track), you are wasting your time and hurting your performance if you are doing low/medium intensity cardio unless it is for a recovery workout. I will talk more about this during the next post.
Train Hard-Train Smart,
