Knowledge
Conditioning Conundrum
Every year as the fall approaches, high school coaches around the country embark on a quest to get their teams "into shape." For some, this means timed 3-mile runs and for others it means set after set of sprints. Many coaches do this because it is what they did in high school or because they saw or heard about another coach doing it. What is almost universal is that coaches don't stop to think about the demands of their sport and the training effect that their conditioning work has. After all what does being "in shape" even mean?
The answer to that question is actually surprisingly simple. Simply put, an athlete who is "in shape" has the ability to complete the demands of competition while suffering as little performance drop-off from the beginning of the game to the end. After all, it doesn't matter what your mile time is, it matters if you can make that foul in the fourth quarter! So now that we have the definition of being in shape, we can use that to determine what our conditioning methods should entail. The first step is to evaluate the demands of competition. This is not entitled to be an in-depth treatise on biochemistry or the energy systems involved in sports, but here are a few factors to consider:
The work:rest ratio encountered during a typical game
For example, the typical college volleyball rally lasts between 6 and 10 seconds with about a 12 to 15-second break between plays. Many of these rallies will be shorter when players miss serves or get aces. In high-school volleyball, the rest interval between plays is typically longer, as are the rallies themselves. The average football play lasts somewhere around 4 or 5 seconds with up to 30 seconds between plays. Is your conditioning work for these sports improving the energy systems used in these work:rest situations or are you improving your capacity to do work in an energy system that will rarely or never be touched in actual competition?
Expected overall workload encountered in competition
An athlete should train for workload that will be encountered during competition. For example, an outfielder may perform somewhere between 10 and 20 maximal sprints over the course of a baseball game. In contrast, some studies suggest that college basketball players may run upwards of 3 miles over the course of a game. Don't you think the conditioning workouts of these players should be different?
Heart rate
This is an aspect that many people don't consider, but more people should. Research has indicated that competition performance is often related to an athlete's ability to control his or her heart rate. An elevated heart rate can cause motor skills to be altered, making technical skills more difficult to execute. This relates to training in two ways. First of all, many coaches make the mistake of trying to teach athletes new skills in ways that resemble conditoning, when the heart rate is significantly elevated. This is self-defeating! However, performing on an already-learned skill under fatigue and conditions of elevated heart rate may help that athlete in a game. Science seems to back the classic drill of shooting foul shots immediately after running sprints.
Conditioning work is vitally important for all athletes, but it must be for a purpose and that purpose must be to prepare an athlete for competition. No team gets points for having the best 3-mile times, just as one does not get credit for having the highest bench press. The purpose of training is raise an athlete's peak performance and to make sure that the athlete can continue to perform at a comparable level for the entire duration of competition. The final questions I offer to all coaches are these: what is the purpose of your conditioning work? Are you doing it to make your athletes tired? Or to improve competition performance?
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