There is no longer any doubt that targeted and effective resistance training is not only beneficial but essential for improving athletic performance. Sports like rugby, football, and rowing have employed weightlifting techniques in some form for what seems like forever. However, these are sports where the size of the athlete was seen in the past as “bigger is better”, hence the enthusiasm for lifting weights.

Fortunately, even trainers in sports who have traditionally ignored weight training for fear of “bulking” now realize that weight training can be timed in such a way as to cause dramatic improvements in performance without large increases in weight. muscle mass.

It is not my intention to provide a large body of studies confirming the importance of weight training in sport, as there are many very detailed books out there.

I am most interested in giving you the practical knowledge you need to train hard and effectively, whether you have a keen interest in a particular sport or just want to find the most effective and time-efficient ways to achieve specific fitness goals. .

In recent times we have seen the rise of Rafael Nadal as the number 1 in the world of tennis after 4 years of dominance by Roger Federer. I have no doubt that aside from his raw talent, Nadal’s intense training in the gym has contributed greatly to his success. Whenever his matches are shown on TV, the conversation inevitably turns to his impressive physique and his seemingly endless supply of energy on the pitch!

Speaking of tennis, I am reliably informed that Laura Robson, recent winner of Junior Wimbledon in 2008, has spent the last year training with kettlebells.

Closer to home, and on a level that is probably more relevant to you, my personal training clients at BodyClocq in Nottingham have experienced fantastic results on the sports field. Some of these people take up the sport as a serious (or not so serious) hobby.

For example, I currently train a guy whose main concern is fat loss. A combination of good nutritional practices and kettlebell training has resulted in a fat loss of around 3 stone.

However, a notable side effect of the power swings has been my client’s delight with the dramatic increases in the length of his golf swing off the tee. At this point, I have yet to do direct rotational power exercises with it, but we’ve done a lot of work with kettlebell windmills and pull ups to improve hip mobility, hamstring flexibility, and core stabilization, all key elements on the golf course.

Another BodyClocq customer who trains with my business partner recently embarked on a structured weight training routine for the first time. As a rider who weighs between 55 and 60kg, he can’t afford to add unnecessary weight to his frame.

A combination of kettlebell swings and sprints in his training has dramatically increased his strength and power on the bike, culminating in second place at the British National Pursuit Championships and third place at the European Championships. The energy output from the corners has been particularly notable according to our client.

So what’s going on here and why is weight training so important?

Again, I don’t intend to throw too much science at you, but it will help your learning if you understand the key concepts behind weight training in sport.

Each sport has its individual requirements, but I’ll take some of the most popular British sports as examples of how weight training can improve performance on the sports field.

Football/soccer (and most team sports)

Most team sports involve repeated bursts of speed over short distances with periods of low-intensity activity in between.

Soccer players, for example (barring the goalie), must move across the field at a relatively low intensity before being called into action, typically for 5-20 seconds at a time. Clearly different positions will have slightly different requirements.

However, at a basic level, each player needs the ability to produce fast sprints repeatedly for 90 minutes. This is known as power endurance – the ability to produce power for the entire duration of the match. The inability to maintain speed in sprints can be the difference between winning or conceding late goals that change the outcome in an instant.

Before you can develop endurance power, you must have power in your muscles. If you were listening in physics class you know that…

Power = Force x Distance Time

In other words, to maximize power over a given distance, you need to be able to maximize the force your muscles can produce while minimizing the time it takes to complete the movement.

Another equation you may remember is that…

Force = Mass x Acceleration

Now you might be thinking (and rightly so) that the mass you are required to move on the sports field remains (relatively) constant, since it is your body weight.

Much can be improved by training with body weight by using ‘plyometrics’ such as skipping, skipping and jumping to increase the acceleration part of the equation. However, these gains are limited and, at a certain point, the introduction of extra weight work in some form is crucial if continued gains are to be made.

The force that a muscle can produce will be greatly increased if you are able to move increasing amounts of resistance explosively. This requires strength in the muscles, which can only be greatly increased by working against external resistance (weights).

This is a good time to point out that as an athlete you shouldn’t be looking to lift heavier and heavier weights. He needs to lift heavy weights to improve strength and power, but his focus must be on his ability to recruit his muscles quickly and explosively, as required on the athletic field. For this reason, if you’re doing squats, for example, be sure to move the weight as quickly as possible. If it takes more than a second to carry the weight through the full range of motion of the muscle, you should reduce the weight until you can perform the exercise quickly but under control.

Before things get too confusing, let’s review a bit of what we’ve discussed so far.

Power endurance is the fundamental requirement of most sports, particularly team sports.

The power must be developed before we can ‘bear’ it or repeat it for the required period of time.

power requires strength

Beyond certain limited gains with body weight, strength gains require weight training.

You should now understand why everything in sport comes down to strength. If a netball player lacks the power to accelerate his body high enough to jump and catch a ball, there is no point in wondering how to improve his performance in the final minutes of the game! Build strength, turn it into power, then build the ability to do it over and over again.

On a more basic level, if you aspire to do twenty bodyweight pushups, you need to be able to generate the strength to do one repetition correctly before you can build the strength endurance to do twenty repetitions.

Golf

Golf differs from most team sports in that while repetition is an element of the game, the repetitions are much more spread out in terms of time between them.

Going back to my golfing client, aside from the skills required for a good “short game” around the greens, you need the ability to hit the ball from the tee to the fairway as close to the green as possible. This requires a single, powerful move with significant rest time in between. Therefore, power endurance is not required in the same way as in rugby, for example.

If we can develop a powerful swing off the tee, my player has a lot of recovery time before he has to tee off on the next hole. While you have shots to make to complete the current hole, they don’t require as much effort as they do on the tee.

Tennis

Just like in team sports, a tennis player needs to repeatedly generate power in various forms throughout the game. The difference is that while soccer players, for example, have longer rest periods between bursts of activity, tennis players have very little chance of recovery. This requires a strong anaerobic base of fitness that allows them to recover and be able to generate power over and over again as they move through each point.

If we dissect a real point, we can see why power is crucial for a tennis player. First of all, the power required on the serve is often the difference between a good player and a great player with a powerful weapon in their arsenal. Contrary to first impressions, a powerful serve comes from the ability to transfer power from the legs through the hips and into the upper body. It doesn’t just require a strong shoulder! However, a strong shoulder is important, and weight training of a more preh-based structure is also crucial.

Once the serve is complete, assuming the ball returns, a tennis player should now be able to perform repetitive sprints of up to five metres, sometimes for up to 30 seconds in a long rally. This is a great power endurance test.

Having completed a sprint to reach the ball, hip drive and rotational power are also required to play a powerful shot.

So you can see that every facet of the game of tennis can ultimately be broken down into strength and power and the ability to generate power for anywhere from one hour to five hours in some of the men’s five-set epics. .