Seminars, Workshop, and Class Information

Components of Athletic Performance

No matter what sports you participate in it requires a combination of the following 4 components:

• Strength
• Mobility
• Balance
• Timing

Granted each respective sports has its own unique combination of the aforementioned 4 components.

Example, a football lineman needs a significant amount of strength followed by mobility, balance, and timing. Conversely, a place kicker requires a significant amount of timing, balance, mobility, followed by strength. There is an old saying “a chain is strong as the weakest link”. An athlete must know their strengths and weaknesses. I have seen to many athletes over-train in areas where they already have significant amounts of strengths. Over a period of time if one continues to over-train there are diminishing returns of muscle imbalances, weakened immune system, fatigue, loss of motivation, and an immense amount of frustration.

I have worked around quite a few baseball athletes who will head to the weight room and do a ton bench press work and arm curls. Yet many of them neglect pull-ups, chins, rotational core work, medicine ball drills (core), posterior back work (lats, rear delts, and spinal erectors). I often ask them why is bench press important to baseball performance? Their answer is “ that’s what my high school coach has the team doing” or “I read in a muscle magazine”. These athletes training is completely out of balance and their coaches need to attend some workshops or classes on functionally training athletes. The athlete also needs to quit reading body building magazines that promotes muscle building without any functional purpose with the exception of posing on a stage and flexing. If you training is out of balance you are not maximizing your competitive athletic potential and you are increasing your risk of injury.

How are we meant to train?

The human body is a multi-dimensional design that was meant to be trained in integrative patterns of movement (compound movements), such as bending, twisting, lunging, squatting, pushing, and pulling. These are the movements that you use in athletic games and competition. Incorporating compound movements in your training sessions will train the muscle and nervous systems to fire and activate dualistically in the heat of competition. To often I see athletes training with isolated( body building movements) which trains the muscle and nervous systems to activate and fire separately which leads to poor timing/coordination and increasing injury potential. Isolation movements are exercises such as arm curls, bench press, lat pull-downs, and a few others. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here, I am not advocating anti bench press, arm curls, and lat pull-downs. There are times when you may need to isolate muscle groups to build more strength and bulk for athletic purposes, however, management is the operative word . Do not over do it while compromising other areas of your total training package.

By the way, one can also perform too much stretching, timing drills, and balance drills. Know your strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusion

Lets revisit our baseball example. What are the important components of baseball? Do you need to able to bench 300 pounds to effectively swing a bat, throw a fast ball, or throw a man out at 2nd base? Obviously the answer is no. However, you better have good timing, good balance, good mobility, and good explosive strength to bat, throw, and sprint effectively. It is matter of knowing your strengths and weaknesses.