Many athletes go through their entire career doing the "regular" activities like lifting weights, running, doing plyometrics, etc. These are all important to development but unfortunately there are hundreds of other ways to develop athletes that are never really pursued unless it pushed by a progressive athletic development team. Fortunately, I have been blessed to be part of a team like this for the past 6 years where we regulary integrated traditional weight lifting, functional training, Yoga, Pilates, swimming conditioning, martial arts and gymnastics. Our success at winning multiple conference championships every year and sending student athletes to top-tier athletic collegiate programs has been a result of good skills coaching, good athletes and a good multi-discipline training and conditioning program.
This summer, I took on the job of not only training and conditioning my high school athletes, I also worked with current collegiate athletes. Many of the guys already had summer programs from their coaches, and I didn't want to fuss with their programs. What I did do was to insert some training that worked on some of areas that were not focused on. We did a lot of functional training with the 3-D Lunge Matrices and 3-D footwork as well as tweaked some traditional lifts like the Power Clean.
We also did some VERY non-traditional work which consisted of:
PILATES
AQUATIC CONDITIONING
At the end of the summer, my collegiate athletes reported feeling stronger, quicker and more flexible than they ever had. Even as I checked in this fall, they are still feeling great and many are still following the program that we did this summer within reason of their primary athletic schedules.
An example schedule looked like this (including their respective school workouts):
Monday: Functional Training
Tuesday: Traditional Lifts and 3-D Lunge and Squat Matrices
Wednesday: Pilates Core work and Functional Balance Training
Thursday: 3-D Footwork, Agility, Speed and Quickness
Friday: Yoga and Aquatics
Athletes were responsible for maintaining their individual sport skills so many would do it after their workouts.
What we saw was the guys were moving better, able to recover faster and maintain a high level of skill work during tournaments and games. Additionally, injuries that had affected the guys during their seasons were able to heal properly and didn't bother them all summer and into their seasons or preseasons.
In the next few posts, I will cover in more detail what we did with YOGA, PILATES AND AQUATIC CONDITIONING and will include videos as well.
Take a look at your workouts. Are you including any cross-training to give your body a rest from its routine and give your brain a chance to create a few more neural pathways from the different activity?
If you want to jump the gun a bit, try this: Instead of going to the weightroom today, look for a beginners Pilates or Yoga class. Get there a little early and tell the teacher you dont have much experience. Teachers LOVE to have new people in their classes and most will give you a little extra attention. Afterall, we want you to come back. (Note: If you are a guy who is nervous about going into a class full of women, SWALLOW YOUR PRIDE AND GO then CHECK YOUR EGO at the door. Not to mention, the women in classes are usually beautiful and I have seen on more than one occasion people chatting it up after class. It's a win-win for everyone!)
How about swimming? Do 2 or 3 pool lengths destroy you and have you rethinking your athleticism? If so, check out TOTAL IMMERSION. It's amazing swimming instruction by revolutionary coach, Terry Laughlin. I went from struggling with 2 lengths to being able to swim a 1/2 mile easily and ready for more. There are tons of Youtube videos as well as thorough explanations of the method by Terry.
I look forward to sharing with you. If you have any thoughts or comments about how you cross-train, I'd love to hear them.
Thanks!
Will
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