Staying Sharp – In-Season Strength and Conditioning

A solid pre-season can set an athlete apart from their competition and keep a team poised to dominate the upcoming season, however this does not complete the high-performance puzzle as the season progresses.

There is still room within a season to continue to progress your athletic profile to stay sharp and mitigate injury, which in turn improves overall performance which is the overarching goal of any training undertaken by an athlete or team.

As a preface, increasing your total training load as a season begins is not appropriate, so the ability to maintain athletic progression initially forms within appropriate progressive loading over a period.

Availability

Maintaining sport specific strength and conditioning throughout a season significantly reduces your risk of injury, particularly when a physiotherapist is involved in your S&C process as they are here at Precision Athletica.

This allows for seamless delivery of strength and rehabilitation training to not only remain injury free but to continue to develop as an athlete. Robustness is a key buzz word being used in the S&C space amongst coaches and clinicians and is simply the ability to handle load.

If you can increase your ability to handle load, your robustness, not only are you injured less often but you increase your overall availability to train and improve your athletic profile more often and at a higher critical intensity than someone who is less robust.

Athletic Potential

There is still room week to week to develop as an athlete during a season without jeopardising performance. Similarly to technical and skill work, the ‘use it or lose it’ concept applies to S&C adaptations that have been gained across a preseason and these physiological capacities require a level of attention within the weekly cycle of competition.

These capacities are sport and individual dependent however range from high-speed running volumes such as maximal velocity running to anatomical adaptations such as musculotendinous stiffness.

While these capacities differ in their overall impact on an athlete’s load, the appropriate planning during a season schedule can effectively include desired physical capacities and ensure these improve and optimise performance.

Want To Know More

This is an introduction to the concept of staying sharp and strength training during the season.

If you would like to know more or to start training to improve your in-season / pre-season / post-season performance, please contact our Strength Coaches including Dylan Bennett, who wrote this article.

How Do I Book An Appointment with Precision Athletica for Help?

We’re taking the health of our clients, members and staff very seriously and our preference would be for you to call to book an appointment so that we can make sure to explain our approach to keeping you safe. You can call our bookings team to schedule a session:

• Customer Support Centre: 02 9764 5787
• OR email us at: olympicpark@precisionathletica.com.au

Online Consultations

Evolving with the current environment, we are also now offering online appointments, meaning that we can support anyone who is unable to leave their home. Sessions are done via our state of the art Telehealth system and as long as you have a laptop or tablet with an inbuilt camera, or a phone with camera, we can help!

To learn more about online consultations, please call us on any of the numbers listed above.