Amazing Feats Can Be Accomplished With ATHLETICISM
By Aaron Marston
Michael Jordan seemed to dominate a basketball game almost effortlessly. Alex Rodriguez appears as if he knows where the ball is going to be hit even before contact is made. Fred Taylor leaves defenders tackling air as he cut 90 degrees while running at full speed.
How do they do it? What makes these individuals a step quicker, faster or stronger? How do they seemingly defy gravity while playing their sport? The answer is simple: athleticism.
Athleticism is composed of several key components, including agility, balance, coordination, speed, strength, endurance, power and body control. An athlete needs to be agile within a small space to avoid obstacles or defenders, and they should be quick with their decision making. A player needs to be fast for longer runs, sprints, and in transition defense.
Muscular strength helps a player to hold his or her position, and muscular power propels the athlete upward to get rebounds or forward to deliver a bone –crushing hit. Also, a player who possesses sound agility, balance and coordination will have better foot work, be more controlled with and without the ball and have better body control to change direction.
These are just a few of the psychical attributes that can be drastically improved through proper athletic development training. Benefits from athletic development training can and will be seen in players at any age and ability level.
Today’s athletes are bigger, faster and stronger than they have ever been. The benefits of strength training and conditioning is clearly evident in the professional ranks, at conditioning standpoint. Does this provide for optimal carry over onto the field or court? I would have to reply with a definitive NO.
In order to provide optimal carry over, we need to first look at the demands of any particular sport and then use science and common sense to devise a training program that allows us to meet those demands.
For the following examples, I will use soccer to illustrate this point. From a conditioning standpoint, the common practice is to have players perform long-distance runs because they have to run for 90 minutes. However, when we look at the demands of any soccer, we see that the players must actually sprint and recover by walking or jogging. This is repeated over and over throughout the game. Therefore, it only makes sense to set up the conditioning program with short interval type training using a jog or walk for recovery.
From a strength standpoint, athletes may spend one to two hours in the weight room in the off-season. However, these same athletes could get much more carryover into their sport if they spent only an hour weight training with the lifts that are absolutely necessary, and the rest of the time focusing on functional strength training.
This could be sprinting while being resisted with stretch bands, performing sport skills at a slower speed while wearing a light weighted vest or performing drills in the sand or running in water for added resistance. This type of training will allow the athletes to train the muscles needed in sport the way that they will be used in sport.
Athletes at the highest lever are currently using this type of training to push themselves to peak performance. However, athletic development training should not be reserved for these elite athletes. It can be safely utilized at virtually any level of sport. Today more than ever, it is critical to partake in a structured athleticism program. With the results being increased performance and decreased injuries, how can one afford not to?
The Hit Center in Jacksonville Florida provides a venue for an athlete to get that caliber of training. For the past five years, The HIT Center has been developing athletes in the Jacksonville area. Ranging from little league all the way to the pros, The HIT Center has training protocols that focus on sport-specific functional training. The HIT Center is the off season training home to many of the Jacksonville Jaguars as well as the growing number of Wake Forest Demon Deacons in the First Coast. “I have trained in my share of training facilities throughout the country and I can honestly say that all of them were good from a conditioning stand point, but The HIT Center was where I noticed a huge difference in my overall athleticism” says Uche Nwaneri of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The HIT Center is Located at 9446 Philips Highway. Contact us at 475-9600 or thehitcenters.com