By Vaughn Gray

In a way, training for sports is simple. Sadly, a lot of the training serious athletes, and even professional athletes, do is based on outdated thinking. Our simple principles and action steps will show you how to train both in the gym and on the field/floor to achieve your performance goals.

Sports Training Principles:

1. Train the motions you use in your sport.

It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how few athletes follow this rule. If you’re going to be lifting weights in the gym, why not perform the motions you will need on the field? For instance, if you are a basketball volleyball player who needs to jump high, train your legs by jumping while holding dumbbells (see our Improving Quickness and Leaping Ability Tutorial for more). Or if you play hockey, golf, or baseball, do explosive rotation exercises on a cable machine to increase the power of your swing. Training the motions you use in your sport with increased resistance while in the gym will tailor both your musculature and your nervous system to your sport of choice. This will translate into increased quickness and power on the field or floor.

For most sports, you’ll want to combine cardiovascular training with weight training. To get the most out of your weight training workouts, avoid doing them after long cardio or practice sessions. Your body will be tired, and you won’t be able to move as quickly. The key to making motions like jump squats, explosive cable rotations, and other performance enhancing exercise work is to do them as quickly and powerfully as you can. These motions work primarily by training your nervous system to coordinate your muscles. Rapid, high intensity movements challenge the nervous system, and, over time, the nervous system adapts to these motions by becoming more responsive and adept at coordinating the muscular contractions used in the motion that is trained. This translates into increased quickness and power. After a practice or cardio session, you’ll be too fatigued to move explosively. At this point, any performance enhancing exercises you do won’t end up really challenging your nervous system. As a result, you won’t get much benefit out of your workout.

"Two a days”, in which you practice and/or do cardio in the morning, then lift and perform explosive training exercises in the afternoon, are the most effective way to train. Performance exercises are best done in the afternoon, when most people’s bodies perform at their best. Practice and cardio are best done in the morning because they so powerfully stimulate metabolism, which can interfere with getting a good nights rest.  If you need to reverse this schedule (training exercises in the morning, practice/cardio in the afternoon), try to finish afternoon practice/cardio sessions by 6pm so that your body has a chance to calm down for 4 hours or so before you go to bed.

Intense sessions will yield more benefits than longer sessions. 45 minutes to one hour is generally optimal. Training longer than this without a long break can actually hurt performance. A hard one hour morning session, followed by a hard one hour session in the afternoon provides enough conditioning for most sports. Of course you’ll need to do some long duration cardio training to make sure you have the endurance to finish out games, but twice a week is enough. Most teams scrimmage or play games twice per week, and this should provide all the long duration training that you need. If you are following an intense practice and game schedule, be sure to set aside rest days whenever you can. Days off will not only refresh your body, leading to improved performance in games to follow; they will also give your body a chance to respond to all of the training you’ve been doing. Four intense training days per week, with three days completely off from exercise, is optimal for most peoples bodies.