Athletic Performance

ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE

You don’t have to be a current competitive athlete to train like one. Athletic training can be described as exercises based around movements that typically engage fast-twitch muscles. Common athletic movements are sprints, jumps, agility, and Olympic lifting to name a few.

THE ROLE OF PROGRESSIONS

If your goal is to see improvement, you MUST make sure you are progressing your workouts. The rate of progressions may vary from every 2 to 4 weeks and it can mean increasing weight, sets, repetitions. Keeping a workout journal will help you keep track of your progress.

BASELINES OR EFFORT

If you’re a competitive athlete, you will want to establish a few baselines to quantify your progress. For example, a basketball player may do a few change-of-direction tests and a vertical jump test to establish baselines and compare against when reassessing progress.

If your goal is improved fitness, then you will use perceived effort to determine if your workouts are effectively training the muscle types intended which are fast twitch muscles. To measure effort for fast twitch movements, ask yourself this question – “after doing 3 reps, can I turn around and repeat the SAME effort with less than 30 seconds of rest?”. If your answer is yes, you’re not giving enough effort and therefore you’re training the wrong muscle type, slow twitch. You’re also training the wrong system. Remember, slow twitch is endurance/aerobic, fast twitch is anaerobic. The goal of this type of athletic performance training is to train fast twitch muscles.

UNDERSTANDING TRAINING OUTCOMES

Athletic performance and endurance training are greatly beneficial to your training. After a consistent athletic training period, you can expect to maintain, develop and improve your full body coordination, muscle definition, metabolism, power, and speed.