Everyone loves sport in one form or another and the majority of our population will have taken part or been involved with it at some time in their life whether it was at school, college or becoming a weekend warrior to play with some friends in a casual competition . Conditioning is a term that is used to describe preparation or training to increase our ability or skill level at a physical activity. Put together the two terms and we get Sports Conditioning and this is defined as any activity that enhances or Promotes our body to be better conditioned to any sports activity, whether that is to run, to jump to throw push to kick or to punch better.
Sports conditioning is not just performing an exercise to be better at a sport. In fact, because the movement requirements in sport are mostly activities that our bodies do on an everyday basis, the more we train these skills, the easier it is for us to get fitter stronger and faster! We just have to train them the right way.
So lets break down the fundamentals of everyday movement and once we look at these, we will see that they are the same as life skills we perform everyday. These include, balance, speed, agility, deceleration, power, strength acceleration. All of these are key components to an increase in sports conditioning in our competition whatever that may be. These drills for sports conditioning however need to be trained in the right order progressively and also mastered at a lower speed before moving to a more intense level or at the level that this skill is performed at in your sport.
So here is the key to getting that increase in Sports conditioning. Balance needs to come first as the component to train. To have better balance through all ranges of motion and in different directions allows us as the player to control and own our offensive and defensive position by being stronger and able to react more quickly that your opponent.
To train balance you need to be out of balance and have your body go through movements that have random angles and directions creating movement that our body has to react quickly to. If we are not in balance the body can not carry out a movement efficiently as a unit either with greater speed agility or strength without an injury occurring. Balance drills and equipment that will help us train sports conditioning include agility ladders mini hurdles the Bosu Integrated balance trainer and slingshot harnesses. These pieces of equipment help create an unstable environment to force the body to work out of balance and adjust to make the body learn to adapt to these challenges.
Once the balance has been mastered, people can progress to challenges which include speed work, deceleration and power acceleration and these sport conditioning drills can also use the BOSU Balance trainers, agility hurdles and slingshot harnesses.
As long as we ensure that the sport conditioning drills are graduated and not too difficult to achieve typically our body learns the tasks and is able to be better at sports conditioning and overall movement. So if you want to play better soccer, run faster, ride harder or lift heavier, the key is to combine sports condition with traditional strength and fitness training.