Preparing for Your Best Season is More Than Hard Work

Weight trainingby Mike Pimentel, LATC, CSCS
Sport Medicine Specialist

The weights are banging, music blaring, sweat dripping, muscles burning, legs and arms shaking. The kind of drama movies are made of…. These are the romantic images that athletes of any age feed on.

Every week I’m introduced to athletes with steeled determination to better themselves in the off-season. They are enthusiastic, goal oriented and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve.

But is that all it takes? Is it only “hard work” and “drama” that get you there? The reality is “hard work” is only a single trait in the engine of a much larger machine. “Hard work” by itself can be blind, and potentially, lead to only marginal gains in performance. There are countless individuals, young and old, who fail to hit their goals – not because they lacked the “hard work” ethic or even a goal. The missing link is their lack of appreciation of all the qualities that contribute to their success.

What if you were able to objectively look at all the qualities necessary for athletic success and integrate them in to a plan? What if you were able to ask a few simple questions that would lead you to a superior result? What are those qualities and what would the questions be?

First, let’s define the “Athletic Qualities”. Researcher, Tudor Bompa was one of the first to define these areas and Coach Ian King of Kingsports International is one of the first to provide in-depth education, appreciation and integration of the qualities.

We can divide the “Athletic Qualities” into four categories; technical, tactical, psychological and physical.

  • Technical is the particular skill set in a given sport and position. In basketball an example would be dribbling, in hockey it may be skating.
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  • Tactical is the ability to make decisions in game play, in addition to knowing specific preset “plays”.
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  • Psychological, as an example, may be their mental toughness, discipline and/or self image.
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  • Finally there is the physical quality which can be subdivided into four sub-qualities: flexibility, strength, speed and endurance.

These four athletic qualities are dependent on one another. They cannot exist exclusively. Each of the qualities are affected by the growth or lack of growth of the other qualities. Some directly - some indirectly, but all are affected. The first challenge in the planning process is identifying what quality, when changed, would provide the greatest possible outcome for all the other qualities. A possible question to ask to come to the above conclusion is, “What are the strengths and weaknesses in relation to each of the Athletic Qualities?” Working on the weaknesses will improve the remaining qualities by default.

What is often found is the athlete spends an abundance of time on what he or she is good at and avoiding other areas. Consider the following as an illustration. Let’s say each of the athletic qualities contributes equally to performance at 25% each. As discussed, the physical quality is comprised of four sub-qualities (flexibility, strength, speed, endurance) – so what is the potential contribution of each of the physical sub-qualities? – the math shows us that the contribution of each physical sub-quality is only 6.25%! (ie. 25% / 4).

Given the above - Is it possible the athlete could actually spend an abundance of time majoring in minor things? Yes! Many athletes are drawn to the romance and drama of building strength, however, it’s possible it would have the least amount of contribution to their success.

Approach your training with some objectivity as well as passion. Use your own observations and intuition in regards to your strengths and weaknesses. Then couple it with observations of others (ie. coach, trainer etc.). Design your integrated training plan based on this objective data and then implement your plan with passion and tenacity.