Conditioning Is Still Misunderstood
The credo of "do no harm" applies to coaches and volunteers across youth sport. How we prepare our athletes falls under that responsibility.
Welcome to edition 198 of The Physical Movement. Can you believe we are already in April of 2023? As we move into spring, new sport seasons start. Let’s dig into to a common issue we see and hear about in early season sport preparation.
It used to be called building up stamina. It was also doled out as punishment.
I clearly remember bag skates in junior hockey without water to “toughen us up”. The cotton mouth and feeling dizzy on the ice is not something you soon forget. The lack of water was punishment. Ironic that coaches thought it would make us focus better, when physiologically we now know it does the opposite.
Our endurance. Our conditioning. It was usually left to end of practice. Happened in college as well. When I think about it, it’s crazy. A college student has long days and practice was in late afternoon. We did not eat well usually. Go to class. We would practice daily for 45 to 1hr 15 minutes, and last 15 minutes was usually boards to boards or blue line/red line stop and starts. Basketball had suicides: baseline to foul line back to baseline to center court/baseline to far foul line and back/and then to opposite end line. Football had up downs, baseball ran poles.
While conditioning is critical in sport (defined as the body’s ability to meet and exceed the demands of the competition) it often gets confused with punishment, building toughness or with the intent of developing speed skills.
Running is the bad boy in most sports (hockey being the exception) which further exacerbates the problem with its high demand on the body (not just energy wise but also on the skeletal system).
The topic comes to mind as spring and summer sports ramp up their training and practice preparation. The beginning of the practice season always leads to reports of coaches doing too much running /sprinting as conditioning tools.
In 2023, in youth sport, we must do better.
When kids come back to a sport they have not done for months, the actual sport skills themselves are a form of conditioning.
Think of it this way. If you go dancing today with your better half, and have not danced in months, you will get exhausted just practicing your footwork to dance. The skill itself is conditioning. With some practice, the body builds its ability to meet the physical demands of the activity. But this takes time and is what we call progressive overload.
Having kids do more than just practicing specific skills does more harm than good early in the return to play. This adds too much workload to our athletes too quickly, pre-disposing them to injury and setting up a season where many of the kids won’t ever be 100%.
The Physical Movement has covered strength training myths and basics for the youth athlete, injury prevention and workload topics over the last 3 years, and will continue to do so until the message starts to get through.
Some myths that need to be cleared up:
1. Running drills are great for conditioning early on in training season.
Conditioning should not lead the training session, practicing the sport specific skills should lead the initial training. That becomes conditioning. Gradually, more conditioning can be added to the practice load, but the key word is gradual.
Thanks to friend of The Physical Movement, strength & conditioning coach and teacher Mike Boyle for keeping this topic relevant and at the forefront.
As coaches, teachers and parents, our mission should always be to do no harm.
Myth 2: Running for conditioning will help with speed development.
First of all, running in endurance drills is not sprinting. Sprint training helps with speed development.
Sprinting is maximum effort, running as hard as you can. Race to first base after a hit or to catch a ball. Accelerate to the basket for a layup. Cut across the field to knock down a pass. Chase down a loose puck, or ball in soccer. These are examples where a burst of speed is required. They are all maximum bursts over a very short time. We should train the same way. Short bursts of maximum effort.
Second: Sprint drills should be used in low doses to improve speed. Sprint drills should not be used for conditioning. 2x 10 yard sprints per practice when rested is best (2-3 times per week).
TPM spent time with Speed Coach Phil Campbell on this very topic. As a youth sport coach, spending a little time understanding speed training will make you a better coach.
Myth 3: Running is the best way to develop conditioning.
Running is one way, but it is also very hard on the body. Running increases the pounds of pressure on the lower body joints 3 to 5 times body weight, depending on how fast you run. That is a lot of pressure on our back, hips, knees, ankles and the muscles, tendons, ligaments surrounding each. There are easier ways to build conditioning (please don’t say burpees!) levels.
Bear crawls and any form of crawling is a great example. Using equipment like cycles if you have access. Isometric work will increase heart rate pretty fast as well. Anything that is specific to your sport can be turned into conditioning.
What if running is a skill in your sport? The key to any conditioning work is to gradually introduce the drill and skill so our athletes bodies can adapt.
The stories of injury early in training season makes me cringe. There are still stories of workouts being conducted in extreme heat without proper hydration. This brings me back to the mentality of 1983 junior hockey.
Monitoring workload of our athletes is another in a long list of tasks for coaches. It is our responsibility to ensure that we don’t do too much too fast.
At the end of the day, our credo is “to do no harm”.
That is not too much to ask.