Do you play football, basketball, golf, swimming, baseball, cricket, track and field? Whichever sport you participate in, if it requires explosive power, chances are you can benefit from weight training. Even endurance athletes for whom strength and power is not a primary attribute can benefit from strong abdominal and lower back muscles -- everyone can.
This article describes the basic principles of weight training for sports while using common sports to demonstrate those principles. After you read it, consider which weight training exercises you can do to improve your sport based on these ideas.
Here are weight training programs I have developed for various sports. Your feedback is always welcome.
Specificity Rules, OK?
This is a general principle in sports training. It means that if you can train in a way that imitates your activity when competing in the sport, then you should spend most of your time training in that way. Runners run, swimmers swim, javelin throwers throw, team sports practice moves.
Even so, aspects of fitness cannot always be gained from event-specific training patterns. Physical conditioning usually requires activities that supplement specific training. Aerobic and strength training are examples of this. Even swimmers run and lift weights to improve their aerobic and strength fitness.
Determine the Primary Performance Muscle Groups
Say your sport is football -- American, Rugby or Soccer -- they all have one thing in common: running, sprinting, twisting, side-stepping, turning and setting for a tackle. It is absolutely essential that the chain of muscles used in these activities, which I will call the "anterior and posterior chain," are developed for strength, stability and power and probably endurance as well. I'm talking about the lower back, gluteals (butt), the hip flexors, the hamstrings, quadriceps, muscles of the back, and front of the thighs, as well as the abdominals. This is the powerhouse upon which most of your running athletic movement and performance will depend.
Sure, if you're a linebacker or rugby forward you need strong shoulders and neck muscles as well, but every person playing running team sports needs that strong mid-section chain of muscles which are their 'go-to' muscles in the first instance. Basketball, hockey, baseball, skiing and more can benefit from stability and strength in these muscles.
The best exercises for developing these muscles are the core lifts, the squat and deadlift and variations. An all-round program may also help, but these big two lifts will work wonders for leg, hip, butt, back and abdominal strength.
In another example, swimming, you may wish to consider your requirements according to swimming stroke. Breast, butterfly, backstroke and freestyle may have slightly different requirements; and then you should consider starts and turns and also the length of the event as well. In all swimmers the shoulders, triceps and back muscles, especially the latissimus dorsi just under the armpits are very important. Cable exercises are often good simulations for swimming functionality for the arm stroke and kicking actions.
Consider Requirements for Strength, Power and Endurance
Your sport may be essentially a strength and power sport such as sprinting or shot put, or the requirements may be more a mix of strength and endurance, which is the case with many team sports. The more dominant strength athletes may require a program in which weight training exercise programs consist of heavy weights and a small number of repetitions, say 3 or 4RM, with which to build nervous system adaptation to heavy loads.
For developing power, the speed of the lift or exercise is important. Power, for example, is an important consideration for tackling football players yet also for the batter's swing in baseball or the batsman's stroke in cricket or a golfer's swing. Tiger Woods has demonstrated what a good weight training program can do for power improvement in a somewhat unlikely sport.
"Strength endurance" is the maintenance of strength consistently over time and is developed by training with moderate to low weights with higher repetitions, say 15-20RM. Running team sport players may benefit from strength endurance weight training and, controversially, so may middle distance track athletes.
Consider Requirements for Injury Prevention
Injury prevention is another aspect of weight training often ignored. While not contributing to primary increases in performance for sports, injury prevention can certainly assist sports performance by allowing consistent training at crucial times in the event calendar.
Strengthening highly susceptible muscle groups such as the lower back and hamstrings, the shoulder rotator cuff complex and the quadriceps muscles that control knee joint function could provide performance benefits in the absence of primary strength, power or endurance gains. Keep this in mind when weight training for a sport for which you may not initially consider weights to be an advantage. Endurance running, cycling or swimming might be examples.
Summing up, weight training programs should be prepared specifically for individuals taking into consideration the sport, the role -- in team sports for example -- or the specific event within a sporting discipline such as track and field or swimming or gymnastics. I trust the above information provides a good start.
