„Importance of athletes physical self preparation during the exceptionally long „off season” period and extremely difficult training conditions”. Part 1 by: Strength and Conditioning Coach licenced by Australian Strength & Conditioning Association and Polish Academy of Physical Education My name is Łukasz Orzechowski and I am former basketball player, and presently I am strength and conditioning coach licenced by Australian Strength & Conditioning Association and Polish Academy of Physical Education. I am also sports nutritionist. In the years of my coaching career, I was working with professional athletes at the highets international level, including Polish national team and international champion and medalist. Years of my sportsman, coaching career and real passion for weights training, allowed me develop a certain point of view for better understanding training process, which I try to implement to sportsmen I working with. Unpredictability of sports can be the result of many different causes and affect on athletes in various areas. Currently We are dealing with one of the most unanticipated reason of it, which is worldwide Covid-19 virus pandemic. Pandemic which has an impact on every aspect of peoples life, including sports environment. The premature ending of the season caused an „off season” period will be much longer than usually is. In this situation extremely important is a self awareness of athletes, how to use this period well, to prepare his body to future effort in preparation and game season. Proper approach is significant for each athlete to avoid injury in future and sustain shape on the appropiate level. You must be aware important think: the more of Your shape You lose at this time, the more difficult will be get back to the desirable shape, or even achive shape from last season or higher, could not be possible at all. You must create a solid base which will be fundamental, and let You reach top of Your possibility and stay healthy for all game season. What can We do when all gyms and weightrooms are closed, and many restriction has been inposed ? Can we handle with it at all ? It is undoubtedly more difficult, but I will try to show You how can deal with this situation. We will not need specialized equipment and a lot of room, we use our bodyweight, or simple stuff like towels, resistance bands, piece of twine, bucket maybe piece of some board and just some space of room. There are few different areas of athletes physical preparation which must be working on, to make his shape complete, and I will give You some tips, examples and even full solutions for this. Longer „off season” means We can work for other aspects more closely and for longer time. Is the best opportunity to work for Your underdone areas which usually there were no time to working on. Before I go to the each elements which I would like to present, I must start from very importat basics of whole structure of training cycle which make it arrangad and orginized. Planning is importat for our work won’t not be chaotic and allowed us achive expected results. Tip 1) If We have, for example 14 weeks of our „off season” We want to plan, let’s start from establish priorities and place them in specific time of cycle and duration for this 14 weeks. Plan it in: microcycles (1 week duration) and mesocycles (2-4 weeks or even longer). Whole 14 weeks is macrocycle. Then place the each element of macrocykle in right order. Example: - mesoscycle 1, weeks 1-2/3 (2-3 microcycles) is MOBILITY priority, - mesocycle 2, weeks 3/4-5 (2-3 microcycles) is STABILITY priority, - mesocycle 3, weeks 6-14 (8 microcycles) is STRENGTH and ENDURANCE priority. Ratio between this two abilities could be 50/50 or 60/40 in 6-10 weeks, and then 40/60 10-14 weeks, or different way. Priority doesn’t mean that We work only on one specific element in micro or mesocycle, and other aren’t trained at all. There are trained, but with less frequency and intencity. We just put more attention on our priority part, do more then in other periods. Tip 2) Take into consideration progresion of Your training. If You are able to do 20 push ups in each series as Your max, then don’t do max of Your reps at the beginning of mesocycle ! You can do, for example 15 reps in week one, then 16-17 reps in week two, then 18 reps in week third, ect. In that simple way You ensure one of the basic rule of training, which is progression. Other way is making constant numeber of reps, for example 10 but each week adding little more of weights on You. Tip 3) Care about Your safety, don’t do more then You can ! Example – don’t push much more over Your range of motion when mobilize joints, try to keep the range of motion and just push forward a little more in each rep. Stop if You feel pain ! Tip 4) I recommended exercising without shoes or us that kind with a very thin sole. It will stabilize the whole body more, will be a lot safer for joins and develop stabilization of the foot. The worst shoes for weight, stability ect. trainings is shoes with every kinds of cushion. Let’s start with basics – mobility and stability 1) Mobility. Throught the years of my working experience, mobility was one of the most ignore aspect of the training process, both by the other coaches and players as well. Very offene I was meeting with athlets with poor joints mobility. There were problems with proper performance even of basic exercises. While poor joints mobility could be one of the injury reason and directly affects on the range of motion during performace specific discipline movements, which become less effective. Now, We have a lot of time to improve it. There are many other mobility tests which every athletes should be done by his physical therapaist or strangth and conditioning coach, to define potentially areas to working on. I will not present the tests, but I will concentrate more on exercises. Do 1-3 exercises of each area with about 15 repson each practice You has planed. You can also add foam rolling as a preparation. Here are some exaples: 1) ankle mobilty: 2) shoulders and thoracic spine mobility: Test: Exercises: 3) Hips mobility: 2) Stability: Some time ago, when I was working with professional basketball club, We had the game with terrible free thorws shooting percentage for all team. Next practice head coach ordered to shoot a lot of free thorws to make this skill better. After practice I said “train more core stability, guys...”. Head coach made a jokes then, and laughing asking, what stability has to do with free throws skill ? My comment was also some kind of joke, but there is a lot of truth in that. The more stabile Your body is, the more You can control it. Super important when You are tired durring the game. How can You make a good statistics when You are under the game stress, tired and Your body can even stand stabil ? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim that the strong core is most important element of free throws shooting, that would be silly, but it seems reasonable to work on every component which affect on You. Your shape depends on many components, not only technical or tactical skills, but also physical preparation elements in the same piece. So, each time if You avoid them in Your trainings, lose some piece of total shape. That could be pretty big a piece, believe me. All studies made in team sports are agree with each other – “strong core directly affect on better quality of movements and specific sports skills especially when You are fatigue”. Shortly lets back to mentioned example of free throws shooting ones again. If You want, You can try by yourself making simple test. Shoot 10 free throw first, and then shoot another 10 standing on bosu ball or fitness ball. Try like unbalance and unstability affect on You. Speaking about stability, We must also make awareness that is super important component in injury prevention. It’s not only popular and most often mentioned and trained core stability, but also stability of Your shoulers, legs and especially hips. Studies shows that weak gluteus muscles, which are the strongest hips stability group, make about 75% causes of knees injurys in team sports !! That is the huge reason to make this group strong and don’t disrespect to train them. If You can control all Your body in unpredictible condition during the game, more secure You are. … If You can control Your body: What if You can not… ? In this part of article, I will present You some core exercises, shoulder and legs stability. (Although gluts muscle group is very importat for hip stability, more about it in part 2) Exercises: All rights reserved
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-