Personal training for athletes should look very different from what you see a powerlifter doing on a regular basis. Powerlifting is one sport where the training and skill development are the same thing. The better a powerlifter gets at a specific lift, the better they will perform in their sport. If a hockey player however gets really strong at deadlifting, that doesn’t necessarily translate to being a better hockey player. Yet even professional athletes still train this way. You wouldn’t practice soccer to become a better hockey player, so why do you practice powerlifting to be better at hockey?
Yes, strength will play a role in how good a hockey player is, however professional athletes that have been training for years likely won’t become better by adding 10 lb to their lifts and won’t have the time or energy to train enough to do so. Rather, the personal trainers for these athletes should be assessing their bodies, specifically their joints and determining where they can make more impactful progress. This will reduce unnecessary volume, reduce risk of injury, and allow for meaningful adaptations to be made to the lowest hanging fruit.
The first thing I do with any athlete (or regular person for that matter) is take them through an in depth assessment of their joint capacity. This allows me to be more specific in my personal training. If a hockey player has bad hips (chances are pretty high due to the nature of skating), then we will work on expanding the hip capsule. Once they have more hip space, they now have access to more trainable tissue and because that tissue has never been trained (unlike the tissue used over and over again for years deadlifting), will adapt quickly to stimulus.
Another pro of training this way is a reduced overall amount of volume, which will be beneficial for an athletes in-game performance. NBA players have been famously taking entire games off to deload, but if they changed the way they trained instead they could likely continue playing without worry.
Personal trainers need to get away from the traditional principles of training that were developed from bodybuilding and powerlifting and take an approach that makes more sense for the desired goal.
Athletes (and everyone else) that want their body’s to move and feel good contact me here to get started Contact Tommy Kudoba Fitness – Personal Trainers Kitchener, ON
