Lifting>Running, Sprinting>All
When it comes to athletic development, there is a lot of misinformation that runs rampant in our industry. To this day, parents and coaches still worry that lifting weights will make their children/athletes slower, and that metabolic conditioning/cardio is the key to succeeding in team sports, despite the fact that the athletes who typically dominate team sports are freakishly athletic and have been lifting for years. I think a lot of this comes down to a general lack of understanding so I wanted to share some thoughts on athletic development:
1. Lifting will not make your athlete slower. Think of it like building a car. Putting a bigger engine in a car will make the car heavier, but it will also allow the car to generate a lot more horsepower, and as a result, reach much higher speeds. The same is true when we lift. Sure, we will likely gain a little bit of muscle mass that will make us heavier, but it will also allow us to produce more power, generate more force, and run faster (assuming athletes are training like it’s 2023 and not like it’s 1980).
2. Sprinting is the key to building faster athletes. Of course, all that extra muscle does nothing if we can’t translate it to speed. The key is for athletes to sprint as hard as possible, as often as possible, as fresh as possible, while timing each and every sprint. Things that get measured typically get improved and it’s the only way to tell if their training is actually translating to speed.
3. Build your aerobic capacity through repetitive sprinting. Having a high aerobic capacity is very valuable as it is what drives recovery and allows athletes to sprint again and again and again. The trick is to train it in a way that translates to the game. When most people hear “aerobic capacity” they immediately think of distance runners and steady-state cardio. The reason steady-state cardio is effective is because it keeps athletes in a certain heart-rate range, allowing their heart to adapt a certain way. The problem with most team sport athletes is that they already spend enough time in that heart-rate range. Almost any sport-specific technical work that they do puts them in this range, so they don’t need to intentionally develop it. Instead, they should sprint repetitively because it makes them faster, increases their muscular resilience, and helps them succeed in their favorite sports, while increasing their aerobic capacity.
All of this is a long way of saying that lifting is far more important than running (I’d advise team-sport athletes to never “go out for a run”) and sprinting is the key to getting faster.
Contact us if you’re interested in working with us!
