Strength and conditioning Training for the Young Athlete - The Benefits Will Last a Lifetime!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Strength and conditioning Training is not training to see how much weight one can push around the gymnasium. Simply expressed, Strength and conditioning Training is a method of conditioning that will increase an individual’s power to handle the physical requirements of activity. Strength Training may involve the use of weights or other external immunity (bands, medicine balls, pulleys, etc.), it may involve body weight (push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc.,) and it may involve the use of body weight and ground forces (skipping, hopping, jumping, etc.)

There is an interesting trend in the physical activity of today’s youth, a trend that makes the integration of a Strength and conditioning training program more important than ever. Today, kids are specializing in a particular sport at an early age. Kids are picking one sport and playing it year round. Because of this specialization and the fact that kids don’t engage in “free play” the way they used to, young athletes today aren’t developing the fundamental motor skills, and musculoskeletal balance necessary for peak performance and injury prevention.

We all want our young athlete to be as successful on the field as possible. Coaches pass a great deal of time with young athletes on skills and practices. Parents enter children in speed and legerity camps and provide private instruction hoping to develop a better player. While skills and practices and sport specific instruction may make the player more expert kicking a soccer ball or throwing a baseball, chances are they won’t make them a better overall athlete, and they surely won’t decrease the chance of sport related injury.

Continual training of only specific sport related movements tends not only to limit performance, but sets the stage for imperfect movement patterns and overuse injury. In most sports, common sites for overuse injuries include the heel, ankle, and knees. You can add shoulders and elbows to that list for the young baseball, tennis, and volleyball player. Well designed Strength and conditioning Training programs will not only make muscles stronger but will strengthen other supporting tissues like bone, ligaments and tendons thus decreasing the chance of keen injuries such and sprains and ligament tears.

Health organizations such as the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), have helped put to rest the long held belief that Strength and conditioning training for children is insecure and ineffective. These organizations now support the participation of children in appropriately designed and competently oversaw Strength and conditioning training programs.

At what age can a child begin a Strength and conditioning training program? If a child has the capacity to follow guidances, then the child is old enough to follow a properly designed and oversaw age-appropriate strength training program. Protect your young athlete’s future and let them bring their game to the next level.

Improve Athletes performance ? Only 4 Principles of Strength and Conditioning Training and Exercise

To guarantee success and results with any strength training or conditioning program, it must be designed with the following rules in mind. Impressive training programs will merged periodization, specificity, and overload, while avoiding overtraining.

The following paragraphs will briefly describe what each of these terms mean.

Periodization
Periodization is a term used to describe the collapse a strength and conditioning training program into periods, or phases. The idea behind periodization is to constantly present a new training stimulation to the body to force it to repeatedly adjust to this new stimulation.

If a new training stimulus is not presented, the body will set to the training and performance will not continue to improve and will finally go down. On the other hand, if a new type of stimulation is presented too soon, the body won't have had enough time to respond and adjust, and again, adjustment will decrease.

This is the reason you should see programs last only about 4 weeks. Trained athletes can adjust much faster to new programs, and should consider changing programs more frequently. Athletes newer to training can continue to make gains for much longer on the same program. This is the reason you see many people "plateau" in their training. They aren't taking advantage of the principle of periodization.

Periodization is completed by changing the strength and conditioning training intensity and volume during certain phases to continue to place stress on the body that it isn't used to.

Specificity
Specificity refers to strength and conditioning training specifically for a desired outcome. You will train differently to build muscle mass than you would to improve performance. You would train differently if you wanted to run a marathon as opposed to play football. There are different strengths, movements and physiological requirements that need to be more developed in certain activities than others. Everyone has things that that they should be training to improve, whether it's health-related or performance-related (notice I didn't say beach body-related). A good strength and conditioning training program is designed with specificity, taking into circumstance the needs and goals of each person.

Overload
This is the most crucial principle behind any strength and conditioning training program. Overburden can be substituted for the word stimulation or tension in the description of periodization. To create an overburden, the body must be made to do things it is not habitual to. This places a tension, or shock, on the body. If the body is not given an overburden, it will not adjust. If there is no adjustment, you will not get any stronger or any more conditioned than you already are. In short you will not see results. Keep this in mind during your strength and conditioning training. Always promote yourself to improve on your last workout. Always push yourself to get better.

Overtraining
Overtraining is when fatigue or a decrease in performance rises up from more and more training and a miss of proper rest and recovery between workouts. Overtraining is an injury. In most cases, overtraining is got by "too much, too soon", or simply training too often and not allowing the body the proper amount of rest from an intense workout.

Some symptoms of overtraining may or may not include: Increased resting heart rate, increased resting blood pressure, decreased sports performance, slower recovery after exercise, weight loss, decreased appetite, decreased desire to exercise, increased choler and depression, and increased incidence of injury.

The Secret of Become a successful Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

The program has increased the level of competency among the CSCS specialists around the world. At last count there were over 19,500 certified CSCS professionals, including athletic trainers, physical therapists, Strength and Conditioning trainers, chiropractors, physicians, researchers, educators and coaches.

Register For The Course

To register for the CSCS exam, you must apply either a bachelor of arts or bachelor of sciences degree from a school, college or university, authorized by any of the following: Middle State Association, New England Association, North Central Association, Northwest Association, Southern Association and Western Association.

If you are a college senior, you must show proof that you are currently registered in an authorized institution. Your exam scores and results will not be issued until you are able to submit a transcript that will verify that you have graduated from an authorized institution.

The CSCS Exam

The CSCS exam is made up of two sections that will test your knowledge on Strength and Conditioning.

The first section, the Scientific Foundations section, will contain 80 multiple choice questions that measuring your knowledge on exercise sciences such as physical body, exercise physiology, bioenergetics, biomechanics, and sharp and long term adaptations to anaerobic and aerobic exercises, and nutrition. You will be given 1 ½ hours to answer:

• 58 questions on exercise sciences

AND

• 22 questions on nutrition.

The second section, the Practical or Applied section, will have 110 multiple choice questions on program design, exercise methods, testing and evaluation and organization and administration. You will be given 2 and ½ hours to answer:

• 40 questions on a video to will evaluate your technique in exercise techniques, functional anatomy and testing procedures

• 78 questions based on exercise technique and Program Design 1

• 10 questions based on Organization and Administration and

• 22 questions based on testing and evaluation.

Successful ending of the CSCS exam will help you land a job of your choice, working with athletes and scientifically creating programs that will improve their performance. With increasing awareness of the importance of exercise and fitness, parents today are introducing their children to athletics and sports at an early age. This is creating a requirement for CSCS professionals. With track and field events becoming ever more competitive, there are lots of chances for CSCS professionals.

Successfully passing the CSCS exam will give you a stage up in your career as a Strength and Conditioning Coach - and who knows - someday you may see one of your trainees standing on the winning ambo at an important athletic meet!

How to Become a Successful Sports Strength and Conditioning Coach

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

A sports Strength and Conditioning coach is a person who works closely with athletic teams and departments at the high school, college and professional-athlete level. He or she makes effective training programs in the areas of strength, speed, survival and power.

Become a Sports Strength and Conditioning Coach

Join the collegial Strength and Conditioning Coaches association (CSCCa), a professional organization that provides certification, maintains a list of current job chances and boosts a sense of respect for the field.

Read about the process of certificate for the Strength and Conditioning Coach Certified (SCCC) and its requirements on the CSCCa Web site (see Resources below). Most sports Strength and Conditioning coach positions require or strongly suggest this certification.


Apply for an internship, practicum or graduate assistantship that is authorized by the CSCCa. This is one of the requirements for certificate and usually durations 8 to 9 months. You may be free from this step if you were a full-time Strength and Conditioning coach for a college or professional sports team prior to September 1, 2000.

Review the subjects that are covered on the written portion of the SCCC, as well as additional study guides that are suggested, on the CSCCa website. Areas to study may include, but are not limited to, stretching and flexibility, weight management, physiology, metabolism, function of the cardiorespiratory system, program development, goal setting and nutrition.

Prepare for the practical section of the exam by practicing a variety of Strength and Conditioning techniques you will need to explain and show.

Register for and sit for the SCCC exam after you have completed the preparation requirements.

Apply to become a sports Strength and Conditioning coach at the organization of your choice. Get help with finding chances on the CSCCa website.

Widespread Health profits by Strength and Conditioning Exercises

Friday, August 7, 2009

Strength and conditioning exercises are the kind of special performance training routines that all professional sports men and women will use to get fit and stay fit for their chosen sports.

The strength part generally consists of working with weights. In particular they will target different muscle areas related to that sport. Golfers and tennis professionals will be focusing on the forearms and rotator handcuff to improve arm and joint strength and concentrate on developing sport specific power.

The second view of strength and conditioning exercises is obviously the conditioning - this can be quite intensive and consist of half-hour non-stop workouts taking skipping, squat thrusts and lots of other similar exercises to build up staying power.

Nowadays though, more and more people are starting to feel the profits of strength and conditioning exercises. Nonprofessional sports players are gaining important advantages over their equals by workouts that are targeted towards the needs of their favourite sport. Strength and conditioning exercises makes sense, though, for improving general fitness. Athletes have to be fit and in shape for their sport or they go home broke!

Strength and conditioning exercises can be done at home or in a hotel room and as not over-training is a key view of a successful authorities they can be pretty time efficient. They will also provide you with fitness with a purpose rather than just getting a six pack or some other token physical improvement as a vanity project. At the same time a good set of strength and conditioning exercises can have fast profits. They will make you look better and they can have a real affect in just a few weeks.

For some training secrets 99% of people just don't know head to stength training and conditioning while find out how your strength and conditioning workouts can be revolutionized with the "two for two" rule.

A successful programme's secret for The Strength and Conditioning coach or Professional

Sunday, August 2, 2009

This is a different era in sports and athletic competition. I am from the state of Georgia and here football is KING! From the great University of Georgia who has come on the collegiate view as one of the first programs in college football today all the way down to the high schools and youth leagues around the state. The one thing they all have in common is a formula for turning out both superior football programs and players. I am here to take you in on one of the main factors to this success.

To have a successful program we can all agree that it takes a team effort. It takes not only the coaches and players to be on undertaking from week to week, but it also takes the support of the parents and promoters. Basically, saying parents and promoters is other way of saying kind donators. So having all of this help what more can a program have to set itself apart from the competition? Well, it has been my experience that the most successful programs have the availability of a well-structured strength and conditioning program. More and more programs are employing on certified strength and conditioning specialist like myself to either come in as an outsourced independent contractor or as their own full time strength and conditioning coach. I have had the chance to be this particular professional at all levels in the state of Georgia. I have seen teams that went from being ordinary to being teams that are in the search for a regional title all within a year by applying the help of a strength and conditioning coach or professional. This is surely a key factor for total success. I saw many athletes make strength records in the squat, bench-press, and vertical jump at the school in 2002 and 2003, and the records still stand.

Now I'm not telling you this because I want to boast about the UGA football program. I am simply stating facts that support the very point that I am trying to get across about the importance of having a strength and conditioning coach or professional in your community's programs. If you don't have one then there is always money that can be increased to find a competent encouraging young professional to come in and make things happen!