Robert Taylor discusses the importance of actually using basketball as a part of a basketball players conditioning. I know that may sound obvious, but the fact is, we weightlifting coaches are rather weightroom centric.
Unfortunately, the way sports performance is approached today, strength coaches almost never have any contact with sport coaches. Be sure to ask your athletes for a detailed description of their sport specific weekly load so that your strength programs are properly in line with that and don’t over train them.
This is one of the great benefits Olympic Weightlifting coaches have when coaching their own guys than when we are coaching other athletes. With Oly lifters, all conditioning and strength work is done “in house”. It’s as though the football coach also did all the strength coaching.
And don’t get me started on how hard it is to design good programs for “recreational” athletes like rec-league softball players, roller derby, rugby, and golf. At least in school-based team sports environments they are supervised by a coach who keeps their workload in check. For the recreational athlete, there is no such supervision. And far too often the athletes don’t know how to stop themselves from overworking.
