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Long-term Gains Take Long-term Training and Practice

Well, it’s getting to be that time of year again. Athletes are gearing up and getting ready to report to football camps, pre-season workouts, and team conditioning drills. From high school to the professional levels, athletes are looking forward to the start of a new season. NFL teams will be starting their pre-season training camps, college teams are starting two-a-days, and high school teams are getting ready to begin organized practices.

No matter the level, all of these teams have two goals in mind during their pre-season practices. The first is to do better than last year, and the second is to get in the best shape possible for their first game, match or meet of the season. Athletes are working hard, sweating in the heat and humidity, running, jumping, lifting weights and practicing plays all with the hopes of improving their game.

Unfortunately, not all athletes will achieve their goals this year or this season. Why? Well, simply because their focus on improvements made in their sport are only emphasized in the weeks prior to and during their sports season. Athletes who only focus on getting faster, stronger, more agile, or more flexible and in shape in the weeks prior to the start of a season only see short term gains. Most of these gains are then lost or broken down in-season. True long term gains and improvements in sport should be made on a year round basis.

Now this is not to say that athletes should be playing or practicing their sport all year round. Instead they should be developing the athletic skills needed to further excel in their sport. If an athlete needs to become more powerful for their sport, performing countless plyometrics in their pre-season training will only give them short term gains. Instead they should develop a long term plan that lays out a foundation of strength from which speed and power can later be developed and produced. In fact, high performance sprint and plyometric activities for athletes should only occur after a minimum of 8 weeks of prior training, focusing on strength, stability, technique, and injury prevention training has taken place.

It’s important to remember that the body adapts to training stimuli in 3 week intervals. The first week, the body says, “wow what’s going on here?” The second week it says, “are you sure about this, what do you want me to do?” The third week, it says, “Ok, I think I get it.”

Over the course of the next three weeks the body begins to remember how to do things and how to function better so that by the time it reaches the end of the 6th week it has become better at a given task. However, after just six weeks of training, true gains have yet to be realized. The only thing that has occurred in those first six weeks was that the athlete’s body learned how to perform the drill. All those first six weeks did was lay a proper foundation from which the body is able to feed off of and begin to develop. This is especially true for young athletes; however their time line often takes much longer. For athletes under the age of 18, a multi year approach must be taken.

My advice to athletes and coaches working hard right now to see gains in speed and power in their performance in given drills is this. Ask yourself, are you training for your sport or for a drill? Will the gains seen in a drill or exercise transfer over into your sport and will that gain last all season and into next year? Lastly, develop the entire athlete first and then develop the athlete’s specific skills for their sport.

Written by Kevin Ebel, July 2006
Published in the Stevens Point Journal, July 25, 2006

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