Today all top notch athletes are well alert to the need for cross training to improve performance in their particular sport. Once we heard and saw during the 2010 Olympic Video games, just practicing your sport isn’t enough any longer. Athletes need to create a strong fitness foundation in the fitness center. Enter the world of general sports activities fitness.
Increasingly sports activities training programs are becoming more generalized rather than highly specific because of the similarities found in all sports. An intense fitness foundation can be built in the gym following a same series of working on stability and flexibility first, strength and power then. I will talk about each component here and the importance of an operating movement screen as a measuring tool.
It is important to begin with an operating movement screen that will test mobility and stability and present a concept of how strong somebody’s functional base is. Many people build fitness on a poor foundation, hindering performance and therefore increasing the chance of injury. Stability is the power of a joint to stay static against an external force while mobility is the power for this joint to move through a variety of motion.
Both are extremely important for sports. Gray Cook, a physical therapist and trainer, has designed five exercises to check functional movement. He also recommends learning and executing the turkish get-up with a kettlebell to check functional movement and build better mobility and balance. Strength is the ability to move a weight through …