Jonathan’s Note: Sorry about the formatting of this article. You’ll still enjoy the content.
Conditioning is probably one of the most misunderstood components in training for lacrosse goalies. In the quest to “get in shape” or become more “fit” many goalies turn to aerobic based conditioning to p. Unfortunately most athletes and even sport coaches fail to understand the energy system demands of their own sport and unintentionally train themselves off the field. What do I mean by training themselves off the field? Training yourself off the field basically would be defined as over-conditioning resulting in overuse injuries, de-conditioning or conditioning methods that defy the appropriate energy demands needed for the sport you are training for. An example would be a 100 meter sprinter running a 5k race to prepare for sprinting events or a football offensive lineman running 100 yard shuttles to get in “game shape”. Doesn’t make sense right, but the scary thing is that this goes on all over America in youth, high school, collegiate and even professional sports because our sport coaches refuse to better understand the physical demands of their own game. Ok, without getting too in depth into the physiology of energy demands I will give you a quick crash course in what strength & conditioning coaches call bioenergetics. The human body has three different energy systems that fuel movement of the body. The first energy system we call the ATP-CP system. This system is used for very short powerful movements of up to 10 seconds. Examples: Baseball swing, pitchers throw from the mound, 40 yard sprint, golf swing or a slap-shot. The second energy system we call is the anaerobic system or gylcolytic system. This system is used for movements lasting less than 2 minutes so your examples would be a 400m sprint, an end to end rush up field in lacrosse, hockey or soccer. Last but not least the third system of energy delivery is the aerobic system. The aerobic system is our long duration energy system that usually kicks in fully at approximately 5 minutes of continuous exercise. So what you would need to do is match the above energy systems to the actual physical demands of the sport you play. So obviously if you play lacrosse the energy systems used to play the game would be a combination of the ATP-CP system as well as the gylcolytic system because lacrosse is a combination of intermittent explosive bouts 0-10s combined with start and stop sprints 0- 120s. Soccer, hockey, field hockey, and tennis would fall into this same category, tennis for example being more ATP-CP driven than gylcolytic but still utilizing both energy systems. Then you have your true American power sports such as football and baseball which are fueled almost entirely off the ATP-CP system and gylcolytic energy systems. Baseball requires 0% off the aerobic energy system and football less than 5% off the aerobic energy system. Here is where the article gets interesting! What is going on in American sports? As a strength & conditioning coach in the private sector it has given me the opportunity to observe the different training methods of sport coaches and how they approach skill training combined with conditioning for their athletes. I hate to admit it but it is why I got out of the professional and collegiate sectors of strength & conditioning. You are hired as a specialist to train athletes to reduce injury potential and improve sport performance so obviously as a specialist you have a superior knowledge of the energy system demands for that sport, strength demands, and special needs of that sport for each player and position right? Well you would think so but it is not so easy. Many years ago early in my career I was hired as a paid intern in a professional sports organization to assist the head strength coach in the day to day operations of managing the players off-season and in-season training programs. I was psyched! This is what you dream of, getting to work at the professional level with elite level athletes and really make your mark. I was working my way up the ladder. About a week into the training program we got called into the general mangers office for a meeting in regards to the implementation of the training program. It was announced to us that the GM felt we needed to incorporate “extra conditioning sessions” into our program because he felt that the team the year before was not as “fit” as they should have been and therefore needed more running. We adamantly opposed his suggestion and tried to explain why this would be unnecessary and even counterproductive. We gave him the whole list of reasons both realistically and physiologic but he wasn’t having it. This is what he wanted and that was it! He was our boss so we reluctantly (it was painful to watch) ran the you know what out of them which left minimal amounts of time to do the things that we knew were most productive for them in keeping them healthy and strong. Here was the end result: the players were pissed off all the time because they felt burnt out and sore, guys started dropping like flies with injuries, our team had the most man games lost to injury in the league that year and when the team didn’t make the playoffs the GM fired the head strength coach! I actually was asked to stay on but I politely declined besides the fact that I was loyal to the head guy and felt we had to stand together based on principle. As disappointing as that was it actually turned into a great experience for me because it immediately educated me on the level of ignorance in sports both amateur and professional on how performance enhancement was being approached. The following table provides an approximation of the percentage contribution on the energy systems in the following sports SPORT – ATP-CP – GYLCOLYTIC – AEROBIC Soccer -50% – 30% – 20% Football – 80% – 15% – 5% Lacrosse – 70% – 20% – 10% Sprinting – 90% – 10% – 0% Tennis 80% – 15 – 5% Ice Hockey – 50% – 20% – 30% Cross Country – 10% – 20% – 70% Basketball – 60% – 20% – 10% Swimming – 5% – 25% – 70% As you can see from the chart above the aerobic system plays such an extremely small role in most sports unless you run marathons. I can’t tell you how frustrating is when parents come to me and say ‘he/she really needs to improve speed and explosiveness”. I will spend months with athletes working on improving these characteristics. I see some pretty amazing results where an athlete may have come in running a 4.9 or higher in the forty yard dash and after training in the program for a few months see them significantly drop that time up to 3-4 tenths of seconds only to see them come back from school or team training programs right back where they started because of such abuse from conditioning programs. Ok here is the deal, most sports coaches from the pro to youth level have no clue when it comes to energy systems, conditioning programs and anything that has to do with performance enhancement or training. But because they coach the team and are not always afforded strength and conditioning coaches or specialized speed coaches especially in high school programs the training and conditioning is left up to them. So they just wing it or implement what they did in the sport twenty years ago which is most always antiquated and unproductive. Tell me if these training methods sound familiar to your sport: • Baseball – Is predicated on explosive power, strength and speed. I see coaches spending hours on marathon conditioning sessions, running perimeters, stairs, 2-5 mile runs, hills and “poles”. Baseball is probably most guilty in this area considering its energy system demands never touch the aerobic system (see ATP-CP system above). Who invented the idea that pitchers need aerobic conditioning because they need endurance to overcome fatigue over nine innings? BASEBALL IS AN ANAEROBIC SPORT THAT REQUIRES POWER, STRENGTH, AND SPEED. Running miles for conditioning is the most foolish thing you can do for baseball whether you pitch or play the field. There is a difference between muscular endurance and cardio respiratory endurance. But the knuckleheads that teach the game tell their pitchers to run to get in shape instead of having them do power sprints, game situation conditioning or weight training. I have my baseball pitchers dry throw and sprint on a diagonal as if they were covering first base. Condition them as close as you can get them to a game situation. They can run sprints but keep them in 20-60 yard distances with timed intervals. Spend more time on injury reduction and shoulder conditioning. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen the so called highly conditioned pitcher that is lauded for his incredible conditioning regimens so he runs all day like it’s his job because his pitching coach told him he needs to run more. Then the first time they have to sprint to first to cover the bag you see him lying on the ground holding his hamstring! These are the same guys who always have arm problems because they spend 20 hours a week running instead of working on improving leg and trunk power, strength, and flexibility. AEROBIC CONDITIONING HAS NO PLACE IN BASEBALL. Know the physical demands of your game! • Lacrosse – Here we go again. Another sport predicated on first step quickness, strength, speed and explosiveness. Again lax draws its energy demands from the first two energy systems (ATP-CP and Gylcolytic) yet most lax coaches turn conditioning sessions into cross country practice. Long duration steady state aerobic training sessions seem to be quite the norm in lax conditioning which again translates poorly to the lax field. Over the past few years in my training practice I have seen an alarming number low back injuries in lax players or what are diagnosed as Spondylosis which is a stress fracture in the pars interarticularis of the L4-L5 lumbar vertebrae. This can be caused by any number of physical stresses as well as heredity, but in my opinion I see a strong connection to sports such as lacrosse that put a very high emphasis on running for conditioning purposes. In lacrosse because there is a high level of repetitive rotational forces, torque and spiral diagonal patterns of the spine would lead you to believe this would be the primary reason for this type of injury. Although I believe there may be some connection here, I see this injury more in lacrosse and soccer players than in baseball and even football players. Obviously the torso rotational forces in baseball are even greater and more pronounced than lacrosse. Yet I see the injury in lax players twice as frequently. My conclusion is that there is a direct correlation to the compressive forces to the lumbar spine in spinal extension during running and rotation that when overused increases the potential for this type of injury. In 2006-2007 I saw 17 diagnosed spondylosis injuries in my training practice. The breakdown was 8 lacrosse players, 4 soccer players, 2 baseball players, 2 gymnasts and 1 softball player. This result seems to be consistent with what I have experienced throughout my career. Ironically my own soccer career was ended prematurely from a spondylosis injury so I have first hand experience. My point here is that poor implementation of running programs for lax can be more counterproductive to the development of lacrosse players unless the conditioning is carefully thought out and implemented with the correct energy systems utilized functionally. I get better results in my program with lax players by strengthening the lower extremities, increasing the flexibility of the hip rotators which improves agility and lateral speed, and focusing on short burst sprinting and deceleration (slowing down). Take note here this could be career changing for some players. • Football – Although I see less of this running debauchery in football I still see the conditioning programs using a similar mentality. The mistake I see being made in football is that coaches condition their players of different positions the same. In football the demands of your wide receivers differ than that of your D-lineman and the demands of your Linebackers are obviously different than that of your O-lineman ect. Why are you testing your O and D lineman in the forty yard Dash? What correlation does the forty yard dash have for these position players? I have had much greater success testing my lineman in the 10 yard dash because it more closely mimics field play. I also test my D-backs running backwards 10-20 yards to see how coordinated they move as well as how fast. Last season I watched a professional football team finish their practice with the whole team running 300 yard shuttles. I am sorry but I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s me but I guess I just refuse to fall in line and accept flawed training methods when I know they come up short of the true desired result. • Soccer – Why is soccer treated as an aerobic sport? The idea that soccer is an aerobic sport is what I believe is one of the reasons our US national teams have failed to advance the sport and be more competitive throughout the soccer world. Soccer coaches and players need to better understand the balance between anaerobic and aerobic capacity and what role these play in training for their sport. The energy system that primarily drives a soccer player is the ATP-CP system (see above) with the aerobic system accounting for only one third of energy demands. Yet soccer coaches engage their players in marathon type conditioning sessions with the idea that they are building an “aerobic base” of fitness. To the contrary research studies have shown that the higher a players V02 max (oxygen consumption) or levels of aerobic fitness the lower power output and strength levels they have. Why does this matter? Shot velocity from leg strength, maximal speed and jumping ability are directly connected to the amount of force production (applied strength) a player can generate during these activities. When soccer players overemphasize aerobic fitness the side effects may severely derail a player’s development and performance. My approach with my soccer players has been to reduce the amount of conditioning and employ an aggressive strength training program with an emphasis on anaerobic endurance training (sprint conditioning). The results have been overwhelmingly productive with increases in shot strength, vertical jumping ability, linear and lateral speed as well as significant reduction in overuse injuries like shin splints, turf toe, ankle sprains, and knee injuries. In 2003 Germany won the world cup by beating Sweden 2-1. Germany’s coach was German Soccer legend Juergen Klinsmann who made some significant waves in German soccer when he decided to adopt much of the American strength training methods being used in American strength & conditioning circles. He moved away from the long conditioning sessions got the team into the weight room and incorporated more short distance anaerobic training methods (sprints) with the ball only and dynamic movement preparation warm-ups which is the antithesis of what his country had always done in the German national soccer program. He was absolutely lambasted by the German soccer federation and was almost outcast for his changes. I saw him interviewed on TV after the victory describing what the changes had done for his team and he swore by his changes and vowed to never go back to the old ways of training. This was a guy who had the ability to see outside the box and make changes regardless of anybody said even if he lost his job over it. It obviously paid off for him. What is the message here? Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and employ what you find useful. John Furia is the owner of Furia’s Xceleration Strength & Conditioning located in Deer Park, New York. John is a highly sought-after Strength & Conditioning coach for healthy and injured athletes alike, he has helped athletes at all levels – from youth sports to the professional and Olympic Levels – achieve peak performance in a variety of sports. https://www.xcelerationstrength.com https://www.johnfuria.com
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