This last weekend we hosted the Rivals Northeast Five Star Showdown Combine at our facility. It was a great event showcasing the best football talent in the Northeast. We were extremely happy to be a part of it. There were great scores in the combine metrics, and some amazing performances in the positional drills.
One thing that struck me while spectating was the strength of performance I saw from athletes who were products of Athletic Republic programs, ours, and Blue Streak’s (Stamford, Conn facility). I got to hear the back story from trainers who had worked with them and hear about how their training had progressed. Even athletes who had come to the programs with a lot of natural strength or coordination made noteworthy gains.
What I was thinking through position drills and viewing of 40 yard dash attempts was that “we can help a lot of these athletes”. Our training could take these guys a lot further. I don’t say this in any way that takes away from strong athletes and strong performances. But I was struck by the fact that we could make significant impacts on these guys with our training, from running mechanics and form, to strength during multi-directional movement. The guys who had been through Athletic Republic programs showed appreciable advantage. I can say that without any “sell” intention as I myself asked numerous times “who is that guy?” only to be answered by “Oh, we trained him” uttered by a Blue Streak trainer.
We are committed to helping our athletes and making available the best training there is so we can send more athletes to these combines and into the upper ranks of athletics. Our program can do it. This weekend was real proof of that. These athletes were being looked over by the best coaches and scouts in the country. It was pretty exciting to see what can happen as a result of the work these athletes put in to the programs and the combined result.
Many times when speaking to our athletes and parents the question of sport specific training comes up. “Is this sport specific?“I often answer with a yes and no answer. At the core of our training is the principle of Athletic Performance. When distilled the concept of athletic performance versus sport specific performance is a very different one. Game specific skills and knowledge are the result of training, experience, and practice within that discipline. Athletic performance is the ability to perform within competitive situations with power, agility, balance, and body awareness, that can be applied to all sports. This is the result of a balanced body with good range of motion, strength, and flexibility. This is an important distinction to make because it makes what we do more clear.
Our treadmill training, plyometric training, strength training, and conditioning, all provide the foundation for athletic performance. As a result of our training programs our athletes have a comprehensive strength that will allow for performance in many disciplines.
During the course of training with us though, there are sport specific elements of training introduced and utilized. For example, our hockey treadmill provides stride refinement while also conditioning. We use slide boards and hockey specific strength exercises to build athletic performance specific to hockey. We also use throwing and hitting cords for baseball players, and soccer players.
The reason we think it important to make these distinctions is to provide the understanding that there is training that provides a foundation for athletic movement and performance, as well as training that reinforces or improves game/sport-specific skills and actions. We provide both, building a foundation of athletic performance so that sport specific training can have maximum impact. Our athletic abilities, once formed and reinforced, allow us to perform our sport specific skills at maximum potential. We cannot achieve sport specific strength until we achieve athletic strength.
I wanted to take a minute and talk about our running treadmills. At first glance they may appear as industrial versions of their more familiar health club brethren, not so….And the “they’re really fast, and really high” description bestowed upon them by first time viewers is far too narrow.
Their specifications allow for higher speeds, and higher inclines than anything else out there, true.
Still this is not the source of their importance to us. They are for us an invaluable training tool for athletes. They bring to us a controlled teaching environment for a dynamic, whole body, motion. We are able to teach, correct, coach, and cue, right next to an athlete as they work. Feedback is the name of the game and the real power here is that it is instant. Visual feedback happens both during the run, and after via a delayed capture on film. Audible feedback occurs as we coach the athletes and speak to them. Tactile feedback occurs as we can help to correct form and position directly through manipulation. And lastly the athlete-instructor feedback that occurs as an athlete responds to any and all cues from the coach. Again the power is on the fly feedback to the athlete.
Why do we use the treadmills? Glad you asked…We use the treadmills to train from “the center out”. One of the most unifying weaknesses across athletes is hip girdle strength. Be it a young athlete who hasn’t developed the strength yet, or a seasoned athlete who has developed an imbalance, a lack of flexibility, or compensation patterns, the treadmill is the most effective way for us to train the hip girdle. Coming back to “train like we play” the treadmill trains us through running, and we have evolved to be runners, so we train the motion. By training the motion in this controlled environment we achieve increased flexibility and dynamic strength by incrementally increasing required output from the athlete through ranges of motion and power produced. The result is the ability to put power into the ground in a game speed situation; translation….on field/in game performance.
Keep checking back as we write about more specific workouts and mechanics of running on the treadmill.
