How to Improve your Sports Performance
Feeling that you lack that explosive first step during a basketball game? Feeling slow and in need of some agility during a badminton match? Feeling breathless and failing to keep up with your opponent during a game of soccer?
Sports Specific Training might be the missing piece of puzzle that you need in your gym routine! So, what exactly is Sports Specific Training?
Sports Specific Training is targeted towards improving fitness and is specifically designed to improve athletic performance. Athletes of all sport backgrounds require strength, power, speed, agility and conditioning in specific areas of their body in order to excel at their sport and perform at their optimal level. This allows the athletes to gain that competitive edge over their opponents.
At FITLUC, our Personal Trainers have helped a variety of clients from different backgrounds in Singapore, who are seeking to improve their sporting performance; student athletes seeking to improve their performance level for their CCAs, working adults who want to better at their recreational sports, current or former competitive athletes looking to regain their peak performance through Personal Training.
So what are the various aspects of sports training and what kind of training can improve those aspects?
1. Strength
Greater muscular strength in an athlete is strongly related with improved force generation that contributes to an athlete's overall performance. It can also enhance the ability to perform general sport skills such as jumping, sprinting, throwing and change of direction. It is backed by research that stronger athletes produce higher level performances during the sport specific tasks. Not only does greater muscular strength enables an athlete to generate force earlier and to a greater extent, but it also decreases the risk of injury during sports.
To put things simply, our Personal Trainers would recommend performing compound exercises such as Bench Press, Barbell Rows and Squats. These exercises can definitely help you improve in your muscular strength. For instance, Bench Press can help you improve your power in your punches as a boxer, Barbell Rows can allow you to row harder as a dragon boater, and Squats will increase your lower body power that a rugby player needs!
Our trainer Ming Tao, doing one of the compound exercises - Barbell Squats.
2. Power
Power provides a number of benefits in a sports setting. The benefits are higher maximal speed, quicker acceleration and better agility. By improving power generation, it definitely enhances your endurance performance.
As per our Personal Trainers advice, landmine exercises, such as rotational clean and press, ballistic exercises like medicine ball slams and plyometric exercises like depth jumps can undoubtedly improve your muscular power! Medicine ball slams will add power to your overhead throws in throwing sports and overhead spikes in volleyball. For sports that require in increase in speed within a short period of time or jump as high as possible such as track and field or basketball, depth jump can help you sprint faster and jump higher!
Lucas, our director, performing Rotational Landmine 180!
3. Speed
Faster speed is absolutely advantageous for athletes to move quicker than their opponents. By being faster, one can obtain the ball quickly or even outrun their opponent who is pursuing them. This is why speed is highly valued by athletes in most sports.
Our Personal Trainers would recommend performing sprint exercises, like banded sprints and uphill sprints, or sled exercises such as sled push and resisted sled sprints, which will definitely improve your speed exponentially. Resisted sled sprints can allow basketball players to sprint faster in a fast break scenario, while sled push can aid with the acceleration and speed in track and field.
One of our clients, doing Sledge Push in our gym!
4. Agility
Agility is needed in any sport that requires movement, which is almost every other sport.
Be it you are moving on the field, the ice, or on the balance beam, you will stand to benefit from agility training. Agility training will allow athletes to have quicker feet, improved balance and faster reaction times.
Our Personal Trainers have a variety of agility exercises like exercises on the agility ladder such as in and out, or lateral runs, to improve your agility. Cone drills such as the L-drills and pro agility shuttle (5-10-5) can achieve the same objectives as well. If you are a badminton player, lateral runs can help you shuffle from one side of the court to the other within a shorter period of time. Sports such as tennis, netball, basketball, also require many changes of directions which the L-drill can help you with.
One of our trainer, Darion, who was a ex-Tchoukball player, performing some agility exercises with some cones in the gym.
5. Conditioning
Having a good level of conditioning can provide a number of benefits to an athlete in their respective sports. Such benefits include delayed fatigue, better on-court performance, increased self-confidence, quicker rate of recovery and increased resilience and mental strength.
Our Personal Trainers have a variety of circuit training methods, such as Tabatta, kettlebell complexes, AMRAP, and cardiovascular training like jogging or cycling, can increase your level of conditioning. All of the above will improve your general physical fitness, like one's stamina and endurance, which is applicable to most sports that require high endurance and workload.
Check out this video on a Full Body Pump with one Kettlebell!
In conclusion, Sport Specific Training is very beneficial in improving the various aspects required in the athletes’ respective sport. Sport Specific Training is safe when properly designed, administered, and supervised. It also reduces the athlete’s risk of injury by strengthening the muscles, bones, tendons and joints. However, if you are still unsure or not confident about how to apply Sports Specific Training into your workout, do not worry as our dedicated personal trainers here at FITLUC are more than happy to help you customise a training programme and provide you with proper advice and supervision! So, what are you waiting for? Drop us a WhatsApp message at +65 8812 0110 or book a personal training trial to explore if personal training is the best choice for you!
Just a heads-up, it will probably be one of the best decisions you’ve ever made.
About FITLUC
Looking for a Personal Trainer in Singapore? Look no further! At FITLUC, we specialise in In-Person and Online Personal Training, and we also offer house-call PT with a small additional fee. We currently base our Personal Training clients at a well-equipped gym just a stone's throw away from Outram Park MRT. We have also just opened our second outlet at 82 Boat Quay, which is located right in the heart of CBD!
We are recognized as one of the Top 12 Best PT in Singapore and were featured on Mothership, The Straits Times, YES 93.3FM, Yahoo News, etc. Our Personal Trainers have worked with clients aged 13 – 84, from Celebrities to CEOs, working professionals and homemakers, with goals ranging from fat loss, weight loss, muscle gain to athletic performance and elderly training. Our celebrity clientele includes Tay Ping Hui, Maxi Lim, Hazelle Teo, Tayying, Lee Teng, Ze Tong, Benjamin Tan, Jaspers Lai and more.
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