Ultimate Athlete - Physical Training to Succeed in Sport

Author: Jeff Wood

March 26, 2010

Last week we talked a lot about commitment to success and how that can help you achieve your goal in either sport or life.  This week we will start to talk about the physical attributes needed to become the Ultimate Athlete.

The word Ultimate is defined as not to be improved upon or surpassed; the greatest.

An athlete is defined as a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, speed or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.

Now we can combine those two words to make up a definition of the Ultimate Athlete but I think it would be best if we saved that until the end of this series.  You should be able to make up the definition at that point.

The physical abilities someone needs to succeed in sport vary from sport to sport obviously but the Ultimate Athlete is STRONG, POWERFUL, FAST, QUICK, AGILE, FLEXIBLE and has BALANCE, COORDINATION, and STAMINA.

It is very common in sport to find people only dedicated to strength thinking that it is the one thing that will make the biggest difference to ones performance in their sport.  Yes it is true that strength is the base and foundation for an athlete to develop speed and power, but there are some very strong people out there who couldn’t run 100 metres without pulling a hamstring or jump into a pick up basketball game without making a fool of themselves on the court.  Personally, I believe that a great athlete could play multiple sports and succeed at any of them because they possess the physical skills necessary to do that.  I’ve said the following to many parents in my career: DO NOT HAVE YOUR KIDS PLAY ONLY ONE SPORT GROWING UP!!!  The only way they will achieve success in their chosen sport later in life is to experience many sports early on and learn from each of them.  There is a time to specialize and a time to generalize.

Sorry I got a little off track there, back to strength.

Strength is an extremely important factor in most athletic activities.   It is simply defined as the ability to move a heavy load in a maximal effort.  Without having a solid base of strength, you will not have speed or power.  Without speed or power, how do you compete in sport?  Even endurance athletes need power.  Think of a triathlete, there are 2 athletes racing over the final 50 metres of their 10k run to see who takes home the gold.   It will be the athlete with the strongest final kick (the one with more power) that wins the race.   So, clearly strength is a necessary component to athletic success.  Without it you would not be able to achieve the highest level as an athlete.

So, to give some practical application to this topic let’s look a little deeper at how to develop strength.  One of the true keys to getting strong is to develop strength over time.  This means you don’t train for 2 months in your off-season only to stop during your actual sport season.  By the time you finish your season, your strength has dropped back off to when you first started training again, therefore you will never get as strong as your potential will allow you.  That is why a Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model must be used.

At the younger ages (8-11 - Focus Fitness Future Stars) strength training can take many forms but it is really centered around body weight exercises in a fun setting.   Exercises like squats, lunges, push ups and pull ups are key strength exercise.  As kids mature (12-15 - Focus Fitness All Stars), the training becomes more structured and free weights and machines get introduced.  Loads are not maximal in either of these groups.  Once athletes reach the age of 16 (Focus Fitness Performance Program) (assuming they have been training for some time) they are ready to start using loads that can really improve their maximal strength.  At this point they are usually ready to start training for power as well.

Strength is one of the foundations to athletic success.  Without it an athlete will never be able to become the Ultimate Athlete.  Next time we will talk about another foundational component to athletic success: Agility.

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