The majority of weight training programs being performing in commercial gyms, garages and basements across the world are based on bodybuilding. What a shame, because weight training like an athlete is better for achieving most people’s goals. Plus, athletic weight training is quicker, so you can get out of the gym faster. In this article, I’ll explore why you should be weight training like an athlete.

You’re out of shape. You’re lumpy in places that shouldn’t be lumpy. And muscle tone? Your arms don’t even fill out your shirt’s sleeves and your legs are scrawny. You look like an apple with four toothpicks stuck in it. You decide to do something about it (good idea!).

So, you do some searching to find the “best” weight training program, or give yourself over to the trainer at the local gym. In either case, the result is usually the same. You start doing a weight training program based on bodybuilding practices. You isolate muscle groups and use sets, reps and rest periods designed specifically for muscle growth. Then you follow this up with some “cardio”, normally some sort of steady-state aerobic activity.

Does any of this sound familiar?

But the truth is, you’re not a bodybuilder. And quite frankly, you don’t even want to look like a bodybuilder. So here’s an stupid question: Why are you training like one?

There are three things I believe men and women want when they start a weight training program. They want to get fit, lose fat and build muscle (not necessarily in that order). The RESULT they are looking for is a strong, muscular, lean, athletic body. And they don’t just want to look great either. They want to feel great and posses the athletic ability to meet the challenges of sport, work and life with excellence.

So you see, the goals of the average exerciser mirrors the goals of athletes, not bodybuilders. So here’s a crazy idea. Why not start weight training like an athlete?

Bodybuilding training has one goal and one goal only; muscle growth. Health and performance are of no consequence. But athletic weight training is performance based. It is designed to improve your performance in all the physical abilities of fitness. (Here are some of them… strength, cardiorespiratory endurance, power, speed, flexibility, coordination, balance, agility, accuracy and toughness.) And when your weight training is designed to improve performance a strange thing happens. You feel better and you look better!

So weight training like an athlete is more accurate at helping you achieve your goals. You are more like an athlete than a bodybuilder, and should train accordingly. And when I say you are more like an athlete, I mean everyone. I don’t care if you are participating in a sport or just running to catch a bus or chasing the kids around the living room. What you do during the day requires athleticism, and improving your physical abilities enables you to live a better, fuller life.

Here is another reason I like athletic weight training better than bodybuilding. It is faster. You see, bodybuilding is based on volume. It is a high volume of exercises targeted to a specific muscle that makes it grow. But athletic weight training targets fitness, fat loss and strength as well as muscle growth. Therefore you are not required to spend long hours at the gym in order to see improvements like bodybuilders are. Plus, athletes have other training to do, so they can’t spend all their time and energy in the gym.

I don’t know about you, but less time in the gym and more results to help me live a better life sounds pretty great. Right?

If you are unhappy with how you look, feel and perform and are determined to do something about it, I applaud you. But don’t sabotage your efforts by choosing a weight training program that doesn’t match your goals or requires a huge investment of time to be successful. In my opinion, weight training like an athlete is the best and fastest option for reaching your goals and finally seeing, feeling and benefiting from all your hard work in the gym. Wouldn’t you agree?

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Let me ask you a few questions. How does Tiger Woods consistently play his last hole as strong as his first? How is it that Michael Jordan could consider a comeback in the NBA, and play successfully, at an age when most professional athletes are stuck in their armchair counting their pension checks? Three words.

Superior physical conditioning.

Compare two athletes in any sport. Given equal talent and skill, the player with superior physical conditioning will win every single time.

If you’re serious about your sport, you must know and live by these 7 principles that I call the 7 Secrets to Developing the Complete Athlete

1. Identify the abilities of the ideal athlete in your sport. The easiest way to initiate this part of the process is to picture the top athlete in your chosen sport. Ask yourself what abilities they possess that make them the best at what they do. Abilities are things like flexibility, strength, endurance, power, balance, reaction time, coordination, speed, and agility.Don’t confuse abilities with skills that are specific to the chosen sport. For instance, a basketball player must be able to dribble while running up the court. That’s a sport-specific skill, not an ability. The abilities are what underlie each skill. Now, examine each ability more closely. Think of the extreme of each ability and rate that level of ability a 10 on a zero to 10 scale. For instance, if you are examining flexibility, who are the most flexible athletes in the world?

Gymnasts! So gymnasts require a number 10 level of flexibility for successful performance. Olympic weightlifters would be a 10 for power. Power lifters would be a 10 for strength and so on for each ability. Next, take your chosen sport and compare it to the extreme. Let’s use Lacrosse as an example. Does lacrosse require the same level of flexibility as gymnastics? Of course not! But, lacrosse does require some pretty significant amounts of flexibility in the spine, shoulders, and hips.

So while it may not require a level of 10 in flexibility we can estimate the ideal level of flexibility as a 7 or a 8 out of 10. At this point don’t worry about trying to be exact when establishing the ideal abilities of a lacrosse player (or any other athlete for that matter) as your best estimation will not vary much from the ideal unless you really have no understanding of a lacrosse player’s needs (or your specific sport). Repeat this process for each ability to create your ideal athlete, in this case a Lacrosse player.

When you finish you should have a chart that looks something like this. Keep in mind that the scores will be different for different sports.

Optimal Abilities for Lacrosse; Strength – 6 Power – 8 Speed – 8 Coordination – 8 Endurance – 8 Reaction time – 8 Flexibility – 7 Agility – 8 Total Score – 61

2. Realistically assess your current abilities. Here’s the hard part. Now you have to be honest with yourself. It’s time to compare your current abilities with those of each extreme. You may or may not be a strong as a power lifter. It doesn’t matter. BE HONEST! You gain nothing by overestimating or intentionally underestimating your own abilities.In fact, overestimation or underestimation of your abilities will promote absolute failure of your sports conditioning program. When you’ve rated your own abilities, you should end up with a chart that looks something like this.

Your Current Abilities Ability your Score Strength – 6 Power – 6 Speed – 5 Coordination – 8 Endurance – 3 Reaction time – 5 Flexibility – 5 Agility – 5 Total Score – 43

Identify your weak points compared to the ideal. This part is easy. Simply put your abilities up against what you determined to be the ideal for your sport. Then just highlight those abilities that fall below your estimation of the ideal level for your sport.

3. Now, design an individualized training program to focus on your weak points. I think this is one of the most common areas where athletes make mistakes in their sport-specific conditioning program design. It is a waste of valuable time to focus your conditioning program on your abilities that are already at optimal levels or higher. Look at the example. “Your score” for strength was 6 out of 10 but the optimal score only requires that you possess a strength ability of 6 for successful performance. So how much time and effort should you be spending on strength? Enough to maintain your current levels. Any more than that will not improve your performance, in this case, as a Lacrosse player. However, “your” speed, endurance and agility ratings fall below the ideal for Lacrosse.

Therefore, the majority of your sports-specific Lacrosse conditioning program should revolve around improving those ability scores to achieve optimal levels.

4. Identify current muscle imbalances you currently have. Muscle imbalances are the main culprit when talking about injury. Most injuries occur because there is a significant imbalance between antagonistic (opposite) muscle groups. To compete at optimal levels there must be a balance throughout your entire body.For example, let’s say that your pushing muscles (chest, shoulders and triceps) muscles are far stronger and tighter than the Pulling (upper and mid-back) muscles. That means you have a common imbalance between these two muscle groups and you are likely to hurt your rotator cuff (common shoulder injury).So what do you do about it? What you have to do is stretch the pushing muscles and strengthen your pulling muscles to create a balance between the two muscle groups, producing less stress on the shoulder joint resulting in an INJURY FREE Shoulder. Now this example is quite basic but you should get the point. It doesn’t matter how strong you are in one movement, it matters how strong you are as an entire unit.

5. Identify and train in the energy system used in your sport. This is probably the biggest flaw in training and conditioning programs I see. To do this correctly, you must understand the physiology of the main energy systems and how they are used in your chosen sport.

Let me use two examples. A marathon runner and an Olympic Sprinter. A marathon runner relies very heavily on the aerobic energy system to provide energy over 26.2 miles of running in about two and a half hours. A Sprinter uses primarily the ATP/CP system to provide energy to run as fast as possible over a very short amount of time. So how much distance running and endurance training should a Sprinter do? Minimal, assuming our Sprinter has plenty of gas left in the tank after his short race. Get it?

Take basketball for example. It sure looks like a lot of running, but it’s not marathon-style running now is it. It’s actually a whole lot of repetitive sprints followed by a lot of standing around and occasionally some light jogging. Research shows that basketball actually relies most heavily on short-term energy sources (85% ATP/CP and anaerobic glycolysis) and a little from intermediate energy systems (15% aerobic glycolysis). In other words, if your coach is having you run laps for conditioning you are wasting your time.

6. Identify and train the type strength used in your sport. Most athletes equate strength or being strong to maximal strength. In other words, how much weight can you lift? However, there are many different types of strength such as maximal strength, starting strength, explosive strength, speed-strength, strength-speed, and strength endurance.

Focus on the wrong type of strength training may improve performance in the weight room, but it does very little toward improved sports performance. For instance, it doesn’t take a 300-pound bench press (high levels of maximal strength) to drive a golf ball 300 yards, but it does take higher levels of speed-strength and explosive strength than the norm. Most of a golfer’s strength training should, therefore, be designed around increasing levels of speed-strength if the goal is to increase driving distance.

7. Hire a professional sports performance coach to design your individualized program. If you haven’t realized by now, proper design and implementation of a sport-specific conditioning program is not as simple as it seems. Each individual athlete brings a unique set of abilities to the table, so “cookie-cutter” programming doesn’t work.

Each sport has very specific needs for optimal performance. Only those who are trained to identify these abilities and needs can truly provide you with an optimal training program. Without proper guidance, your conditioning program becomes a “crap shoot”. By the way, a poorly designed sport-specific conditioning program can actually reduce your ability to perform at your best on game day. If you have learned anything from this special report, consult with a professional sports performance coach or strength and conditioning coach to make every play your best.

Best of Luck

JZ

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WHAT IS DOMS?

If you are athletic and tend to read articles about health and fitness, you may have stumbled upon a headline or two that mentions an ailment called ‘DOMS’ and thought ‘is that some sort of disease of the month?’ DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is not a disease but rather a popular new buzz word that simply describes discomfort or pain in muscles associated with increased physical exertion. Often confused with acute muscle soreness, DOMS does not result right after exercising; often 1 to 3 days can go by before it the soreness comes on. Typical symptoms include muscle stiffness, strength loss and swelling that usually subside within 7 days without any special treatment.

Although it can be annoying and uncomfortable, DOMS is pretty common and is a normal bodily response to greater intensity, increased duration and unusual physical activities. It is part of the body’s adaptation process, which leads to increased stamina and strength as the muscles recuperate and build.

WHO GETS IT AND HOW?

DOMS is not partial to any age, sex or physical training. Anybody can get it regardless of muscular maturity or conditioning. It strikes anyone especially at the beginning of a new workout program, increased exercise intensity or change in sports activity.

It is believed that DOMS is a result of the microscopic tearing of muscles and subsequently setting off an inflammatory response. It is predominantly caused by exercise such as downhill running, going down the stairs, plyometrics and resistance training, although any movement the body is not used to can also lead to it. The degree of tearing and inflammation depends on how long, how hard and what type of exercise you do.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?

Prevention and treatment of DOMS is important to coaches, trainers and therapists because the pain and discomfort associated with DOMS can hamper performance and impair physical training. DOMS is bothersome and very common but it does not necessarily have to be part of anyone’s exercise program.

In the past, stretching before and after exercising was one of the recommended ways to avoid DOMS or any exercise related muscle soreness. However, a study published in 2007 by a research team in Australian showed that stretching was not effective in avoiding muscle soreness.

With inflammation as one of the main symptoms of DOMS, most athletes use NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) like ibuprofen, aspirin or naproxen to temporarily control the soreness.  NSAIDs lessen the muscle pain but do not actually speed up the healing process and overuse of these drugs can also cause serious adverse effects like hypertension and gastrointestinal bleeding.

Here are some things you can do to prevent or minimize DOMS:

· Raise your heart beat level with a warm-up well before any activity and completely cool down afterwards.

· When starting a new exercise or activity, do it gradually and build up the intensity and duration not more than 10% per week.

· Avoid making a sharp increase in the duration of your activity.

· Avoid making sudden alterations in the type of activity or exercise you’re doing.

· Take natural food supplements that promote general good health and have anti-inflammatory properties like fish oil.

FISH OIL! REALLY?!

It turns out that oil from cold water oily fish such as salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies and sardines is rich in something called omega-3 fatty acids. These fatty acids have proven protective healing effects for arthritis, dermatitis, cardiovascular conditions, and other inflammatory diseases, and they also regulate cholesterol in the body as well.

The fish themselves do not really produce the omega-3 fatty acids but accumulate them from either eating microalgae rich in these fatty acids or by eating other fish that have eaten these microalgae.

Omega-3 fatty acids, particularly EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), are recognized for their strong anti-inflammatory properties. Omega-3 fatty acids act on the muscle fibers, where the pain comes from. These acids stimulate the production of anti-inflammatory hormones, regulate and prevent formation of pro-inflammatory agents, increase elasticity of muscles to reduce the risk and degree of muscular injury during workouts, and influence the cartilage cells to enhance cellular repair capabilities.

After long term use of omega-3 fatty acids, no significant adverse reactions have been noted compared to serious side-effects from long term use of NSAIDs and other analgesic drugs.  With their potent anti-inflammatory effects in combination with their cardiovascular and other health benefits, omega-3 fatty acids are the safe nutrient choice for the alleviation of the symptoms of DOMS.