What Should Be the Focus – Guest Blog by TrueFitness

Determining what is your training focus is a very important decision for each client. Focus varies from sport to sport, position to position and even changes based around the time of year. Focus can even shift based on the individual and their current needs. Focus is a tricky emphasis because it needs to be addressed regularly with each individual and re-evaluated constantly. Learning about the individual needs of the athlete, the demands of the sport and the requirement of their position will help to determine what the focus of training should be. To properly improve sports performance an athlete must determine what is the proper focus NOW based around their current needs, requirement of the position and what needs to happen to get game ready. When these factors are accounted for then an athlete can ensure they are game ready.

Individual focus- Every individual is different and their own specific needs need to be addressed in order to ensure that the individual is game ready. An evaluation of the athlete’s current condition and potential is mandatory. Taking into account the athletes current strength and conditioning will help to determine the needed course of action. Knowing the requirements of the position will help to determine where the athlete needs to be by the start of the season and to be game ready.

Position requirements- Every sport has certain elements that pertain to all positions in that sport but each position has special needs that separate its training focus to an individualistic approach. One must understand the needs of the position to properly address training protocols. Speed, duration, power output, rest, and muscular requirements are just a few of the factors that need to be addressed based around the positional requirements. So determining the position requirements of each individual athlete will help with the creation of a training program.
Season- If you break down a year into 4 seasons they would be in-season, post-season, off-season and pres-season. Each season has its specific needs that need to be the focus of that particular time period. We will go further into depth in next week’s blogs regarding the goals and focus of each season. For now, understanding that each season has different training parameters is enough to know that we need to train differently based on the time of year.

Demands of the sport- Position requirements not withstanding, most players in a sport require the same general performance elements. Whether those elements are speed, agility, power, quickness, strength and all the different variable combinations of those qualities, a program must address the needs of the sport properly to achieve better sports performance.

Taking into account all of these factors will help to determine the overall approach to the current needs and focus. After all these factors are accounted for, then the program must use periodization to limit plateaus and ensure proper progressions to get the athlete game ready. So before starting any sports performance program an athlete must undergo a thorough evaluation to determine the proper course of action and only then is it time to begin working hard to get game ready to be the best possible athlete that you can be

Anyone in the San Diego area is welcome to drop in at our studio at 2949 Garnet Ave. 3rd floor, Pacific Beach, CA. We would love to put you through our workout. Please feel free to call or email Annalise Evans of TrueFitness with any questions: (760) 809 1848 annalise@truefitness.biz and join her fan page on Facebook: TrueFitness Annalise Evans.

Article written by Spencer Aiken, CSCS, CEO, TrueFitness