Make Your Body Your Machine : fitness training

TRX Football: Conclusion

Fitness Anywhere — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

At the end of the day, the work that is done in the gym must transfer to performance on the field. Research points to the fact that athletes with the best strength/power-to-weight ratios will likely be more explosive, more agile and better prepared to play the game. Victory is judged by wins and losses, not by the team weight room stats. In order to achieve victory, it’s clearly paramount to utilize training techniques that map directly to football movements. Using the TRX for suspension training is the best way to make sure that happens and ensure you or your players are at their very best when they step onto the field!

Until next time! FA

TRX Football: Position Specific Training

Fitness Anywhere — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Both every player and every position in football has unique training requirements. Ergo, individualization of training is a cornerstone of successful football strength and conditioning programs. Suspension training offers unique, propietary solutions for designing the truly individualized, dynamic strength and conditioning programs that today’s game requires.

Suspension training enables athletes to directly address faulty motor patterns, muscle weakness or imabalances, or specific training requirements for a particular position. These characteristics also make suspension training ideal for quarterback conditioning and shoulder injury prevention.

Hurling a 14-15 ounce football around the field as hard as possible places a tremendous amount of stress on a quarterback’s shoulders. Improper technique, overuse or an inability to decelerate external rotation can all cause shoulder injuries. When you factor in defender impact on the quarterback’s arm while he is in a throwing motion, it’s clear that the quarterback must be provided with the best functional strength and conditioning possible for his position. And that means suspension training.

Below are a number of unique, highly effective techniques for addressing these demands. Exercises like Bilateral Internal and External Rotations allow for isolated strengthening of the rotator cuff while the Suspended Scorpion develops core strength and loading while creating the hip dissociation necessary for an effective throwing motion.

The fixed point loading concept is a very unique and highly effective suspension training technique that mimics the forces and mechanics of the loading phase of the throwing motion. This exercise does a tremendous job of training the body to withstand the forces that the shoulder is subjected to during the throwing motion. It also helps to train the mechanics of effective throwing and ensures that the entire body is contributing to the throw in order to maximize performance and reduce related injuries.

Further, it provides the ability to train different versions of this throwing motion. These variations map directly to the demands of common game situations where the environment dictates the throwing motion. The photos demonstrate how this technique reproduces the loading phase of the throwing motion and how they can be used to enhance performance and reduce injury.

TRX Football: Explosive Acceleration

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Exploding off the line of scrimmage or “getting off the ball” is one of the key determinants of the outcome of each play. A faster or more powerful reaction to the snap can create a split second advantage that is often the difference between a play succeeding or failing. The Sprinter’s Start is an excellent movement to help effectively transfer the explosive power developed in the bilateral olympic lifts to a single-leg, body weight environment that more closely resembles the actual movement and speed in which it occurs on the field. Another advantage it offers is the ability to train the movement in quick succession, either in sets or as a reaction drill to help develop the endurance players must possess to maintain this explosiveness during long drives.

TRX Football: Single-Leg Reactivity

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:26:00 GMT

Often a play must be made from a less than optimal body position. Typically, an opponent has knocked a player out of ideal body position or the player must instantaneously respond to a poor pass or change in direction. A player’s ability to decelerate unusual forces from a poor body position can make the difference between a game-making catch and a failed pass. All too often, failure results in season-ending injury.

As we look at the game photo we see a catch where the body is airborne and the hips are rotating to the right. As this player lands on his left leg he must decelerate all of these rotational forces or suffer the imminent knee injury, all while his opponent bears down on him. In short, if he does not possess a high level of single-leg reactivity, he is likely to drop the pass and runs the risk of a major injury. Suspension training techniques provide a unique means to train this single-leg neuromuscular ability coupled with strength and power.

To the right of the game photo we see a Suspended Lunge with a lateral medicine ball throw.Comparing the body positions in the game photo and the training photo, we witness nearly identical forces being transferred through the body from the same position. The player who utilizes functionally-tasked suspension training will be much better prepared to manage the forces necessary to perform at the elite levels, avoid injury and complete these game-making plays.

The same comparison can be made in the next set of images. The ability for a player to make a hard cut requires an inordinate level of eccentric single-leg strength and power. The Suspended Lunge variation shown here is an excellent way to train the ability to suddenly decelerate a tremendous amount of momentum in one direction and explode in another. It’s another fundamental for developing strong, powerful players who are physically capable of highlight plays.

TRX Football: Enhancing Basic Lifts

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Heavy lifting is an integral part of any football strength and conditioning program. Suspension training can be used as an incredibly effective technique to help with neuromuscular activation, or warming up, prior to heavy lifts. This approach can significantly increase performance of the key heavy lifts and help athletes to break through plateaus and achieve new levels of strength. Simply integrate suspension training as a component of a general warm-up routine or as a series of warm up sets for a range of key heavy lifts.

Using suspension training for this purpose is highly effective for a number of reasons. If you’re a trainer or strength and conditioning coach, the ability to adjust resistance simply by adapting body position allows for a fast and efficient method to prepare a number of players simultaneously with individually appropriate resistances. If you’re training on your own, these same attributes will let you rapidly transition from exercise to exercis.

Using functional, integrated movements that task balance and attack subtle instabilities heightens neuromuscular activation and prepares the appropriate motor pattern for the exercise, all without causing any lasting local muscular fatigue.

Many exercises can be used to achieve this effect. Below are photos of a few primary movements for enhancing key lifts.

The TRX Postural Squat, reinforces the squat pattern while activating the posterior chain to prepare for overhead lifts like clean & press

The TRX Single Leg Squat activates single-leg squat motor pattern, teaches mechanics & is excellent for hip complex

The TRX Chest Press uses tremendous upper body activation due to the subtle instability in suspension training

In this way suspension training is an ideal technique to support the Olympic lifts and other ground-based training that modern football teams must utilize to be as functionally strong and powerful as possible.

TRX Football: Single-Leg Strength & Power

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:13:00 GMT

The development of single-leg strength and power is key to athletic success in football. Sudden decelerations, hard cuts and explosive accelerations are the tools necessary to create game-making plays. An athlete’s single-leg strength and power determines the intensity at which these movements can be successfully performed. A direct comparison of the movements such as the TRX Suspended Lunge with Hop below shows just how closely a number of suspension-based exercises resemble some of the key movements in football rooted in single-leg strength and power.

TRX Football: Building Upper Body Strength

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:07:00 GMT

Upper body strength and stability play central roles in winning at football. Players must be able to ward off defenders, battle for position or take down opponents. Therefore, the ability to functionally train the upper body with high loads in a way that integrates the entire body in the movement as a complete unit has tremendous transferability to the demands of the game.

Exercises like the TRX Deep Single Arm Row require extremely high strength coupled with full body muscular integration. These movements offer considerable advantages in training that map directly to the demands of football.

TRX Football: Unprecedented Core Strength

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Suspension training can lead to a quantum leap in functional core strength. Demanding exercises like the Suspended Body Saw and the Suspended Pendulum develop exceptional core stability, strength and rotational control. Standing movements like the Standing Rotation and Hip Drop provide more functional rotational strength and power along with side pillar strength and reactivity from a standing position. These characteristics directly apply to the battling and impact resistance necessary for successful football.

TRX Suspended Body Saw

TRX Suspended Pendulum Swing

TRX High Rotation

TRX Hip Drop

One of the unique properties of these movements is their scalability. They become increasingly challenging with heavier body weight. Suspension training provides commensurate challenges and training benefits for bigger, stronger players and lighter players alike.

TRX Performance: Team Sports

Fitness Anywhere — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:44:00 GMT

You’ve got to be able to play the game to win it.

Performance is everything to athletes. To be confident that your top performance will show up for the game, you have to get game ready with your strength and conditioning. Todd Durkin shares his proven cutting-edge techniques that push you to give your all and meet your goals.

Whether you’re a coach or a player, you will benefit from Todd’s proven techniques. You will learn how his unique combination of Suspension Training exercises and speed + agility drills work for your sports and how to tailor the exercises for every fitness level.

If you are serious about improving your performance, this is the strength and conditioning program your team needs to get that “W” on game day.

Buy the TRX Performance: Team Sports DVD

TRX Football: An Introduction

Fitness Anywhere — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:36:00 GMT

Of all the major sports, football demands some of the most intense strength and conditioning training. Accordingly, the gladiators who battle on the gridiron are among the best conditioned athletes on the planet—strong, agile, powerful warriors who must prepare their bodies to explode and cut in the quest for peak performance. But at the same time, football players must maintain the durability to withstand car-wreck force impacts play after play, game after game, season after season.

Traditionally football players have relied on basic, heavy lifts like hang cleans, squats, dead lifts and bench presses to build strength. And if it were 1955, this might be enough. It’s not. That’s why top NCAA and NFL programs like perennial national powerhouse Ohio State use suspension training techniques to enable their players to reach their peak potential.

This series will explain the benefits you’ll experience from using the TRX for football training including:

Enhancing basic lifts
Building upper body strength
Single-leg strength, power and reactivity
Position-specific training
Unprecedented core strength

In the following posts, we’ll explain how the TRX can be used to achieve each of these aims. Until then! FA