Dr Di­a­lo-Rudolph Brown

It is the last quar­ter of 2024, two months in­to the new school year. Many sports are well un­der­way with their “back­ground sea­son” or “prepa­ra­tion phase” of train­ing ahead of ma­jor com­pe­ti­tions. Some have al­ready be­gun com­pe­ti­tions.

Track and field ath­letes at youth and se­nior lev­els, af­ter a very com­pet­i­tive pre­vi­ous sea­son—and a break late in the sum­mer—use this prepa­ra­tion phase to em­pha­sise high-vol­ume gen­er­al strength and con­di­tion­ing. Oth­er sports, like foot­ball, con­tin­ue train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the start of com­pe­ti­tions. “School­boy foot­ball” com­pe­ti­tion has al­ready be­gun, and young foot­ballers will com­pete over sev­er­al months whilst con­tin­u­ing gen­er­al train­ing.

The “back­ground”/“prepa­ra­tion” pe­ri­od ap­plies to all sport and should be op­ti­mised. Not on­ly should there be phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion for sports “per­for­mance”, but al­so com­pre­hen­sive pre-par­tic­i­pa­tion screen­ing by sports med­i­cine physi­cians; full di­ag­no­sis and op­ti­mal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of any lin­ger­ing in­juries from the pre­vi­ous sea­son (or be­fore) by ap­pro­pri­ate sports med­i­cine spe­cial­ists; thought­ful and strate­gic re­turn-to-play af­ter a rest and/or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od as ap­pro­pri­ate; and im­ple­men­ta­tion of in­jury pre­ven­tion mech­a­nisms wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

Strength and con­di­tion­ing (S&C), which refers to ex­er­cise train­ing us­ing weights and oth­er forms of re­sis­tance (aka “gym work”) to en­hance sports per­for­mance, is piv­otal dur­ing the back­ground sea­son/prepa­ra­tion phase and be­yond. S&C spans the “per­for­mance spec­trum” from re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of in­juries to in­jury risk re­duc­tion/in­jury pre­ven­tion (aka “pre­ha­bil­i­ta­tion” or “pre­hab”), to op­ti­mal sports per­for­mance.

S&C has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly shown to im­prove key sport per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors such as speed, pow­er, and work ca­pac­i­ty (or “en­durance”). It is al­so a key part of full/op­ti­mal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for an ath­lete’s re­turn to sports af­ter in­jury; and can al­so help to re­duce the risk of in­juries/re-in­juries. S&C ac­com­plish­es these goals via in­creas­ing gen­er­al strength and ca­pac­i­ty through gen­er­al phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion, or GPP, the ear­li­est phase of a struc­tured S&C pro­gramme, which fits right in­to the “back­ground sea­son.”

With greater strength and ca­pac­i­ty, track ath­letes can with­stand longer and more in­ten­sive sport train­ing through­out the sea­son, with less un­due fa­tigue and po­ten­tial­ly less like­li­hood of in­jury. They can be bet­ter pre­pared for the rigours of re­peat­ed rounds of rac­ing dur­ing cham­pi­onships at the high school, col­le­giate or even at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, e.g. the World Ath­let­ics Track and Field Cham­pi­onships. For ath­letes in team sports, gen­er­al phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion in­creas­es over­all strength and ca­pac­i­ty, po­ten­tial­ly mak­ing them less in­jury-prone over the course of long com­pet­i­tive sea­sons, and in­deed their whole com­pet­i­tive ca­reers.

Grad­ual ex­po­sure to heav­ier weights and/or in­creas­ing­ly chal­leng­ing train­ing ses­sions – termed “Pro­gres­sive Over­load” – is pro­tec­tive. It pre­pares the ath­lete’s body for the sig­nif­i­cant forces en­coun­tered dur­ing sport, whether from col­li­sions with op­po­nents; force­ful body move­ments like twists/ro­ta­tions, “flip-turns” or throws; or pow­er­ful limb move­ments like swim­ming, hit­ting, kick­ing or sprint­ing. For ex­am­ple, while it is com­mon­ly felt that ham­string in­juries oc­cur due to a lack of flex­i­bil­i­ty or “tight mus­cles”, in many in­stances it is due to a rel­a­tive lack of strength and ca­pac­i­ty of the ham­string mus­cles to with­stand the re­peat­ed, rapid, high forces that they en­counter in sprint­ing. This lack of strength and ca­pac­i­ty may be due to im­bal­anced gym pro­grammes where em­pha­sis is placed on strength­en­ing the large and pow­er­ful quadri­ceps mus­cles (mul­ti­ple ver­sions of squats and lunges, pop­u­lar in most track-and-field gym work­outs) but poor at­ten­tion to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing the ham­string mus­cles and how they work in sprint­ing. This pre­dis­pos­es the ham­strings to in­juries when faced with the de­mands of train­ing and com­pet­ing. Like­wise, oth­er mus­cu­lar in­juries in ath­letes (e.g. shoul­der, low­er back, etc.) al­so oc­cur when there is in­ad­e­quate or im­bal­anced, strength work for the mus­cles and their rel­e­vant move­ments and func­tions.

Bal­anced, well-struc­tured strength-and-con­di­tion­ing, through gen­er­al phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion (GPP) and pro­gres­sive over­load, de­vel­ops greater “re­serve” or ca­pac­i­ty in the rel­e­vant mus­cles and their re­spec­tive move­ments and func­tions, strength­ens “weak links,” while po­ten­tial­ly cre­at­ing a buffer against the pos­si­ble neg­a­tive ef­fects of train­ing, school and life stress­es.

For all the rea­sons men­tioned above, S&C should al­so con­tin­ue be­yond this prepa­ra­tion sea­son, and even through­out the com­pet­i­tive pe­ri­ods - “in-sea­son strength-and-con­di­tion­ing.” While it may seem “counter-in­tu­itive” or coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to main­tain gym work dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions, the op­po­site is true.

“Main­te­nance-lev­el” S&C train­ing dur­ing com­pet­i­tive pe­ri­ods has mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing in­jury risk re­duc­tion over the long haul of a com­pet­i­tive sea­son and in­creased re­silience should in­jury oc­cur. The in-sea­son pro­gramme must be mod­i­fied for in­ten­si­ty and over­all “vol­ume”, with few­er, but the most es­sen­tial “bang-for-your-buck” ex­er­cis­es.

A qual­i­fied strength-and-con­di­tion­ing spe­cial­ist/S&C coach can analyse the needs and de­mands on the ath­lete through­out the back­ground prepa­ra­tion and com­pet­i­tive sea­sons, to de­sign ef­fec­tive pro­grammes that sup­port the ath­lete across the per­for­mance spec­trum of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­turn-to-play, prepa­ra­tion, in-sea­son main­te­nance and ul­ti­mate­ly, op­ti­mal per­for­mance.

Dr Di­a­lo-Rudolph Brown is a Sports Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pist and Cer­ti­fied Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Spe­cial­ist at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sports Med­i­cine Clin­ic, Mona. Con­tact: di­alob.rpt.cscs@gmail.com.