Athletic Development – A True Misconception About How the Athlete Should Build Strength!

I am here to tell you the truth about off-season strength training and total-body conditioning to maximize your performance for the next upcoming season of your sport. You don’t need the fully-stocked weight-room to achieve optimal performance. The following philosophy is a proven fact and translates over ALL boundaries to ALL sports!

So you are thinking “what is he talking about?” Well the truth about building strength is easy, but you have to have a definite logical plan in your approach for your optimal performance development. You see the only way to truly get stronger is to maximize muscular tension. Tension is what builds absolute body strength. This is achieved best by engaging in lifts of 3 dimensional movements. Now when I say lifts I don’t necessarily mean weights, I mean lifts that create resistance! You should always try to master different ways of handling a load rather than just handling a different load of weight. For instance, I may be able to deadlift 500 lbs as a football player, but to truly get stronger should I continue to increase the poundage to maybe do 550 lbs? The answer to this is no. Rather than trying to improve the poundage of the DEADLIFT I would better OPTIMIZE my strength by changing to do snatches, cleans, jerks, lifting rocks, sandbags, variation animal walks, and a engaging in an arsenal of plyometric drills.

Now what I have mentioned so far can all be varied by utilizing alternative tools to traditional weights found in a weight-room. To name a few examples: your own body-weight, rocks, sandbags, buckets of water, swinging a sledgehammer, tires, and throwing heavy objects! Creativity is underrated. Any multi-planar movement will stimulate your neuromuscular system to not only adapt to a heavy load, but to adapt to MOVING that heavy load therefore giving you OPTIMAL performance!