One of the better resources I’ve reviewed in the past few years has been Mike Boyle’s Complete Sports Conditioning. To say that I’ve been impressed has been an understatement, as it’s a fantastic resource that offers a nice blend of research, anecdotal observations, actual programming recommendations for those who need to manage energy systems development in athletes. It’s on sale for 50% off through the end of the day tomorrow (Wednesday).

That said, Mike’s presentations got me thinking about a variety of conditioning-related topics, so I figure I’d do a bit of a brain dump here to highlight some of my favorite take-home points from this resource.

1. This quote kicked off Mike’s initial presentation on the right foot!

Using extra conditioning to try to enhance “mental toughness” might yield some benefits in young athletes who have larger windows of adaptation in work capacity – and because just about anything works for untrained athletes. In more experienced athletes, however, throwing in a bunch of extra conditioning usually just leads to increased injury rates – and the realization that it’s super challenging to try to take the spots off a leopard.

2. You don’t have to be an aerobic rock star; you just have to be good enough.

I deal with a lot of baseball players, and it’s important that they have a solid aerobic base. This allows them to bounce back faster between bouts of intense exercise (i.e., throwing 95mph or running to first base) and training sessions. They don’t have to have elite aerobic capacity, though.

We’ve always used a resting heart rate below 60 as our standard for a “sufficient” aerobic base with the baseball guys, and it was good to hear Mike reaffirm this (referencing Dave Tenney of the Seattle Sounders).

Honestly, most guys show up at the start of the offseason with a sufficient aerobic base (via this measure) because it’s something that is relatively easy to maintain once established. As Mike noted, “You can get ten minutes of aerobic work with a good warm-up.”

And, as I noted in Building Aerobic Capacity with Mobility Circuits, we will do exactly that (albeit with extended warm-ups) with our guys in the first month of the offseason.

There has definitely been an industry-wide trend of heavily emphasizing aerobic base work – and that’s a good thing – but we have to be careful about taking it too far with athletes who have other important qualities they need to train. That said, remember that very low intensity work (below 70% of max heart rate) affords “easy gains” that can promote recovery and help with long-term adaptations to training, so if folks have the time for it, adding a little bit in won’t hurt (assuming the modality is appropriate).

3. Appreciate the interaction between biomechanics and physiology.

It’s our natural tendency to get “boxed in” based on our specialty. As an example, I’m a shoulder and elbow guy, so I’m naturally going to be drawn to learning more about those joints as opposed to seeking out continuing education on the foot and ankle, even though that’s my biggest weakness. It’s just like training athletes; they like to do what they’re already good at, and as coaches, we need to be cognizant of giving them what they need.

This has parallels in the conditioning discussion. Many coaches will be incredibly physiology driven, meaning they understand the cardiovascular and (possibly) endocrine responses to a given training protocol. However, in my experience, these folks are often the most likely to overlook the biomechanical side of things, and that has an even larger contribution to injury risk in athletes. Mike demonstrated that he’s a guy who understands both sides of the equation well. A few key points that stood out:

a. With treadmills, the athlete isn’t creating hip extension. Rather, the belt moving is creating hip extension.

b. Most “traditional” conditioning – all cardio equipment and straight-ahead sprinting – occurs almost exclusively in the sagittal plane, but most sports injuries involve frontal and transverse plane challenges that go uncontrolled. Incorporating slideboards and change-of-direction work like shuttle runs to conditioning programs is imperative to check both the biomechanics and physiology boxes.

c. Rowing might be blast heart rate up, but from a biomechanical standpoint, it can irritate a lot of lower backs and hips. I’ve even seen folks deal with forearm/elbow overuse issues from adding in extra gripping with rowing on top of their normal lifting programs. It’s probably not an awesome conditioning option for team sports athletes.

d. Shuttle runs are far more intensive than tempo runs because of the deceleration/acceleration components involved with changing direction – but they also allow you to train to prevent injuries better than straight-ahead running (even if heart rates are matched to the tempo approach).

This leads to…

4. Year-round competitive play may have eliminated the need for “conditioning.”

When athletes is playing hockey, soccer, basketball, or some other conditioning-heavy sport, they are stressing both the same movement patterns/muscles and the same energy systems. And, if you think extra conditioning is going to help a basketball player who is already playing five games per week, you’re sorely mistaken. If you add more in, you’re likely going to increase injury risk and lose valuable training time that would be better focused on enhancing other athletic qualities like strength and power.

5. Heart rate based training is superior to time-based interval training.

Time-based interval training prescription is very arbitrary, and Mike demonstrated it in real-time with a collection of athletes from different backgrounds performing conditioning on heart rate monitors. When time during the “hard” portion of the interval is matched, athletes will have a lot of variability in how quickly their heart rates recover. A 15s: 45s work: rest ratio might be a piece of cake for one athlete, but absolutely crush another one.

Cardiac drift – a phenomenon where heart rate will gradually trend upward as a training session progresses – will likely exaggerate this even further. The further up it goes during the “work” period, the further down it’ll have to come during the “rest” portion.

The take-home point is that monitoring heart rate allows you to individual conditioning in a way that promotes faster adaptation – and gives you peace of mind that you’re actually training what you want to train.

6. Maximum heart rate is highly variable.

At Cressey Sports Performance – Florida, we have a 57-year-old client who is a competitive skisurf (ocean paddling) racer. His max heart rate is 180 beats per minute, which effectively blows the “220 minus age” model for predicting max heart rate out of the water. Mike Boyle is about the same age, and he mentioned that he, too, can get up to the 180bpm mark.

Conversely, I’m sure there are other folks who can’t come close to their age-predicted max heart rate. I’m 35 years old, and I’m not sure that I could touch 185bpm, as I always seem to be an “under responder” when it comes to monitoring heart rate.

The point is that you never know unless you measure it and plan accordingly. Having an idea of both resting and max heart rate is really helpful for planning things out.

7. “If I have young kids, the last thing I am going to be worried about is fitness, and the first thing I’m going to be worried about is fastness.”

I loved this quote and absolutely plan to steal it (thanks, Mike). If we are talking about SPORTS conditioning, the faster athlete should theoretically always win, and that’s why it’s so important to start with speed development. This comes through getting stronger and training power.

Starting with speed is also particularly important because fatigue is the enemy of motor learning. If we want young athletes to pick up new skills, we can’t introduce these challenges with a huge conditioning element that may impede that development. Sure, aerobic exercise offers benefits for motor learning, but as we noted earlier, most young athletes are already getting an “accidental” aerobic stimulus with some of their other training. As the saying goes:

[bctt tweet=”Move well before you move a lot.”]

If I had to ballpark an age, I’d say that it would be a bad idea to do targeted aerobic work with anyone under 15 years old. Free play and multiple sports is the name of the game up through age 12, and then the 13-15 year-old athlete has remarkable windows of adaptation for strength and power, making this a perfect time to initiate more targeted strength and conditioning work. Specific low-intensity steady state work just gets pushed out because athletes have to be athletic and work on the most pressing growth areas.

Apologies to all the middle school cross country coaches who are reading this!

8. Good conditioning programming is heavily based on common sense.

If you’re ever struggling to really appreciate what athletes need, sit back and watch the sport. Appreciate how much ground an athlete covers, how much time is spent at maximum speed, how many changes of direction take place, and how much time he/she spends with the ball/puck. These observations will tell you just as much as researching the energy systems demands.

These are really just a very small tip of the iceberg with respect to what this excellent resource contains, so I’d definitely recommend you check it out for yourself, especially since it’s on sale for 50% off through tomorrow (Wednesday) at midnight. You can check it out HERE.