Fill Every Bucket (of athletic development)

Athlete’s need well-rounded development. In an age of specialization it’s all too common that athletes solely play their sport 12 months a year. While this can be tremendous for skill development, one must ask, is it providing the athlete with everything they need? My answer is no. My solution, especially for those that aren’t multisport athletes, fill the missing buckets with a comprehensive sports performance program.

From a purely physical perspective we can break athletic qualities down into Strength, Speed, Power, Endurance and so on. Each quality has a range of intensities, but to truly develop a quality, to raise the ceiling of a particular quality, you must experience it at it’s highest intensity. Otherwise, you’re addressing it submaximally which will NOT force the body to adapt.

Many sports already provide athletes with hundreds of low, moderate, and even high intensity actions. But what’s incredibly rare in sports is reaching maximal intensities. This is why we aim to provide all our athletes with at least 1 opportunity to hit Max Speeds every week.

It’s the same rationale we use when programming our weightlifting to prioritize high quality, explosive movements, rather than high quantity slower movements. More of the same isn’t going to help the athlete grow. Athletes need different stressors to continue to develop. They also need adequate rest & recovery, as I covered in this IG post.