Enhance a Competitive Atmosphere
This week we introduce our final installment of the Return to Play series of how weight room technology can help get athletes back and better than ever with # 6: Enhance a Competitive Atmosphere, Safely. Athletes are competitive by nature! Coaches love a good competition, athletes love it too, but sometimes the competitive drive can overpower the body’s need for rest. This is where weight room technology can come in handy to help facilitate competition safely.
6. ENHANCE A COMPETITIVE ATMOSPHERE, SAFELY
Athletes will most likely be itching to get back to campus, load the barbell up with weight, and lift the same weight they had lifted before they left. If they haven’t touched these loads in months, this can be dangerous. To build an environment of long-term athlete success, return to play has to planned and executed to promote safety and an encouraging environment. Velocity and power output provides other metrics on which athletes can focus. These metrics aren’t just about brute strength, but focus on explosiveness and speed. These attributes will carry over onto the field of play. The metrics can also be used to compete against themselves and each other day to day, without risking overtraining or injury under load.
No matter what we were doing we were using velocity to measure load. The athletes loved it. It was an easy transition because it created a really competitive environment, it was an easy process for the players. They were competing between racks and really trying to get better.
Tony Smith, Director of Strength & Conditioning, Gaffney High School
By utilizing weight room technology, and velocity based training specifically, athletes can compete with each other on a level playing field. In this way, they’ll be able to bring out the best in each other and do so with coaches watching and the objective metric of velocity or power output informing when fatigue sets in. The introduction of VBT to a weight room environment can help both enhance and facilitate competition, meet athletes where they’re at, and help get athletes better every day.
OTHER RELEVANT POSTS:
Check out Tony Smith’s coaches corner: https://perch.fit/coachs-corner/tony-smith/
Check out other posts in our Return to Play series: https://perch.fit/return-to-play/covid-rtp/
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