6 Strength Training Programs for Various Sports

6 Strength Training Programs for Various Sports. This article will explain about six strength training programs for various sports, which can be used for us in the training process. Athletes and coaches in various sports use 6 main programs for strength training: bodybuilding, high-intensity training, Olympic weightlifting, power training throughout the year, powerlifting, and periodization of strength. Overall, however, periodization of strength is the most influential training methodology. (Bompa: 2015)

1. Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding is a creative sport in which the bodybuilder and trainer manipulate training variables (such as sets, reps, rest periods, and speed of execution) to produce the highest level of exhaustion, followed by a period of rest and regeneration. Muscle size and strength increase due to adaptations in the form of energy substrate overcompensation and muscle protein accretion.

Bodybuilders are concerned chiefly with increasing their muscle size. To that end, they perform sets of 6 to 12 reps to exhaustion. However, increased muscle size is rarely beneficial to athletic performance (the few exceptions may include younger or lower-level athletes, American football players, and some performers in track-and-field throwing events). More specifically, the slow, repetitive contractions in bodybuilding offer only limited positive transfer to the explosive athletic movements in many other sports. For instance, whereas athletic skills are performed quickly, taking from 100 to 180 milliseconds, leg extensions in bodybuilding take 600 milliseconds (see table 1.1).

There are exceptions. Selected bodybuilding techniques, such as supersets and drop sets, are used during the hypertrophy phase of training for certain sports where the main objective is to increase muscle size. However, because neuromuscular adaptations are not vital to bodybuilding, it does not usually include explosive concentrics or high loads with long rest periods. For this reason, bodybuilding is rarely used in strength training for sports.

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2. High-Intensity Training

High-intensity training (HIT) involves using high training loads throughout the year and performing all working sets to at least positive failure. Firm believers in HIT claim that strength development can be achieved in 20 to 30 minutes; they disregard the high-volume strength training for events of long, continuous duration (such as mid- and long-distance swimming, rowing, canoeing, and cross-country skiing).

HIT programs are not organized according to the competition schedule. For sports, strength is periodized according to the physiological needs of the sport in a given phase of training and the date for reaching peak performance.

Athletes who use HIT training often gain strength very quickly but tend to lose strength and endurance as their competitive season progresses. Furthermore, the high level of muscle soreness and neural fatigue caused by the intensification methods used in HIT programs (such as forced reps or negative reps) interferes with the more specific physical work, as well as the athlete’s technical or tactical work throughout his or her weekly training.

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3. Olympic Weightlifting

Olympic weightlifting exerted important influence in the early days of strength training. Even now, many coaches and trainers use traditional Olympic weightlifting moves (such as the clean and jerk, the snatch, and the power clean) despite the fact that they may or may not work the prime movers—the primary muscles used in specific sport skills. Because exercises that train the prime movers should always be placed at the forefront of any strength training program, coaches should closely analyze the primary movements in their sport to decide whether Olympic weightlifting exercises would be beneficial. For example, American football linemen can benefit from the lifts, but rowers and swimmers, who often use Olympic lifts as part of their strength training regimens, probably do not.

In order to avoid injury, it is also essential to carefully assess the ins and outs of Olympic weightlifting techniques, especially for young athletes and those with no strength training background. Indeed, it is a time-consuming process to master Olympic weightlifting techniques, but one must achieve sufficient technical proficiency to use loads that generate a training effect. In summary, although Olympic weightlifting can be a good way to improve overall body strength and power, strength and conditioning coaches must evaluate both its specificity and its efficiency.

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4. Power Training Throughout the Year

Power training throughout the year is characterized by the use of explosive bounding exercises, medicine ball throws, and weightlifting exercises regardless of the yearly training cycle. Some coaches and trainers, especially in track and field and certain team sports, believe that power training should be performed from the first day of training through the major championship. They theorize that if power is the dominant ability, it must be trained for throughout the year, except during the transition phase (the off-season).

Certainly, power capability does improve by doing power training throughout the year. The key element, however, is not just whether the athlete improves but the athlete’s rate of improvement, both throughout the year and especially from year to year. Strength training has been shown to lead to far better results than power training, especially when the athlete uses periodization of strength. Because power is a function of maximum strength, improving one’s power requires improving one’s maximum strength. As a result, strength training results in faster power improvement and allows athletes to reach higher levels.

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5. Powerlifting

Powerlifting is the latest trend in strength and conditioning. It is a fascinating sport, growing in popularity, in which participants train to maximize their strength in the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Many powerlifting training methods have emerged in the last two decades, some of which are very specific to geared powerlifting (in which lifters wear knee wraps, a bench shirt, and squat and deadlift suits to increase their lifts). Other methods have been adapted to train athletes in various sports.

The key point, however, is that powerlifters train to maximize one biomotor ability—strength. In contrast, an athlete usually needs to train all biomotor abilities, and more precisely their subqualities, in a sport-specific combination. As a result, a sport coach usually cannot devote the same amount of time to strength training that powerlifters do in terms of both weekly frequency and workout duration. Furthermore, though the squat, bench press, and deadlift are the bread and butter exercises for general strength, an athlete needs to perform exercises that have a higher biomechanical correspondence to the specific motor skill, especially during the specific preparation and competitive phases, as well as convert his or her maximum strength into specific power—be it power, power endurance, or muscle endurance.

As you can see in table 1.2, powerlifters strength-train much more often during the week throughout the year than do athletes in other individual sports or team sports. This difference is another reason that one cannot simply apply a powerlifting program to other athletes.

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6. Periodization of Strength

Periodization of strength must be based on the specific physiological requirements of a given sport and, again, must result in the highest development of either power, power endurance, or muscular endurance. Furthermore, strength training must revolve around the needs of periodization for the chosen sport and employ training methods specific to a given training phase. The goal is to reach peak performance at the time of major competitions.

All periodization of strength programs begin with a general anatomical adaptation phase that prepares the body for the phases to follow. Depending on the requirements of the sport, it may also be useful to plan one or two hypertrophy or muscle-building phases. One of the goals of periodization of strength is to bring the athlete to the highest possible level of maximum strength within the annual plan so that gains in strength become gains in power, power endurance, or muscular endurance. The planning of phases is unique to each sport and also depends on the individual athlete’s physical maturity, competition schedule, and peaking dates.

The concept of periodization of strength for sports has evolved from two basic needs:

1. to integrate strength training into the annual plan and its training phases and 
2. to increase the sport-specific strength development from year to year.

The first athletic experiment using periodization of strength was conducted with Mihaela Penes, a gold medalist in the javelin throw at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. The results were presented in 1965 in Bucharest and Moscow (Bompa 1965a, 1965b).

By knowing the 6 strength training programs, we can understand what kind of strength training program is suitable for use in sports that are being occupied. So the training program given to the athlete by the trainer will be right on target.

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