How to Create a Training Program for Your Team
If your facility hosts its own sports teams (such as select soccer, elite baseball, or all-star cheerleading) you know that most of your practice time is often spent on team strategy, preparation for upcoming events, and other sport-specific drills. Time spent on pure physical conditioning has its place, too, but it’s usually taken care of at the beginning or the end of practice – not exactly emphasized, just checked off the list.
However, when your team only focuses on sports-specific training and play-centered drills – especially as competitive seasons take up more and more of the year – your players are at greater risk for injury and burnout.
Creating a sports performance training program specifically for each of your teams is a great way to combat this risk. Sports performance programs should focus on fundamental fitness techniques for improving strength, speed, agility, as well as confidence.
As I’ve mentioned before, creating team-specific sports performance program can also serve as a selling point for the team itself. Players should get special access and discounted rates on this type of program if you also offer it to the general public (which you should, because sports performance programs are a great way to gain revenue throughout the year and cross-promote other programming at your facility).
Benefits of Sports Performance Programs for Teams
Other benefits of sports performance programs for teams include:
- Team bonding. Putting players in a new, less competitive atmosphere gets them out of their defined roles and changes up the team dynamic, allowing players to interact and bond in new ways.
- Improved athletic performance. As players get stronger and more agile, their other, sports-specific skills (such as throwing or passing a ball) will improve, as well.
- Injury prevention. Repetitive sports-specific movements can cause strain. Increasing general strength and learning proper change of direction and deceleration techniques help prevent possible injury.
- Improved mental performance. Players who struggle with various sports-specific skills may excel in sports-performance training. Strength and speed training are great ways to track tangible improvements that players are making over time, which builds confidence, which can improve actual game play.
At my own facility, DNA Sports Center, we offer Parisi Speed School programming. Our baseball team, the Midwest Prospects, gets exclusive access to a specially tailored speed, agility, strength and hitting membership 12 months out of the year. If you’d like to discuss this in more detail, or see the sports facility scheduling software that we use to create these programs, give me (Mike) a call at (513) 791-4940.