Four Fundamentals For Training Your Student-Athletes

Athletes all have their own strengths and deficiencies, necessitating a personalized approach to training.

It’s essential for coaches and trainers to establish a baseline for individual student-athletes, a foundation from which to build upon the five trainable qualities: hypertrophy (building muscle mass), speed, power, muscular endurance, and strength.

Here are four fundamentals to optimal training, based on a conversation with Mac Calloway, Human Performance & Education Specialist for Keiser Corporation, a company whose equipment is used by student-athletes on more than 80% of college campuses across the United States.

Know your student-athlete

Establishing an athlete’s baseline comes through testing on equipment that can help determine factors such as where their deficiencies lie and potential risk of injury.

“The first thing we want to do as coaches is to try to find out where that particular athlete is,” said Calloway, who has been a strength and conditioning coach at DePaul University, the University of Miami, and Clemson University. “Are there any red flags that should dictate where the programming should lead us? How should we train somebody if they're a ‘healthy individual’ versus if they have a deficiency on one side of their body?”

Also, while “sport specific” has become a buzzword in the training space, athletic individuality cuts across particular sports. Rather than looking at sports specificity, the more effective approach, according to Calloway, is to determine the “sport relevance” of a training method or piece of equipment and then relevance to each athlete.

Whether training a basketball player, football player, or golfer, Calloway said, it's more about “what type of athlete are you, where are you producing power, where are you deficient. It's more individual specific as opposed sport specific, and I think that's where everything is going. .... 

“My job is to find the best piece of equipment, whether it's a Keiser piece of equipment or another piece of equipment, that's best suited for that particular individual to maximize their play on the field or on the court.”

Protect your athlete

Training equipment that utilizes pure resistance offers safety not provided by mass-based resistance. Athletes endure enough wear-and-tear during competition. They and their coaches should not have to worry about injuries that can be sustained in the weight room.

“I want to train them in a means where I can get the same, if not a better benefit, by utilizing the resistance that's going to cause less damage to their body,” Calloway stressed. “My train of thought is, ‘how can I get the best of my athlete without breaking them down?’, because I know they're getting broken down on the field or on the court.”

Injuries are often inevitable. When a basketball player, for example, lands on another player’s foot, a rolled ankle is likely to ensue. But proper weight room training and mobility strengthening can reduce the severity of that injury and cut down on missed playing time.

“That's what coaches are looking for,” Calloway continued. “They want to make sure their players and athletes are healthy.”

Know your equipment

There’s a saying within the Keiser offices: “Coaches use our equipment like a VW when they’re really driving a Porsche.” Sure, a Porsche can be driven to the grocery story, but it’s a fine-tuned sports car with much greater capabilities.

Calloway is one of five full-time educators at Keiser who make on-site visits to show coaches and trainers how to maximize the equipment. The education varies based on the clients’ needs – from basics like how to use the equipment and read the display screen to higher-level discussions of an athlete’s force-velocity profile.

The conversations always culminate with the question, “How can I implement the equipment into my program?”

“People ask, ‘This is pneumatic-based resistance, it’s totally different than what I'm used to. How can I build that into my current system?,'” Calloway said. “Our education team helps incorporate Keiser into their facility and training by utilizing our experience as coaches. We’ve been in their shoes, so they trust us to help build their vision.”

Train them the way they play

Pneumatic-based resistance allows athletes to train any direction and any speed, mirroring a competitive environment. Athletes using the equipment can move in the three planes of motion: sagittal, frontal and transverse, just like the way we live and move.

“We don't just live in a frontal and sagittal plane. We live in three dimensions,” Calloway added, “We need to train according to how we play on the field, on the court and how we live.”