Designing an Effective Training Program Part Three: Analyzing Qualities

In the last two posts of this series, I discussed how to analyze the demands of the sport and the importance of understanding the position or event in the sport. The third post in this series will touch on analysis of the qualities an athlete possesses.

Analyze the qualities of the athlete:

This can be as simple as administering tests to determine how fast an athlete is, how strong an athlete is, or how fit the athlete is. We have used a few different tests with the Whitecaps to determine the qualities individual athlete?s possess: vertical jump, 30 meter sprint,?Yo-Yo IR2, etc. This can help determine an athlete?s strong and weaker qualities and where to devote extra training time to. Using a combination of normative date, team averages, or self comparison (how they did relative to their old scores) can be?appropriate?ways to rank players and see where they need to improve. Different positions may require different qualities as pointed out in part two, but there should be minimal thresholds every athlete should be able to attain regardless of position.

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John Grace is a coach at Athletic Lab Sports Performance Training Center in Cary, NC - USA. John has his CSCS, USAW Level 1 certification, USATF Level 1 certification and has worked as an assistant fitness coach for the Vancouver Whitecaps of the MLS.