[IMPORTANT: BEFORE YOU START ANY TRAINING PROGRAM, CONSULT A DOCTOR]

The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the concept of conditioning for sports and it will include aspects related to general fitness, sports specific fitness and strength (general and sports specific). In terms of conditioning, what one needs to realise is first of all, is that all sports differ from the others, and secondly, all individuals differ from all others. What works well for person A, may not work for person B and vice versa. In some cases, certain individuals are highly trainable and just about any program you can think of will have significant benefit for a specific person, but in the case of another, you could go through many different programs with little benefit (there always is some benefit), but only when you get to the twentieth attempted training program, the individual suddenly shows significant progress. The good news is that every person is trainable, even though some seem to show resistance initially.

There are quite a few philosophies regarding conditioning for sports and most of those philosophies are valid. As I indicated, there always is some benefit, which means that if you train, you will improve, but if you train correctly, you will improve even faster. What I will attempt to do with the information here, is to assist you to train correctly. Once again, we are all individuals, who react differently to the various training stimuli, which also means what is correct for one individual may vary slightly for another. What I will attempt to do is address the training generically. In this first post, I will only give an overview regarding the process in very general terms, so that you understand that there is a basis that you have to build on and I will use a few examples to explain some of the difference between some different sports.

Before we can start with sports specific training, we need to build a basis. We all heard the phrase “no pain, no gain”. But forget about that, because it is not necessary for pain to show gains. If you are extremely unfit, you can start of with something as simple as walking and over time build up slowly, while you still enjoy every moment of the training. For Olympic level athletes, there is some level of discomfort, which may at times be associated with pain, but you have to determine what you want to get out of the training. You have to set realistic targets for yourself and determine what you as an individual want to achieve through training.

1. Do you only want to be more healthy?
2. Is it for weight loss?
3. Do you want a general level of fitness?
4. Do you want to compete in social sporting events?
5. Do you want to take part in competitive sports at a club level?
6. Do you want to compete at provincial level?
7. Do you want to compete at international level?

For each of these levels, the time and effort required will change and even for highly trainable athletes (those who are genetically “blessed”), it will take between 5 and 10 years to reach their peak. For the lower levels it is of course less time and effort. And for general health, a simple activity such as walking will already give you benefits tomorrow. By walking today, you can already be one step closer to general health by tomorrow.

In training there are a few general steps we will have to go through to get to our targets that we set ourselves, I will break it down to a simplified process, where we would want to improve constantly, in order to continuously show gains and hopefully move on the the next level. As all sports differ, the list given here is very simplified structure for improvements and gains.

1. Start building a basis at a low/moderate level intensity and increase the volume of work, until you are able to sustain it for the duration of the training session
2. Add low to moderate levels of interval training
3. Once reaching the target in terms of duration, start to increase the intensity gradually ( I will give guidelines in later articles)
4. Add moderate levels of interval training
5. At a certain stage between levels 3 and 6, you can start to add strength work (preferably simple calisthenics)
6. Only after reaching a good level of general fitness, start to add “High Intensity Interval Training” (HIIT)
7. At this stage add targeted strength training, either for a specific sport or to address specific weaknesses (some of us are not perfect genetic specimens and have to work on many different weaknesses and we can add a favourite pastime of cursing those who find it easy)
8. Add various sports specific fitness aspects
9. Structured training for a season
10. Structured training for a specific competition (peaking)

There are still many other factors involved in conditioning, which includes your individual health status, nutrition, other aspects like the genetic capabilities you were born with and the rate of development with age, which also differs for everyone.  Many of us were never meant to be Olympic athletes, but it is no excuse. Most of us are capable of very high levels of performance and with time and some effort, MOST of us can even be competitive at levels we never dreamed of before.

Being healthy is not about living longer, but but it is about enjoying life more, while you are living!

You have a choice!