Is diagnosis left to the athlete?
It is not uncommon to read about high-level athletes, especially in sports such as baseball, basketball and football, who state that they must overcome physical shortcomings or that they do not have the physical talent that other athletes possess. They experience injuries that are not common to other athletes and often feel that by compensating for one injury they end up getting another.
What seems to be missing here is that the teams are not diagnosing exactly what are the athlete’s problems. Nor do they have any special strength and conditioning programs to improve the athletes technical and physical abilities. As a result, most athletes even on the professional level, think only in terms of becoming more fit.
Coaches and teams believe that being fit is the key to allowing the athlete to demonstrate his skills. But being physically fit and to a certain extent being able to execute most skills, does not mean that the athlete can then execute the skills on the highest level in game play. Being fit should be a prerequisite to doing specialized work to improve skills and the physical qualities specific to the athlete’s skill technique.
For example, two of the most common off-season training programs for professional baseball and some football and other players is yoga and Pilates. But, these two activities are far from guaranteeing improvement in sports performance since they do not duplicate the development of strength over the needed the range of motion nor the pattern of movement seen in execution of the sports skills.
These activities may be of benefit in improving certain physical qualities but they will not improve performance. To improve performance it is necessary to do specialized strength and explosive exercises that duplicate what happens in execution of the sports skill. These two factors are the key to improved game performance and to the prevention of injury.
In other words, they must develop strength as it is needed in the execution of the skills. The strength must be developed in the same neuromuscular pathway as seen in execution of the skill technique. In this manner they will be able to improve performance to the highest level.
For more information see Build a Better Athlete.