Coaches Must Train an Athlete’s Conditioning with the Mindset of Discipline
Training an athlete’s conditioning requires the same process a coach would use to develop an athlete’s discipline. Discipline in sports is a skill, and athletes are not born with skills just like they are not born with endurance. Furthermore, the process of developing an athlete’s discipline is a product of how a coach conditions an athlete’s muscle memory.
Conditioning is the process of continuously reinforcing a behavior response to a given stimulus. Moreover, the most effective way to reinforce a behavior response is to use a progression. With this in mind, the process of building discipline applies these three principles.
- Identify the specific area you want to build discipline.
- Select a behavior stimulus you can use to trigger a response you want.
- Follow a plan that utilizes a progression.
Therefore, if a coach approaches building an athlete’s conditioning just to make sure they have more endurance, then they are being too generic. Coaches must be specific to satisfy the first principle. For example, often high school wrestling coaches just make wrestlers run sprints or stairs for conditioning. This is far too generic as wrestlers don’t have to run to wrestle.
A better approach in this high school wrestling example is for the coach to be specific about conditioning the type of quick burst of action / reaction movements wrestlers need to execute repeatedly.
So, instead of simply running sprints, which does not require action / reaction movements, wrestlers could do trail running. Trail running creates action / reaction stimulus because it requires athletes to navigate uneven terrain, elevations, branches, rocks, and other obstacles. The point here is to be thoughtful about the stimulus and response triggers. When it comes to conditioning, specificity and context matters.
The Most Important Part of Conditioning is Utilizing a Progression
Finally, and most importantly there is the progression. A progression is the process of moving gradually towards a more advanced state. You don’t just go from the couch to running a marathon. You must learn to walk before you run, then you must run a mile before you run 5 miles, etc. Correspondingly, creating these gradual steps in progress implies a short and long-term goal setting process.
This is where most coaches fail in conditioning their athletes. Even if the conditioning process is just running sprints or stairs, there are no individual short and long-term goals for athletes to target to improve their pace and times. Indeed, using the eyeball test to train conditioning is a mistake.
A progression for conditioning must be one that you can measure and track with precise numbers that lead to a visual representation of progress over time. Ultimately, it’s this final ingredient that changes conditioning from a rote chore into a meaningful developmental tool.