When you’re an athlete, you get used to a routine of proper workouts and healthy diets. While those aspects of your lifestyle are essential to your physical fitness, it’s important that you improve your athletic performance. You shouldn’t just maintain it by doing the same thing over and over.
Sports performance training from a physical therapist can help you boost every aspect of your athletic performance to improve your gameplay. Finding room for improvement and tailoring your training regimen to those areas can make a difference. But what is sports performance training? How can it unlock your athletic success? That’s what we’re here to answer.
Read on to learn about the basics of sports performance training and the key elements it can provide to boost your athletic success.
What is sports performance training?
Sports performance training is a type of training that’s administered by a physical therapist. The goal is to help athletes reach their fullest potential by achieving their desired performance goals. It can benefit athletes from every type of sport at any level.
Performance training by a physical therapist offers many benefits for athletes, empowering them to:
- Boost overall athletic ability in their chosen sport.
- Reduce the risk of injury.
- Develop a competitive edge.
- Learn perseverance and accountability.
- Gain long-term confidence in their athletic abilities.
6 keys to boosting athletic performance with sports performance training
Your athletic performance doesn’t depend on just being strong or fast. When you’re trying to reach your peak athletic performance, there are a variety of components to focus on. If you focus too much on one aspect, the others could be left behind and hurt your gameplay. Performance training helps you to examine your strengths and weaknesses from every angle to figure out where there’s room for improvement.
Sports performance training can help you with these six components of performance:
- Targeting sport-specific skills — The goal of sports performance training is to help you be the best you can be at your chosen sport. Every sport is different, which means there are skills that are specific to each one. Your physical therapist will help you increase your efficiency in the skills required for gameplay. Some sport-specific skills are swinging a golf club or punting a football.
- Increasing power — The power that you have during gameplay mostly stems from your muscle mass. That’s why strengthening is such an integral part of performance training. Your physical therapist will walk you through safe and effective strengthening exercises that will target the muscle groups that are utilized during your gameplay.
- Improving agility — While power is the driving force behind speed, agility is how you safely and quickly change directions or switch movements while maintaining control. Being agile means having the ability to efficiently decelerate after a run or quickly change directions.
- Increasing balance — Having the ability to maintain your center of gravity while playing a sport will not only help your performance, it can also decrease the risk of injury due to falls or accidents. A physical therapist can work with you to improve your balance and coordination while performing the movements that are required during your sport.
- Boosting speed — There are many sports that require running of some kind, whether it be running the bases during a baseball game or sprinting down a track to beat others to the finish line. A physical therapist can guide you through speed training. This targeted training will help boost the explosive force used while moving at a fast pace in a short time span.
- Increasing reaction time — Having a fast reaction time is essential in sports. You have a split second to decide where to throw the ball or how to move to avoid getting hurt by your opponent. During performance training, a physical therapist will help you perform drills and exercises that can improve your reflexes and reaction time.
REPAIR SI can help you unlock your athletic success with sports performance training
Regardless of how many wins you have under your belt, every athlete has room for improvement. While your everyday workout routines are beneficial, a physical therapist can help you accomplish much more. Performance training can help you unlock the potential you have to reach your peak athletic performance. The physical therapists at REPAIR SI can help you in every aspect of your gameplay to help you be faster, stronger and more agile.
When you’re ready to explore your potential with sports performance training, be sure to contact our team today for more information or schedule an initial appointment.