Furia's Xceleration Strength & Conditioning

Bad Training Methods for These Sports

By John Furia

Hockey:

• Slide board – Creates a shock wave on the ligament structures at the end push off position.

• Skating treadmills – Activities that are 95 % specific ruin the motor pattern of that specific activity.

• Lateral sled work will translate better to hockey because it teaches the glutes to overcome inertia and is only about 10% specific to the ice!

Baseball:

• Throwing weighted balls – Using balls that are too heavy will ruin the motor pattern of throwing mechanics. It also loads the medial collateral ligament (Tommy John) excessively because of the heavier ball. It may contribute to some increases in arm strength but at a great cost. If you must do this, throw only 4-6 ounce balls. A regulation ball is 5 ounces. Throw only 6 ounces max and combine that with underweighted throws of 4 ounces.

• Aerobic running – Yes you have heard this one here before. Baseball is NOT an aerobic sport! Why then do you keep training aerobically for it. Pitchers need “MUSCULAR ENDURANCE” not “CARDIOREPIRATORY ENDURANCE”. Field players need linear speed, lateral speed and power. Pitching is only aerobic in duration! The pitching geniuses who are telling you pitchers that you need an “aerobic base of conditioning” are leading your career right down the path of monumental failure! Unless you are superiorly gifted with arm strength, speed and velocity (only 5% are) you need to train for what we call “Alactic and Lactic capacity” which basically translates to “Power” and “Strength”. I wish I had all the money you throw away on taking bad training advice from individuals who train you with 1970’s science. Baseball is 25 years behind science in its training methodology!

Soccer:
• Same as baseball! Soccer is not aerobic! Stop running yourself into the ground. Strength trains the hamstrings and medial (inner) quads for kicking power, deceleration, and vertical leaping ability for balls in the air. Sprint for speed endurance. Soccer in the US is 15 years behind in its training methodology.

• Upper body strength plays a big role in speed for soccer players, it helps improve running mechanics. Lat strength improves throw in ability. Lastly it improves overall physical presence on the field.
Football:

• There is more to football than the 225 lb bench press for reps and the truth is it has no correlation to the football field because it is an endurance test. Again, football like the other sports we talked about is a speed and power oriented sport.

• The incline bench press is more specific to football and would also reduce a lot of the shoulder injuries that occur from all the bench pressing done in football training.

• The 40 yard dash is an inappropriate test for football other than RB’s and WR’s. How often do you see offensive lineman run 40 yards on the field? Test them in 5-10 yard sprints. The skill positions should be tested in the forty (RB and WR) DB’s should be tested 10-20 yards running backwards.

• Football players should focus on training the smaller muscles, rhomboids (upper back) and rotator cuff to help with running mechanics and injury prevention. Too much focus on bench, squat, hang clean and military press. There is not enough emphasis on low back strength! Front squat better for training speed and vertical jump. Most athletes can’t do front squat due to poor flexibility!

Lacrosse:

• Lacrosse too often is trained with a football mentality by too many football coaches. These two sports have very different needs. Again too much focus on bench and squat. There should be more focus on ankle stability (high incidence of ankle spraining) and back training (lats, upper back). Laxers with the strongest lats carry the best shot! The latismus muscles have a direct relationship to shot strength as I discussed in past newsletters. The lats are the prime movers. Wrist stability and forearm strength are important but have little carry over shot velocity.

• Here we go again……. Lacrosse is not an aerobic sport! The one mile run in under 7 minutes is not a good predictor of lacrosse fitness! Lacrosse is played with an intermittent series of short bursts and 15-30 yard sprints.

• For the 892nd time the agility ladder will not improve your agility or quickness. Speed coaches who exclusively employ it do so because they don’t know how to do anything else, and because it is easier to occupy a larger group of players at one time. If you really do your homework and understand motor learning and speed development you find out quickly that you are wasting your time!

• Baseball players let me make this clear, without good strength development the chances of you maximizing your speed potential are poor at best! For some reason up until the past 10-15 years there has always been a negative connotation toward weight lifting for baseball players. It makes you too tight, it slows you down, and makes you too muscle bound blah, blah, blah. This is absolutely not true unless the strength training you are doing is being haphazardly implemented without regard for muscle balance or functional/usable strength.

• Make no mistake on this; weight/strength training has changed the face of baseball over the past fifteen years and will continue to do so. Today’s players are bigger, stronger, faster and throw harder as a result of off season and in-season weight training programs. If strength training is not a part of your baseball physical development program you are severely limiting your ability to getting faster, stronger and improving your overall baseball ability.

John Furia is the owner of Furia’s Xceleration Strength & Conditioning located in Deer Park, New York. John is a highly sought-after Strength & Conditioning coach for healthy and injured athletes alike, he has helped athletes at all levels - from youth sports to the professional and Olympic Levels - achieve peak performance in a variety of sports.