One of the vital ingredients in your training sessions is the planning stage and being clear about your objectives.

Which of your athletes attributes do you want to improve?

How this will impact on your team’s performance?

In this article I will give you some simple guidelines that will enable you to get the most from you and your athlete’s time.

• Choose one area you wish to improve, too many stimuli will confuse the body.
• Thorough Warm Up for body and mind – neural conductivity can be far more powerful than muscular contraction.
• Breakdown each movement/exercise into its parts
• Focus on the detail of each phase of the movement/exercise
• Build the sections up until you reach the full objective, similar to ‘part – whole’ teaching style.
• During strength and power sessions, start with the biggest exercise/movements (compound) first and then work to the smaller less energetic movements towards the end of the session.
• Thorough Cool Down to begin the recovery process.

Remember that your training session is only the stimulus for the body’s adaptation; recovery and nutrition are vital to maximise results.

The more thought that goes into the complexities and structure of the session, the more impact, long term progression and enjoyment of your athletes.

The order of the session can be as important as the individual exercises within it.

Next month I will look at the complexities of Power development.