It’s a non-negotiable requirement.
“Athletes (& parents):
The moment you stop training for ANY reason (season, ‘busy’, etc.) you are outwardly casting a vote, declaring your lack of desire to be the best you can be.
You can coast all you want, but the person who will ultimately beat you in the long run, isn’t.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
You can wish it was different.
You can wish there was a button to press within our philology that would allow us to continue to leverage the benefits of training without actually having to do it.
But wishing isn’t nearly as effective as accepting and reacting to reality.
You don’t train, the body becomes detained (in as little as two weeks). Once you enter into a detrained state, you know longer get to be the best you can be, physiologically speaking, it’s impossible.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the season.
It doesn’t matter if you’re “busy” (camouflage for one’s inability to manage their time or lying to oneself about their priorities).
It doesn’t matter if its inconvenient or you don’t want to.
If you want to be the best you can be, you have to.
You have to understand there is no choice. You have no say in the matter. The bar has already been set by your competition, so in order to play on a level (less skewed) playing field, you don’t have many choices, because as Nick Saban says, “it takes what it takes.”
This isn’t a post to badger people into wrapping kid’s identities around sports & training.
The goal is to share the important truths of training. Not to try to convince you to overdose it into their lives, we’re already doing that with their sports. (Note the burnout and psychological issues accompanied.)
My point is, if you’re going to invest this much time, money, effort, and energy into sports you owe it to yourself to be the best you can be.
And the only way this is made possible is with preparing to thrive within the demands of sport.
This cannot be accomplished solely with sport specific lessons or practice by itself.
You have to train the qualities: strength, speed, power, and resilience. You have to.
Not every day, but twice a week. That’s all it takes. If you can find time to hit a 3rd or 4th day, great, but two (real training sessions) is minimum to yield a quality return.
I don’t push this stuff because I’m some meathead. I push it because I deeply desire to see kids reach the pinnacle of their potential and I know what it takes.
