As a high-performance athlete, how often should I do Strength and Conditioning?
That is a question you may well have asked yourself. So why don’t we delve into this a little…
How Often Should I Do Strength and Conditioning?
The first point to make here is that you need to keep the main thing the main thing.
Your sport is the main thing. So what does it mean to keep the sport the main thing? You need to make sure you are actually prioritising your sports training.
In practical terms this means two things:
1) Not doing so much strength and conditioning that you do not have enough time for your sports specific training.
2) Not doing so much strength and conditioning that your sports specific training suffers due to compromised ability to recover.
But what are the specific recommendations on how many times a week you should do strength and conditioning? It really depends on a number of factors. Here are some of those factors that will influence this decision:
- The demands of your sport / event
- Are you a full time athlete, a student athlete, or are you in full time work?
- How much strength and conditioning work is already incorporated into your existing sports specific training sessions?
- The time of the year (off-season, pre-season, competition season)
- There may be other factors to consider as well, such as your individual needs. For example, if you have a history of being prevalent to certain types of injuries; you may need to undertake additional work of a certain nature in order to make yourself more robust against those types of injuries. That being said, giving proper consideration to the above four bullet points should go along way towards answering how many times a week you should do strength and conditioning.
Event Group S&C Recommendations
At this point, it seems worth going through a few examples to see how many sessions per week might be recommended in various scenarios.
Example One – A high level middle distance runner who is also in full time work and is looking to incorporate strength and conditioning work into his winter training.
In this example, achieving a high mileage base during the winter months will be a bigger priority than focusing on strength and power training. As the athlete is also in full time work, it would make sense to perform just one session per week during the winter months.
Example Two – A professional sprinter in winter training.
In this example, a much bigger emphasis can be given to strength and power training. The athlete does not have to combine his training with another job. Additionally, strength and power is of increased importance for sprinters in comparison to middle distance runners. Two Strength and Conditioning sessions per week is a baseline amount here. Three per week is also suitable allocation. The exact number of S&C sessions will depend on the athlete.
Example Three – A high level shot putter who is also a university student.
Strength, power and hypertrophy are all immensely important in the shot put. For this reason, a big emphasis needs to be put on strength and conditioning sessions. Depending on the demands of the university course, in this scenario I would be suggesting a minimum on four strength and conditioning sessions and possibly five strength and conditioning sessions per week.
Context is Key
The above should give you some rough guidelines to work from. However, no two situations are the same. For example, the student shot putter might only have time for relatively short strength and conditioning sessions each day. To suit this schedule the shot putter may need to perform six sessions per week in order to accumulate the necessary volume. On the other hand, it may be that the middle distance runner does not actually perform any dedicated strength and conditioning sessions – as he might instead tag on small amounts of strength training on to the end of a number of his running workouts.
If you are unsure of how many times per week you should be doing strength and conditioning training. Or if you are unsure of what you should be doing during your strength and conditioning sessions, then please get in touch.
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Tim Egerton
The EGG
Egerton’s Garage Gym
Foxwood Personal training,York