Effects of a Six-Week Randomized Training Program on Speed and Agility in Previously Trained Adolescent Males.
Athletes are constantly searching for training regimens to gain performance advantages for
competition. Protocols are designed to promote increases in performance over short- and longterm periods but, most of these protocols improve only specific variables such as strength or running speed but not overall performance. Eight-male subjects, mean age of 14.6±0.9 years, participated in this training study.
With the ever changing face of athletics in America, improving sports performance is the primary focus of most athletes. This, however, can be a complicated issue with many conflicting ideas surrounding the best way to improve performance. Obviously, sport selection is the determining factor when shaping a training program. For example, sports that emphasize power, whether anaerobic alactic (baseball, weight lifting) or anaerobic lactic (football, basketball, soccer), are often hindered by training programs that seek to improve aerobic fitness. Most sports require unplanned movements or reactions that require a quick burst of energy intermittently dispersed between bouts of running or sprinting. However, for performance to improve, physiological adaptations must occur to the nervous, muscular, and cardiovascular systems.
This has led to the development of many different modes of training from plyometrics
to more systematic approaches like modified resistance training programs, both of which have
shown to transfer to certain activities such as sprinting. Baker6 however, demonstrated that beginning athletes could achieve transfer benefits from a more general training program but as they become more adapted to that program, specificity played an increasingly important role in performance.
Sport Exerc Med Open J. 2016; 2(2): 41-46. doi: 10.17140/SEMOJ-2-137
