Condition Hips And Glutes For Athletic Power

You should continually strengthen and condition your hips and glutes to improve power. Your athletic success depends heavily on your hips and glutes.

Hips and glutes injuries will put you out of the game. It is impossible to run, jump and cut with power if your hips or glutes are injured. Hips and glutes injuries can also cause hamstring and other injuries. You can lessen your risks of these injuries with proper training.

Great athletes dominate athletic movements with the hips, glutes, quadriceps and hamstrings. All of these muscle regions need to work properly or you will not compete on a high level.

The glutes don't fire properly when the hip flexors (psoas, iliacus, tensor fascia latae, etc.) are overactive or tight. This can happen due to poor flexibility or prolonged sitting. When the hip flexors don't work properly, its antagonist (mainly the gluteus maximus) becomes weak.

Don't just train harder, train your body smarter. It will give you an advantage over the competition.

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Ladder Drills For Offseason Football Training

Offseason football training is the time to get stronger, faster, quicker, etc. Improve your agility and quickness with ladder drills. Athletes worked on improving their agility and quickness at Sports Fitness Hut's Speed and Power Camp. Its important to practice doing the exercises correctly. You can add more speed to the exercises as you progress.



See Speed Camp Youtube video!

In many ways, quickness and agility are more important than straight-ahead speed. A player rarely reaches maximum speed during game competition. Having great change-of-direction speed (agility with quickness) allows you to beat your opponent "to the spot" or recover from mistakes in positioning.

How many times have you seen a player with "not great speed" repeatedly make plays to help the team win. This is not an accident. You can improve your change-of-direction speed with proper training. Read my post that discusses change-of-direction speed in detail.

You can also improve quickness by improving your reaction time. You do this by training to make the right choices as quickly as possible. You can practice reacting to sight or sound cues.

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Speed Intervals For Athletes' Cardio

Speed intervals for athletes' cardio will improve your performance. Athletes training for speed and power should do a variation of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) cardio exercise. Doing too much distance running will not allow you to reach your maximum speed and power potential.

Also, HIIT is the best way to burn fat in the shortest amount of time as well as increase VO2 Max. All that's needed is 20 minutes per session.

Here is an example of how HIIT could work for an athlete:

After a proper dynamic warmup, sprint for 10-15 seconds and walk for 1 minute. The sprint has to be at maximum effort. Do this rotation for 20 minutes.

To continually challenge yourself, progress this cardio exercise to surfaces such as inclines, hills and stadium steps. Weighted resistance, such as vest, could also be used. Its just that simple! And that tough!

Another good interval cardio exercise for speed athletes is speed jump rope. It is performed in short intervals at up to 200 RPM (revolutions per minute). It also uses the anaerobic energy system (85% to 95% of max heart rate) and develops fast twitch muscle fibers.

This type of speed jump roping gives you more speed, quickness, agility, balance, coordination, power and knee/ankle/foot strength. Jumping rope also improves your timing---a critical element needed in sports. Boxers are legendary speed jump ropers.

Try more speed interval cardio during your workouts. It will help your athletic performance.

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Dynamic Balance Is Critical For Athletic Success

Dynamic balance is a must for any top athlete. Without it, you won't go very far in your athletic career. Here are some ways to improve your dynamic balance:

Incorporate many one-legged exercises such as power step ups, single leg squats, single leg good mornings, single leg medicine ball exercises, etc.

Include exercises with your eyes closed to improve limb position sense (proprioception).

Train your body in all 3 planes of motion to improve multi-planar balance. An example would be a grouping of walking lunges, side lunges and transverse lunges.

Train on different surfaces such as grass, sand, astro-play and soft surfaces. You will rarely play on a perfect surface anyway.

Do combinations of one-arm and one-leg exercises such as single leg squat-to-single arm shoulder press.

Jump rope every day using different variations---two feet, one foot, shuffle, etc. Jumping rope is one of the best body coordination exercises out there. And, speed jump rope is even better.

Better muscular balance will give you better dynamic balance. For example, your quadriceps should not be significantly stronger than your hamstrings.

Quickness and agility drills will improve your dynamic balance.

Balance training also improves your core strength. Balance exercises should closely mimic those actions required by your sport.

Train hard and smart!

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Muscular Balance Improves Speed And Power

Maybe you aren't reaching your speed and power potential because your muscles are out of balance. Its not uncommon for one side of your body to be stronger than the other side. If you are right-handed, your right side is probably stronger than your left side.

One side of your body might not align with the other side. Or, one hip could be looser than the other. Training can help with these problems.

It is important for your body to be in muscular balance to prevent injuries and to help you perform better. For example, the frontside of your body should not be significantly stronger than your backside. And, your quadriceps should not be significantly stronger than your hamstrings.

Four effective ways to keep your body balanced are:

1. Full body strength, power and speed training,

2. One-legged and One-armed strength, power and speed training exercises,

3. Doing exercises in all 3 planes of motion and

4. Keeping all areas of the body flexible.

Training with bodyweight and dumbbell exercises force each side of your body to do its share of the work. And, you see right way if a side of your body is weaker than the other. Some of the best exercises for this are:

--Step ups
--Lunges
--Single leg squats, deadlifts and good mornings
--Single leg/arm cable exercises
--Pushups
--Two-armed and one-armed dumbbell presses and rows
--Single leg arm and leg curls
--Medicine ball exercises working all sides of the body

Train hard and smart!

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Deep Stabilizing Core Muscles Improve Athletic Performance

When you train your core, the strength of the "deep stabilizing core muscles" are critical for your athletic performance and success. Don't worry so much about your "six-pack abs." The side plank exercise pictured below is great for strengthening deep core muscles.

The "deep stabilizing core muscles" are: transversus abdominis, multifidus, internal obliques, lumbar transversospinalis, pelvic floor and diaphragm. If these deep muscles don't activate properly, your spine, pelvis and joint structures are placed in a position that will lead to injuries.



The transversus abdominis is the deepest layer of all abdominal muscles and it is considered your body's internal weight belt. When it contracts, it causes hoop tension around your mid section like a girdle.

When the transversus abdominis is working properly, it contracts before the extremities (arms and legs) will move. Bracing your torso will activate the transversus abdominis (act like you are taking a punch to the gut).

When the spine is unstable, the central nervous system will not recruit the extremity muscles correctly. The extremity muscles assist with functional movement patterns.

For example, if you bend over to lift a heavy load, your transverse abdominis needs to activate in order to stabilize your spine. When it doesn't activate and stabilize, you are at high risk for a low back injury.

When you make a habit of not recruiting the transversus abdominis to stabilize your spine, your joints will begin early degeneration.

The multifidus lies deep to the spine crossing over three joint segments. It works to provide joint stabilization at each segmental level. The vertebrae need stability to work correctly and reduce degeneration of joint structures.

The pelvic floor covers the area under the pelvis. The pelvic floor is critical for core stability.

Some exercises that improve strength in the "deep stabilizing core muscles" are planks, side planks, bridges and cobras.

Train hard and smart to succeed in your sport!

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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Improve Explosive Power With Stability Exercises

If your explosive power is subpar, you may have this problem: weak structures supporting your ankles, knees, low back, hips, elbows and shoulders.



Establish a good foundation to improve your explosive power with these tips:

1. Bodyweight and dumbbell exercises are great for stabilizing your joint structures and core. For example, if your right leg is significantly stronger than your left leg, you cannot compensate for the weaker leg.

It will be forced to "catch up in strength" to the right leg.
This will also prepare your body for heavier weights and intense plyometric and speed exercises.

2. Promotion of plyometrics and sport specific exercises has gotten out of hand.

Plyometrics and sport specific exercises are important but only if you have enough strength and joint stability to make these more risky exercises work effectively for you (to improve explosive power).

3. The core muscles are very important in preventing low back pain and stabilizing the shoulder girdle and hip structures. A strong and stable core will maximize your extremity strength (limbs) and explosive power. If your core is weak, you will not effectively transfer power from your legs to your upper body.

A core strengthening program involves using many muscles in a coordinated movement. Rather than isolating specific joints as in most weight lifting exercises, core stability exercises focus on working the deep muscles of the entire torso at once.

4. You can improve the ankle's joint proprioception (position sense) and dynamic joint stability with balance training. Doing one-legged balance exercises will accomplish this goal. One-leg balancing on foam pads or disks for 4-5 minutes (each leg) is a great exercise. Other great exercises are lunges, single-leg squats, step ups and medicine ball rotations on one leg.

5. You will need to strengthen your knees and ligaments around them. Having strong, stable knee structures will influence how high you can jump. The deep knee bend exercise is good for this purpose.

Work hard and smart to succeed in your sport!

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Improve Core Strength And Speed In 2011

Do you want to improve your speed in 2011? Then, improve your core strength and get closer to your speed potential.



Adequate core strength helps you run fast late in the game when you are dog tired! You will generate more power when you are tired if you have core strength.

One of the first signs of fatigue that I look for in an athlete is whether he or she can remain strong and upright towards the end of the game. If your core is weak, you will start to "bend over" and lose power and explosiveness when you run.

Next, your arms will start to "flail" instead of pumping powerfully to fuel your running.

Adequate core strength helps your speed endurance, which is the ability to maintain maximum velocity or a percentage of maximum velocity for a prolonged period of time or in a fatigued state.

The best players and teams have excellent overall body strength, core strength and speed endurance (and they win the most games).

If you are a serious athlete, you need a program that continually challenges and improves your core strength! You will lose power and speed during the game if you have a weak core area!

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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