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Anyone who has played sports is likely familiar with strength and conditioning. The approach differs from strength training, which often focuses on lifting weights to increase muscle mass to improve performance.
Strength and conditioning begins from the intersection of exercise, physiology and anatomy to optimize your movement, recovery and health. Learn why strength and conditioning has been a cornerstone of athletic training for many years.
What Is Strength and Conditioning?
At its core, strength and conditioning strives to improve athletic performance through dynamic and static exercises to improve speed, endurance, power and reduce injury risks. These exercises:
- Focus on refining and strengthening the actions and movements used in your sport
- Work on form and balance to reduce injury risks and help lengthen your career
- Are based on the athletic training principles of reversibility, overload, individualization, progression, periodization and specificity
- Refine how you move and strengthen the areas used for your sport
- Emphasize greater strength, stability, mobility, mental clarity, endurance, speed and ability
- Blend traditional strength training with aerobics, plyometrics, core stability and agility training specific to your sport
Benefits of Strength and Conditioning
Whether strength and conditioning is required by your team or you have a personal drive to improve your performance, it can yield the following benefits over time.
Improved Performance
Strength and conditioning fuels your ability to lift more, go farther or travel faster by:
- Fortifying and balancing your muscles
- Improving your posture and physical mobility
- Enhancing coordination, flexibility and joint stability
You may also find you’re capable of new movements, have better peripheral awareness, and can connect your mind and body with greater ease.
Improved Physical Health
Beyond improvements to performance, strength and conditioning provides support to your muscles, connective tissues and bones. Developments include:
- Greater bone mineral density with time
- More and larger muscle fibers
- Faster and more reliable communication between the brain and muscles, resulting in quicker contractions and more synchronized movements
- More effective fat burning
More Meaningful Recovery
The physical changes experienced through strength and conditioning can also lower your injury risks, as a result of improved healing and recovery. Yet strength and conditioning is not a safeguard against sudden, acute injuries. Rather, the resulting muscle strength guides the recovery process to reduce your risks for chronic injury.
Chronic injuries tend to result from poor form, a lack of muscle resilience and improperly balanced tissues, which can prematurely end an athlete’s career. Along with preserving your body and career in the process, stronger muscles are more likely to respond and better protect your joints, allowing them to move more naturally.
Better Long-Term Health
Strength and conditioning is increasingly recommended by physical therapists outside of athletic contexts. Building and strengthening muscles has pervasive and long-lasting effects on your health:
- Metabolism support, which helps your body continue burning calories even when you’re not working out.
- Lower insulin resistance risks and subsequent health concerns related to hypertension, cholesterol levels, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
- Reduced risk for certain chronic conditions, including heart disease, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
- Support of the body’s muscle-building hormones to reduce age-related atrophy, weakness and related fall and injury risks.
Our team at Integrated Rehab can guide your strength and conditioning efforts to improve athletic performance. To learn more about our services, contact us today.