Laying the proper foundations to develop a fitness for sport

COACH'S CORNER:In the first of a series designed to promote better fitness for sport, our coaches emphasise laying the foundations before training .

HOW FIT are you? This is a common question but there is no simple answer.

Why? Well, fitness is based on the ability to meet the demands of the sport in question. For example, the fitness required to run a marathon will be totally different from that required to sprint 100 metres. A marathon runner needs great stamina; a sprinter needs great speed. If sprinters trained like marathon runners they would destroy the speed fibres needed for sprinting.

The sport, in other words, will dictate the fitness requirement of the participant. If athletes can meet the demands of their sport they are considered fit.

Fitness in sport also assumes underlying wellbeing. Once athletes are free of injury and disease, they can express their true status of fitness.

Fitness, therefore, is a relative physical, physiological and psychological status impacted by the demands of the sport and the ability to meet those demands.

Your fitness can be described in terms of any of its six components: skill, speed, strength, stamina, suppleness and psychology (different sports will have varying requirement for each of these components).

• Skill is the capability to perform a general movement or sport-specific activity efficiently.
• Speed is the capacity to move quickly.
• Strength is the capacity to exert force.
• Stamina is the capacity to endure or continue to reproduce a set work-rate or pace.
• Suppleness is the range of movement about the joints.
• Psychology relates to the mental requirements to perform at an optimum level.

Training or conditioning is the word used to describe the process of getting fitter. But before we start to guide you to better fitness for your sport, you need to make sure you are fit enough to train. This is much like the foundation of a house. No one can develop fitness for sport without having a proper foundation. The process is called "getting fit to train".

Nowadays, elite athletes prepare themselves with basic exercises and routines before starting sport-specific training.

The simple skill of running, for example, demands good strength and flexibility about the moving limbs and stability within the supporting muscles about the legs. Efficient and co-ordinated movement demands ligaments, tendons and muscle about the moving joints co-operate.

These muscles and tissues are controlled by a network of nerves that fire the muscles to move or stabilise. Thus the basic skill of running depends on two key components: strength to stabilise the so-called non-moving parts of the body and flexibility about the joints to be moved. If there is a weakness in this network the action will be affected.

For example, if an individual lacks suppleness about the ankle, the moving parts around the joint will be limited and the movement will appear unbalanced. This may result in a limp. The athlete's "functional competence" to run is affected by this lack of ankle flexibility, which has the knock-on effect of limiting the movement needed to get optimum propulsion from the leg muscles.

Many youngsters are lacking in basic strength, stability and suppleness. For example, 80 per cent of the players in a top-class minor team showed imbalances in strength and flexibility when assessed. Starting to train hard without addressing these imbalances could lead to injury.

By laying the foundation to train athletes will reap long-term benefits in reduced injury risk and better performance.

• These notes are contributed by Dr Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty of Setanta College, the Institute of Strength and Conditioning Studies (www.setantacollege.com).