HSN Guide: Sportspeople at the Gym. Part 1

Most of those who train at a gym want to improve their strength or physical aspect, this is why a great percentage of the information that is available is aimed at this public. But there are others with completely different profiles, the weekend warrior, that person who enjoys doing another sport apart from weightlifting.

A different objective

Either if you play football, tennis, basket, running, volleyball, swimming or contact sports, all of them have something in common: passion for sport. It does not matter if you participate in amateur competitions, with your friends, a race in your city or with a professional team, all of you have something in common: weightlifting can help you improve.

The feeling of winning a match with a three-point shot in the last second is the same for everyone; feeling stronger and more resistant than your opponent is equally gratifying; being able to improve your performance without injuring yourself is rewarding for anyone, from those who compete in front of 10000 people to the one that competes in front of his or her family.

The truth is that deep inside everyone knows and sees how even the professionals of any sport discipline use the gym in order to stand out, which is why try to do the same thing.

This is where the problem lies…

A 99% of the routines that are used at the gym were designed to achieve muscle hypertrophy, which means that an athlete that goes to gym with good intentions will not only see how his or her performance does not improve, but also how it gets worse.

Why a hypertrophy routine will make you become a worse athlete?

The first reason and the main problem are the physiological adaptations created by this type of training, working with reps and moderate weight results in an adaptation that will result in bigger muscles, but not more efficient necessarily.

The second reason is the isolation that occurs in this type of workouts in which our muscles work separately, in isolation, without any kind of benefit for a sport discipline. Example: a bicep curl is a great exercise if you want to grow this muscle, but… are you going to use this movement in any sport?

But not only that, the third reason is that a hypertrophy training follows a slower rhythm, focusing on muscle contraction, the mind-muscle connection and prolonging the time under pressure, producing more fatigue and recovery time. If you train slowly get ready to move slowly in your sport, it makes sense, right?.

Last, but not least, if you start a hypertrophy phase you will also need to combine it with a bulking phase accordingly, which will involve an extra weight gain.

Are weights really useful to improve in my sport?

The response is yes, training with weights can help you improve at many levels, some of their positive qualities are:

We can achieve all of this in a controlled environment in which we can truly change our body and physical performance before a competition

What do I have to do?

The workout of an athlete in the gym is even more complete than that of a person who wants to achieve muscle hypertrophy, this is why a program to improve the performance must have some common patterns but also specific exercises according to your sport.

Taking our physical capacities and enhancing them to apply them to our sport discipline is the main objective of our training routine

Training Objective

The objective is to make a complete guide for any athlete who wants to take their sport performance to the next level, we will deal with topics like:

• HSN Guide: Sportspeople at the Gym. Part 2