After 16 years of coaching you’ve seen and heard it all! Following on from our 5 Top mistakes coaches and athletes make. Here’s the 14 common mistakes athletes make when it comes to improving their performance!
1. Training like a bodybuilder. Using high volume, body part splits. The problem with this approach is that the muscle developed is generally non functional hypertrophy, which means it doesn’t actually improve sports performance and can often decrease performance. Click here to read the article, Looks big, plays weak!
2. Using strength training machines. Machines do not allow functional movements to take place, and they minimise the use of the stabilisers. Free weight training generally provides a superior training stimulus as more muscle is activated, requiring more balance, stability and control. Click here to check out how strongman training prepares you for athletic performance.
3. Using isolation exercises. Isolation exercises can be useful for brining up a weak body part, however athletes will get a better training effect and better training economy from using compound exercises like squats, bench presses, deadlifts etc. Click here to check out how to increase your bench press.
4. Using Slow tempos and lifting speeds. This trains the athlete to be slow. There is an old saying you perform how you train. Sports are dynamic and ballistic by nature, if you train slow you perform slowly or increase the risk of injury as your muscles and joints are not prepared for the ballistic nature of sports! Click here to check out how we develop sport specific explosive power.
5. Training like a marathon runner to improve endurance. Unless you are a marathon runner long slow distance aerobic conditioning is useless for team sport athletes that require repeat sprint ability and the ability to replicate high intensity short bust efforts. Click here to check out how we develop sport specific fitness.
6. Training like a sprinter. Speed training is a necessary component for elite sports performance, but if you adopt the training strategies of track sprinters, you’re missing an integral component of speed development for sports, which is deceleration and change of direction. How often do you see an athlete sprint in a straight line for more than 20m? rarely then why do you train like a sprinter only running in 1 direction? Click here to checkout how to train for sport specific speed. Click here to checkout the sport specific agility drills here. Click here to check out how we develop sport specific repeat sprint ability.
7. No specific flexibility training. Training causes micro trauma and contributes to stiffness. As an athlete flexibility is paramount importance to ensure optimal length tension relationships between joints etc. If you’re inflexible it makes performing sport specific tasks more challenging and increases the risk of injury. Click here to check out how we ensure our athletes stay injury free. 
8. No physical performance testing, assessment or measurement. If you have not identified your strengths and weaknesses how do you know what to focus and target your training on? How do you know if your training is actually working and been worthwhile use of your time? You don’t! Click here to check out what physical performance testing you should be undertaking.
9. Inadequate recovery processes. Recovery is of paramount importance to ensure you achieve optimal results. Insufficient recovery can lead to over-training, burn out and injury. It can also mask performance improvements if you never actually supercompensate to realise your training gains. If you’re not sleeping 8-10 hours a night, you are limiting your performance gains! Click here to check out how we ensure our athletes stay injury free.
10. No integration of physical training qualities. How do you combine all the elements required for physical performance into your training week to ensure you improve and or recover? Doing Speed training in the morning then high volume strength training in the afternoon and long slow distance cardiovascular work in the evening is akin to attempting to ride 2 horses with 1 arse that are going in different directions. Many an athlete has achieved little improvements in either strength, hypertrophy or endurance due to the interference effects of combining high intensity strength training with long slow distance cardiovascular conditioning. Click here to read about how we integrate all the physical qualities together.
11. Poor nutrition! Your nutrition dictates upwards of 80% of your results. However you’d be surprised by how poor some athletes’ nutrition is. It’s one thing to train hard, but you must ensure you fuel your body to perform optimally. That mean sufficient quantity of high quality nutrients to enhance recovery, accelerate muscle gain and reduce body fat! Click here to check out why most athletes diets fail.
12. Focussing on improving sports performance test results rather than improving sports performance. Click here to check out why sports performance testing does not predict sports performance.
13. Inappropriate insufficient supplementation. Click here to check out our supplementation protocols.
14. No periodisation or long term training plan.
Avoid these training pitfalls, better still hire a professional coach or trainer to accelerate your progress and ensure your ultimate results.
All the best,
Joey Hayes
