6 Skill-Related Elements to

Improving Athletic Training

Getting Fit vs. Improving Performance
The five health-related components of fitness are:

 Cardiovascular endurance
 Muscular endurance
 Muscular strength
 Flexibility
 Body composition

These standard components are important for everyone, in all walks of life, regardless of whether
you have a desire to compete or perform at an optimum level.

For instance, when you train to improve your cardiovascular endurance, you're helping reduce
your risk of heart disease. When you train to improve your flexibility, you're helping maintain
range of motion, which improves your ability to perform activities of daily living, like picking
things up off the floor or stretching to reach items on high shelves.

Cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and body

composition are crucial for health and lend themselves to positive lifestyle outcomes, especially
for those who meet the American College of Sports Medicine's (ACSM) physical activity
guidelines.
The 5 Health-Related Components of Fitness

But if you're already meeting the ACSM's guidelines for physical activity and you want to do
more to train for a specific fitness-related event or goal, you also need to consider the six skill-
related fitness components:1

 Power
 Speed
 Agility
 Hand/Foot-Eye Coordination
 Balance
 Reaction Time

In contrast to the health components of fitness, which are universally important, these are more
so for some people than others.
For example, while everyone can benefit from daily walks, someone who hits the path just to get
their heart pumping doesn't need to worry about developing the speed necessary to run a five-
minute mile, though a race-runner does. Likewise, baseball players need to target all skill-related
areas in order to perform at the highest levels, but Olympic weightlifters can get away with
focusing most of their effort on power, balance, and strength.

If you're interested in developing your level of fitness beyond the basic requirements for health,
consider tailoring your workout program to include exercises designed to improve the skill-
related components of fitness.

Power
Power is a measure that combines speed and strength. In essence, it's how fast you can generate a
maximal force. In sports, "power athletes" are those who exert brute strength in short, all-out
efforts. Olympic weightlifters, football players, and "power gymnasts" are all clear examples.

But that doesn't mean athletes in other sports, like basketball, volleyball, and tennis, don't benefit
from developing greater power. For instance, jumping to get a rebound requires leg power, while
forcefully spiking a volleyball requires a combination of upper- and lower-body power. The key
to enhancing your power is combining resistance and speed with fast-paced strength-training
moves.

Examples of power exercises:

 Plyometric box jumps

 Pushing a weighted sled while sprinting
 Clean and jerk
 Kettlebell swings

Weight Training for Power

Speed
When you think of speed training, you might think of the speed it takes to run a 100-meter sprint,
but that narrow definition ignores one important fact: Speed, by nature, is relative.

An Olympic-level 100-meter sprinter needs to be very, very fast, but only for about 10 seconds.
On the other hand, an amateur marathon runner may want to improve his speed to set a new
personal best, reducing his per-mile race pace from 10 minutes per mile to 9.5 minutes per
mile—a speed he'd have to maintain for a little over four hours.

These two fictional athletes train differently, but with a similar goal: To become faster for their
sports.
The definition of "speed," then, is incredibly variable, and training will differ based on the sport
you're training for. That said, regardless of sport, high-intensity interval training(HIIT) is one of
the best ways to improve your speed.

HIIT training involves working at an all-out or near all-out effort for set periods of time,
followed by set periods of rest.2 This type of training enables you to repeatedly challenge
your aerobic and anaerobic systems, teaching your working muscles, heart, and lungs to grow
accustomed to working at higher levels of intensity.

The length and intensity of the intervals you use will be longer or shorter, less challenging or
more, depending on your sport.

Examples of HIIT speed drills for runners:

 For marathon training, try mile repeats, a style of interval training where the runner goes all-
out for a full mile before resting and doing it again.
 For sprint training, try shorter intervals: A sprinter would be better off performing shorter,
more intense intervals ranging from 40- to 400-meters in length, running all-out, and then resting
before repeating.

These same concepts apply whether you want to be faster in swimming, cycling, or even sports
like soccer and basketball. Interval training featuring bouts of high-intensity exercise related to
your specific sport can help you improve your speed.

Interval Training for Speed

Agility
The simple definition of agility is the ability to move quickly and easily, but this definition
doesn't necessarily paint an obvious picture as to how it relates to sport. A clearer definition is
that agility is the ability to move quickly and easily change direction.

Basketball players, for instance, are incredibly agile. They don't simply run up and down the
court—they have to move in every direction, jumping, sliding, and backpedaling in quick
response to the movement of the ball and other players. Their bodies have to be trained to
respond and change course at the drop of a hat.

Agility drills commonly involve exercises that develop foot speed and direction change.

Examples of agility exercises:

 Ladder drills: Use an agility ladder to practice quick and specific foot placement.
 Cone drills: Simply set cones up in a "T" or star shape, then sprint, slide, backpedal, or change
direction depending on which cone you're approaching.
Best Agility Exercises for Athletes

Hand/Foot-Eye Coordination
Think of all the sports and activities that benefit from well-honed hand-eye (or foot-eye)
coordination. Badminton, golf, soccer, basketball, football, racquetball, archery, softball, and
ultimate frisbee are just a few of the many examples that require you to be able to see an external
object and respond precisely with your hands and feet to meet a pre-determined objective.

In some cases, that means hitting a golf ball off a tee, and in other cases, that means catching a
fly ball.

Examples of simple hand-eye coordination drills:

 Playing catch
 Jumping rope
 Juggling
 Dribbling a ball
 Throwing objects at specific targets

Balance
Gymnasts, yogis, and surfers all need highly-refined balance skills to be able to participate in
their sports, but these aren't the only athletes that benefit from balance training.

Balance itself refers to your ability to adjust your body position to remain upright. It deals
with proprioception, or knowing where your body is in space, and being able to make
adjustments to your body position as your center of gravity changes during movement.3 For
instance, every time you take a step, your body has to adjust to its constantly-shifting center of
gravity in order to keep you from toppling over.

In physical activity settings, balance is required for running, changing direction, landing a jump,
and staying upright after you get jostled by an opponent.

There are few sports where balance doesn't play an important role, and there are lots of activities
where balance is required for enhanced performance and safety. Trail runners, for instance,
benefit from balance training because it can help prevent them from rolling an ankle or taking a
nasty fall after tripping over a root or slipping on a muddy path.

Examples of balance training exercises:

 Standing on one foot

 Incorporating standing yoga poses
 Using tools such as BOSU balls
 Using balance discs to perform exercises like squats, lunges, and pushups
By performing standard strength training movements on an unstable surface, you're
simultaneously improving your strength and balance.
Balance-Training Exercises

Reaction Time
Reaction time refers to how quickly you can respond to an external stimulus. Think about a
tennis match for a moment—the best competitors react almost instantaneously when the ball
comes off their opponent's racquet, sprinting toward the location where they expect the ball to
bounce.

Reaction time hinges heavily on your mind-body connection. Your eyes see a stimulus, your
mind interprets the stimulus, and your body reacts in accordance with that interpretation.

Much of this mind-body reaction relates to knowledge of the sport or activity in question. Going
back to the tennis example, a professional tennis player who has played for many years can
almost instantly interpret and predict the movement of a ball as it bounces off an opponent's
racquet. This knowledge enables them to react more quickly (and accurately) to the stimulus.

On the other hand, a novice tennis player may see the ball coming off the opponent's racquet, but
won't be able to interpret what they're seeing as quickly, causing their reaction time to slow.

In many cases, improving reaction time comes down to gaining experience in the sport and
performing sport-specific drills.

Examples of reaction-time drills:

 Softball players can work on fielding balls

 Soccer goalies can work on protecting the goal as other players try to score
 Using tools such as lopsided reaction balls
 Playing table tennis or hacky sack with friends