Structuring Your Sports Performance Training Session

About a year ago my move from New York City to Portland, OR caused a real shift in my training schedule (as well as the travel time to and from: my gym was my office and my martial arts school was one door down, and I took care of everything in a daily 2 hour lunch!).   No longer could I work on fighting and conditioning for an hour or so four days a week and then (already warm) run back to the office to hit a couple big lifts and a small amount of accessory work, leaving all my 'speed'--more on this later--training to one day a week.   Currently both my MMA gym and my 'gym’' gym are about 20 minutes away from my home, in opposite directions, and so I switched to doing about 7 hours of martial arts skill work weekly spread over three days, and 4 hours of performance training spread over two.

                                                                                                                                       ......But not the Yankees

With the decision to make each performance training session (as differentiated from the martial arts ‘sport skill’ or ‘technique’ session) 3-4 times as long as previously, and with the freedom to structure the workout without worrying about fatigue resulting from, or repeating components performed during, the preceding skill session which I had no control over, I was able to design a program with a structure that I had not used for myself in a long time, but which serves as an excellent starting template for combine preparation or training off-season athletes.  The components themselves are listed below:

    PREPARATION

--Soft tissue preparation

--stretching and mobility work

--muscle activation

--movement preparation

    VELOCITY---POWER---FORCE PRODUCTION/STRENGTH

--acceleration/speed/agility work

--plyometrics

--olympic lifting

--Lower <---> Upper Extremity Energy Transfer and Spinal Dynamic Stability

--Resistance Training: For the Extremities    

    CONDITIONING

--Interval Training, Tempo Runs, Implement Circuits, Cardiac Output Training

    RECOVERY

--Stretching

--Thermal Modalities

--Nutrition

Each of these components can be emphasized or de-emphasized as necessary for the athlete’s needs and the requirements of their sport, but the chronological progression should be adhered to unless there is a compelling reason to alter it.  Additionally the insertion of skill practice run by the sport coach after the preparation portion and before the Strength Portion can be beneficial from a time-management perspective if facilities and schedules allow.