My name is Joe Trinsey and I am a coach and trainer based out of Wilmington, Delaware. Over the past couple years, I have specialized in training the volleyball athlete. The ingredients of a champion volleyball player are similar to that of other sports: speed, stamina, explosive power, and, most importantly, an indomitable will to compete and win. As a high school athlete, I was often confused and unsure of how to train. The result was a lot of hard work wasted spinning my wheels doing cut-and-paste programs out of magazines or copying the latest fad or special shoe promised to increase my vertical leap. Fortunately, when I got to college (to play volleyball) I was able to train under strength coach Roger Power where I learned both the science and application of training for sports.
During my four years at college, I added more than 40 pounds of muscle to my sadly-skinny high school frame and increased my vertical leap by 9″. I learned a great deal about the methods of training necessary to improve and, most importantly, the hard work necessary to implement those methods. This concluded in being selected as a 1st-team All-American my senior year. As a coach and trainer, I have applied the principles I have learned to the training of others. Now that my collegiate career is over, I work to help others achieve their own dreams.
One thing I am constantly amazed at is the lack of emphasis on physical strength for female athletes. Even nowadays, when I think that, for the most part, the myths about weight training making you muscle-bound and “manly” have been busted, most female athletes either do not strength train or have a terrible strength training program. I will see girls doing “plyo programs” and “conditioning workouts” until the cows come home. The funny thing is that, almost without exception, the top female athletes that I have worked with all possess very high levels of relative strength.
I coach for one of the top club teams in the mid-Atlantic area and we held our tryouts recently. About 40 or so girls tried out for 10 spots on the team. The funny thing is, if I had simply done nothing else other than observe them doing pushups and walking lunges and taken out the top 15 from that… all 10 girls that were eventually selected would have been in that top 15 from a relative strength standpoint. Compared to the average female, the average male is faster, jumps higher and is overall more explosive from an athletic standpoint. Why? Because the average guy is stronger than the average girl. So then why have most male-dominated sports embraced weight training, but trainers and coaches of female athletes still lag behind?
The number one thing (other than improve skill) that a female athlete in the 13-16 year old range can do to improve her sports performance is to improve her relative strength. This doesn’t require any fancy programs or weight machines or special bands or shoes. Pushups, pullups and walking lunges will do to start. The majority of girls I start working with for the first time cannot do a full-range pushup with good technique. Eventually, all of them get to the point where they can do sets of 5 with perfect technique. Without exception, this has resulted in improved performance on the court.
I will do a follow-up explaining some of the progressions I use for developing relative strength for a beginner athlete.
This is where I get lazy and simply post a link for the readers to enjoy.
This article by Joe Defranco (who was a huge influence on me early in my strength training career) explains a little bit about just how important it is for female athletes to strength train. For many of the girls that I train, strength training is their “secret weapon” that gives them the advantage over their competition. Simply put, regardless of your gender, strength is the foundation upon which all other qualities are built. If you want to get fast, agile and explosive, you need to get strong!
(photo courtesy of EliteFTS.com)
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. ”
-Muhammad Ali
As the days of November roll by, many high school athletes are in the final days of their fall seasons. When the whistle blows for the playoff games and State Tournament matches, many wonder who will rise to the occasion and who will crumble. Who will walk away, head down, wishing they could have another chance? Who will be swept up by the euphoria of victory, buoyed by the joy of classmates and teammates; parents and coaches? The thing is, there are some that already know the answer to these questions. As athletes, there is invariably one instant, one tiny moment of complete introspection, when we are faced with the totality of the challenge in front of us. The night before their toughest competition, some athletes sleep well, not assured of victory but confident in their preparation and knowing they have done what is necessary to compete to their fullest ability. For others, they can only shrink before the moment, reminded of the time in their training when they thought nobody was watching.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-5_8af3TiY&feature=related[/youtube]
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