Introduction

Sports performance training is the training of the body and the mind to prepare an athlete for the rigours of a specific sport. This is what sets it apart from ordinary personal training: personal training aims at broad, general fitness, whereas sports training conditions and prepares the athlete to compete in their own chosen sport.

To do this, the athlete's individual characteristics — age, gender and fitness level — are combined with scientifically proven training methods and exercises to create a customised, sport-specific plan. The result is a more confident, motivated athlete whose strength, agility, speed, power, coordination and balance are all developed exactly as the sport demands.

For example, a volleyball player in sports performance training does exercises that mimic the movement patterns of the volleyball court — working on reaction, balance, vertical leap, agility and high-intensity interval training. By modelling the training on the real demands of the sport, the player develops the specific abilities needed to excel in competition. A 100m sprinter, by contrast, trains differently again — explosive starting-block power, maximum acceleration and top-end speed mechanics — because the demands of her event are completely different from a volleyball rally.

Why sports-specific training matters

A sport-specific plan is built by first identifying the exact physical, technical and mental demands of the sport, then designing a programme that develops those demands in the right proportion. This is why sports science draws on several disciplines together — exercise physiology, biomechanics, nutrition and sports psychology — rather than any one of them alone. Training that ignores this specificity wastes an athlete's time and can even work against performance: a marathon runner who trains like a powerlifter, or a gymnast who trains like a long-distance swimmer, will not improve in the ways their sport actually requires. …