Why Female Athletes Need Strength & Conditioning

1. Why do females need S&C?
Every female needs to spend time in the weight room, particularly those who play sports. The main purpose of any strength and conditioning program, for every athlete, is to prevent injuries and to become a better player. In this, there is no difference between male and female athletes, they all want to be faster, stronger, more powerful and injury free! An excellent byproduct of strength training is the prevention of Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is now said to be a teenage disease that manifests throughout life, becoming a bigger problem especially in middle age and older women. Many people mistakenly think the answer to Osteoporosis is to “drink milk and take calcium supplements”, but current research indicates that Strength Training is the most important factor in preventing this disease. I always tell our female athletes that they will thank me later in life for all the hard work we put them through today.

2. What have you noticed as common problems/deficiencies in female athletes?
Every athlete, whether female or male is unique. This is why ALL athletes are put through a muscular balance and physical assessment before starting any program. Training then focuses on core strength moving on to correcting individual weaknesses and imbalances. Any particular sport creates distinctive deficiencies in each athlete and this needs to be taken into consideration. Relative to male athletes, we have found that females tend to have weak vmo and posterior chain muscles, lower relative strength levels and weaker upper body muscles. Theses areas of weakness are of major concern because of possible injuries such as ACL. By strengthening these areas females will become stronger and quicker. I know many females may balk at me for this, but in my opinion, they are doing way too much rhythmical cardio activity. I am a firm believer in energy system training through intervals. Endurance work negatively affects strength and power in all athletes. Research shows that there is a direct relationship between higher VO2 max and low vertical jump scores. Unless you are running a marathon STOP the rythmical cardio work (biking, treadmill etc.) and get into the weight room! Your game will improve.

3. How do you address the deficiencies mentioned above?
The first thing we do is have our female athletes stop doing cardio work for a specific period of time. In order to increase strength we work together with many of our female athletes to help them lower body fat levels while increasing lean muscle mass. The best meal plan to do this is to add protein to the diet and cut back on refined carbs! We then incorporate true functional training which alternates strength training in the weightroom with intervals of exercises such as sled work and sledgehammer.

When a female needs to strengthen the posterior chains, we incorporate exercises such as the reverse hyper, glute ham raises, all types of deadlifts, full squats and many unilateral exercises such as split squats, lunges and step-ups. At PPC we use many variations of these one legged exercises to eliminate any imbalances in the legs.

For upper body development we like to implement plenty of dumbbell work and chin-ups. When tested initially, many of our female athletes can’t do even one chin-up, but after a short period of training, many are able to complete sets of 5 to 7. No, we do not use the Graviton, we implement eccentric work and decrease body fat levels.

4. What is the role of traditional aerobic/cardio training at SST?
I don’t believe in CARDIO! I prefer specific energy system training for the sport. For example, we take figure skaters on ice and put them though their energy-system-training program. This transfers over to their sport better than jogging! I need to be blunt; I don’t do rhythmical CARDIO with PPC athletes and the proof is in their superlative performance.

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