With summer over and kids going back to school, now is the time of year where we are seeing a steady flow of new and returning athletes coming back from a long competitive spring and summer season.  Which leads me to pose the question: How much emphasis should be put on the preparation phase of training otherwise known as general physical preparedness or GPP?

One of the biggest faults I see in most strength and conditioning programs is the absence of a successful GPP phase following a long competitive season.  The reason why this phase of training is so important is because most athletes, while competing in their season, develop several strength and range of motion (ROM) deficits that if not taken into consideration can be detrimental to a quality strength and conditioning program.

Take for instance baseball players, a population I work with extensively. These athletes, over the course of a season, are performing thousands and thousands of repetitions of swinging and throwing most often from one single side. All this handedness within the sport creates several unilateral asymmetries and muscular imbalances from left to right within the body. When an athlete continually utilizes the same muscles in the same motion they develop pattern overload. These two things, asymmetries/muscular imbalances and pattern overload,  coupled together are a formula for injury – which is why there are so many injuries in baseball due to breakdown and fatigue.

The same can be applied to other sports, as well. In sports such as basketball, soccer, lacrosse, etc. athletes experience the same type of pattern overload by doing the same movements over and over again at high repetitions.

This is where the importance of a GPP phase applies. Upon returning from competition athletes must be put through some type of functional and/or kinetic assessment. This allows trainers to see where the athlete’s weaknesses lie as well as any other major ROM /flexibility deficits are. From this evaluation an appropriate list of corrective exercises can be prescribed including all soft tissue work and upper and lower body mobility work.

Foam Roll Series DEMO

Most often athletes come out of their competitive season with several unilateral asymmetries, which is why it is important to utilize unilateral movements such as lunge variations, single leg squat and RDL variations and single arm pressing and pulling variation as opposed to heavy bilateral movements in the strength component of a program. If an athlete is immediately thrown into heavy squatting, deadlifting or pressing at the beginning phase of their off-season training program you are setting them up for injury. The same holds true for any speed and agility programming. Because the athletes spend so much time on the absolute speed end of the “strength-speed continuum” during the season, it is imperative that this phase of their off-season training program be specifically devoted to restoring optimal joint mobility and range of motion, strength and core stability.

SL RDL DEMO

Essentially, the goal of this phase of training is strictly to restore integrity back to the muscles by soft tissue work (Foam rolling, lacrosse ball, etc.) and stretching.  Another benefit is the minimization of muscular imbalance or asymmetries before getting into the first phase of off-season training by use of different variations of unilateral movements. Without this step in the training process athletes are set up for failure and possible injury later down the training process.