How to Do Strength Maintenance Drills

Finally now is the time to switch gears and put the focus on your sports training and racing. Now you get to enjoy reduced frequency, volume and intensity in your strength training and put the focus on your sport. The goal in the gym now is to do just enough to maintain the gains made in the off-season without inducing any excess fatigue. Speed of movement is the key as we don't want to train the body to become slow, now that you work so hard to make it fast. The same dynamic warm ups apply. This is also a good time to readdress your flexibility to keep the body functional and optimal. Get ready to enjoy the best season ever. Straight Leg Russian Twist A more difficult progression to Line Russian twist is straightening the legs. Here we are adding extra weight by the mere fact of straightening the legs to the lower back and core region. As we rotate from side to side, the cues are the same for Line Russian twist in the initial progression. Want to make sure that we go as far as we can for our feet touching the floor or that they do touch the floor and then rotate to the outside. Push up Position Horse Stance We are going to revisit the horse stance. Again positioning is the same as in the stability phase. Go ahead Jebb and going into the position. Here what we are going to do and how we are going to progress to make it more difficult is by adding a weight to the wrist. You could do that in the form of a hand weight or wrap around weight and also the same thing for the ankle. Again what we are going to do here is get much more activation, make it more difficult for the core musculature to stabilize at the pelvis and the spine. Now from this position, what I am going to do is to progress it one more time and ask Jebb to go into a push up position and again keeping the same focal points with the hip square, everything in line. Making sure they would not getting too much extension or reflection from the spine. Can tell it this is very challenging. We want to make sure that we keep the hip square level and making sure that we keep everything in line. Good job, Jebb. Standing Cable Push Press What we are going to do is line up his shoulder with the cable arm. Making sure that we are keeping the shoulder square as well as not giving again any indication that we are not loosing a neutral spine position. From here what we want to do is extend the arm straight out, coming back and straight out again. Now while we doing this, we are activating the core musculature for stabilization factor. Again drawing in on the belly button. Making sure that we are not deviating away from the cable column system with his hand, making sure that we are keeping it in line with his shoulder. Again we are going to have the opposite leg forward of the hand that we have it in, maintaining a hip square position and extending the arm. Great job. Cable Tug Of War With a tug of war exercise, we are first going to set up with our position. The opposite leg forward of the hand that you have the rope in, also we want to make sure that the cable is in line with your shoulder or they are about in line with the chest. Now from this position what Jebb is going to do is start out with a pronated position. Pull. As he is pulling, he is going to turn the wrist into a neutral position towards the rid cage. While Jebb is pulling, we are going to add a rotational component with the hip. Also we are going from a pronated to a neutral position with the wrist. Pronated To Supinated Dumbbell Curls As with all our exercises, we want to pay attention to a couple of posture cues. We are going to have a belly button in, knees slightly flex, feet are shoulder width apart. Nice athletic stance. We are going from a pronated grip, rotating on the way up to a supinated grip up top, really emphasizing the contraction of the bicep muscle at the top of the movement. Coming up strong, coming down nice and controlled on the eccentric or negative contraction. One thing we definitely want to pay attention to is not allowing the body to swing back and forth. You can't control the weight. With a nice athletic stance without rocking back and forth and not using proper form. It's probably too much weight for you. This exercise is also great by twisting from a pronated to a supinated position works the entirety of the bicep complex. Lowering it slowly in a nice eccentric contraction.