Strength and Conditioning
AT GUERRILLA ATHLETE, OUR TRAINING PROGRAMS ARE DESIGNED TO ENHANCE EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE. WE ACHIEVE THIS WITH A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO TRAINING, WHETHER IT IS THROUGH OUR MENTAL CONDITIONING, NUTRITION IMPROVEMENT, AND OF COURSE THROUGH OUR PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT PROGRAMS. MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER WEIGHT AND CARDIO PROGRAM, OUR GOAL IS TO “TRAIN TO EXCEL IN UNCERTAINTY”, BE IT THROUGH TRAINING FOR YOUR JOB/CAREER, TRAINING FOR A PARTICULAR SPORT OR ATHLETIC EVENT, OR TRAINING FUNCTIONALLY TO BETTER YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE. WE USE A PROVEN AND SCIENTIFIC APPROACH, BASED ON YEARS OF RESEARCH TO ACHIEVE THIS.
Strength and Conditioning Methodology
Warmup- Warming up is one of the most important things you can do pre-workout, with the following physiological goals in mind:
- Improve flexibility
- Increase muscle and connective tissue temperature, heart rate, blood flow, breathing rate, joint fluid viscosity, sweating
- minimize risk of inadequate blood flow when beginning an intense exercise and prevention of injuries
- Improve speed of nervous impulses, leading to better performance of exercises
Strength Training- This is the foundation upon which performance is built. Using correct form and technique, you can establish a solid base which all your other modes of training will depend on. Proper strength training can decrease the risk and degree of injury, increase injury recovery, strengthen both the muscles and connective tissues, increase range of motion, and improve physical abilities as well as your confidence in those abilities. It is important to remember to do all exercises with correct technique, stay consistent with your workouts, and follow the advice we give on this site. This is especially important with your Olympic and power lifting (i.e. cleans, jerks, etc.), which we will typically do first because of the explosive nature of the exercise. They should be done while you are as fresh as possible to promote speed of the weight as heavy as possible while maintaining correct form. From there we will move to the more conventional multi-joint lifts, starting with the largest muscle groups first (i.e. squat, bench, etc.), and working our way to the smaller muscle groups and single-joint exercises as the workout proceeds.
Plyometrics-These are activities that duplicate movements in dynamic or athletic events, involving maximal force in the smallest amount of time. There are 3 phases to a plyometric: eccentric, amortization, and concentric. In the eccentric phase, energy is stored; using the elastic properties of the muscles, say the prestretch squat of a squat jump. The amortization phase is the time between the eccentric and concentric phases, and you want this to be the shortest amount of time possible. In the concentric phase, energy is released, allowing the muscles to rapidly exert force to produce maximal power, or the actual jump of a squat jump.
- Most disciplines only think of plyometrics as lower body exercises, and thus only prescribe box jumps, bodyweight jumps, etc. At Guerilla Athlete, we will take full advantage of upper body, lower body, and even a little bit of core plyometric exercises, making your entire body as athletic and explosive as possible.
Balance, Functional, and Proprioception Training-These activities, though they may seem silly and trivial could mean the difference between winning and losing, maybe even life and death. Life rarely happens in a stable controlled environment, and it might be that unsteady footing, that extra second it may take for your opponent or enemy to regain their balance that will allow you to defeat them.
Core Training-Have you ever seen that guy who has either a really strong upper or lower body, but has no strength and can’t move functionally? Chances are it is probably because he has a weak core. Think of your body as a chain, which everyone knows is only as strong as its weakest link. The link at the center of that chain is your core, composed of your abdominals and lower back muscles, and is the region that enables the athlete to transfer power between the lower and upper body, as well as assist in any kind of change of direction, balance, or stabilization exercise. The core is used in everything, whether it is stabilization while rucking, transferring power while sprinting, protection of some of your vital organs, or even through rotation during simple tasks such as shoveling or weedeating. Because of this importance, we make the core a priority in all of our training. Almost every facet of training we do will train your core daily, and we also will train the core exclusively.
Injury Prevention/Prehabilitation-As we age, continue to do specific activities over time, or do things incorrectly, we get injured, whether acute, specific injuries, or chronic, overuse injuries. In our holistic approach, we try to prevent these injuries from happening in the first place through proper technique, flexibility, nutrition, recovery, core training, and specifically through our prehabilitation exercises. Proper form and technique are critical, because all too often someone can think they are helping a problem area by doing one of these exercises, but if done improperly, they can actually hurt the affected area.
Functional Flexibility/Grip Strength-Defined as the range of motion about a joint, flexibility can be enhanced with a consistent routine, and can be used to prevent injuries, reduce the incidence of strains, and most likely increase speed, agility, strength, and as a result improved athletic performance.
- Grip and forearm strength is trained in conjunction with many other modes of exercises, but we also set some time aside to focus on it, and is one of the last things you want to fatigue in your session. This is essential to our advanced tactical athletes and athletes of any sport where throwing, catching, climbing, or grabbing is involved.
Conditioning-This training must meet the specific bioenergetics needs of the participant, whether for an event, sport, or overall health. It is not just running a couple of miles. In fact, I have had guys not run the 2 mile one time between APFTs and get a better score the second time they take it! The emphasis should be on the energy system most utilized, taking note that at no time are you using just one energy system. We train our athletes on all energy systems, with a focus on what is most specific to them.
- Our sessions can be very intense! When your workout says sprint, we are asking you to go as hard as you can. We will give you rest, but we have to push the limits to get an improvement, which is why many people complain about their running times don’t get better with some of their distance running.
Speed-This is the ability to go from point A to point B in the smallest amount of time, and can be improved by working on both mechanics and muscle memory. Mathematically, speed can be defined as stride length X stride frequency, meaning that an improvement in either one will be an improvement in speed. A proper dynamic warmup and flexibility routine must be done before doing this workout to greatly reduce the risk of injury.
Agility-This can be defined as the ability to quickly decelerate, change direction, and accelerate to full speed, or to react to unexpected actions. With proper training, one can learn how to control their body, minimize injury through proper technique, improve velocity, and improve overall change of direction, whether planned or unplanned. Nothing in life is in a controlled, predictable environment, especially in a game situation or downrange. The ability to instinctively react to this unpredictability as quickly as possible could mean the difference between getting injured or not, or even worse. Our training will place you in a myriad of different body positions, have you do task specific movements, react and change directions on the fly, are performed as quickly as possible (remember train fast be fast, train slow be slow), are short in duration (5-10s), and are run with full rest in mind. Just like with speed, we want each rep to be 100% all out max effort, and as a result, this is not a cardio session.
Post Workout Stretch/Recovery-This mode of training is just as important if not more important than the rest. Overtraining has become a real problem, especially as of the last few years, and we all need to do our best in listening to our bodies. How do we prevent this from happening? Our strength programs will have peak and backdown weeks built into them, depending on what workouts or phases you are in. This doesn’t mean that since this workout was easy today, go and do another one. It was easy for a reason! The body needs time to regenerate and adapt so that you can hit the next few weeks hard again and see marked improvements.
- We also encourage you to make enough time for post workout recovery. This could mean a series of stretches, whether it is static stretches, including band stretches, PNF stretching with a partner, or some more dynamic flexibility. It could also mean myofascial release using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, even a frozen water bottle. Or it could even mean using cold water immersion using either a cold tub or by jumping in a tub full of ice, anywhere between 8-12 minutes. This will reduce the swelling caused by the muscle damage you sustained during the workout and flush lactic acid from your muscles that may have accumulated. Once you get out of the tub and allow your body tissue to warm back up, oxygen carrying blood will return to your muscles, allowing them to recover efficiently.