Six Exercises You Can Incorporate Into Your Next Athletic Bootcamp

Six Exercises You Can Incorporate Into Your Next Athletic Bootcamp

If you’re not already offering a specialized athletic bootcamp, you may want to schedule one soon. That’s because they’re growing in popularity.  Athletes know that in order to really compete, they can’t just train at practice and during the on season. They need to train during the off-season, too.

 That’s where your athletic bootcamp comes into play. Depending on which sports players you’re targeting, you’ll help your clients train for speed, agility, strength, endurance or some combination of these four. 

You can develop these skills through plyometric exercises, weight training and circuit training.  You can also develop any individual skill by practicing the exact skill repeatedly. For example, if you have basketball players that need to improve their jumps, then be sure your bootcamp includes a variety of jumping activities.

When you’re planning your athletic bootcamps, keep in mind what type of skills players in specific sports need. For example:

• Basketball players need to practice jumps, get faster and develop endurance.
• Tennis players need agility, speed and strength.
• Football players need all four, depending on what position they play.
• Track and field athletes’ needs depends on their specialty (e.g., shot-put, sprinting, long distance running, hurdles, etc).And so on.

Let me share with you a variety of exercises that you can incorporate into your next athletic bootcamp:

• Sled drags.  This one is simple – just hook your trainees up to a harness, and then attach that harness to a weight. You might have the trainee drag anything from weight plates to an old tire.  For added difficult, have them run up hill or run backwards with the sled.  This is a great exercise to help develop strength and endurance.

• Running stairs.  If your athletes need to develop endurance, have them run stairs in a stadium.  It also helps some with agility and strength.

• Suicide runs.  There are plenty of names for this one, such as “confidence runs.”  But the idea is the same: Trainees start at Point A. They run from Point A to Point B, then back to the start.  Then they run from Point A to Point C, which is just a bit further than Point B. This continues until the trainee has run all the “lines,” which may number to a dozen or more. 

This exercise can increase speed, if there aren’t many lines and the runners are focusing on sprinting fast.  Otherwise, you can have trainees doing more lines for endurance.  If you want to help trainees improve agility, put a block on the lines for them to pick up and carry back to the starting point.=

• Bungee runs. This is where you attach a strong bungee cord to the runner.  He takes off as quickly as possible and runs for as far as he can. This exercise improves speed and strength.

• Depth jumps.  If you have basketball players in your class who need to improve their agility and their jumps, try this exercise.  The starting position is on a box or other elevated platform.  Trainees should jump off the box and crouch down to the ground as they land. Then they should jump up explosively (as high as possible).

• Medicine ball drills.  Here’s another good one for basketball players, but it helps build upper body strength for other athletes too.  Below are a couple variations. First, have trainees partner up. Then:

-Have partners toss the ball back and forth.

 -Have partners lie down in the sit up position, facing each other.  Both partners should complete one sit up. When they get into the upright position, the partner with the ball should toss it to the other partner. Immediately both partners should complete another sit up. Keep repeating.

 -One partner sits on the ground, arms outstretched, palms up. The other person stands over him and drops the ball into his hands.  The sitting partner catches the ball and brings the back of his hands to the floor as he does.  Then he tosses the ball back up to the partner. Keep repeating.

In sum: Your trainees will get the most out of your bootcamp if you tailor the workouts to meet their strength, speed, endurance and agility needs.  To discover more hints for developing a popular athletic bootcamp, go to: http://athleticbootcamps.com