Training for sports requires creating gamelike movements, intensities and durations during your workouts. While aerobic and bodybuilding workouts are helpful during the off season, it’s important to create sport-specific workouts as you near your season. Building stamina with short, intense bursts of exercise and performing explosive movement drills will help you maximize your workout benefits.

Anaerobic vs. Aerobic

You are probably familiar with aerobic exercise, which is work performed at roughly 60 percent to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, usually for 30 minutes or longer. This steady-state training requires oxygen to support your muscle movements, engages your slow-twitch muscle fibers, burns more fat than sprint training, and helps build stamina and endurance. High-intensity anaerobic exercise occurs at high heart rates, primarily above 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, doesn’t require oxygen during the short bursts of activities, recruits fast-twitch muscle fibers and burns mostly glycogen. Unlike aerobic training, anaerobic exercise helps you train your body’s ability to recover after activity.

Explosive Power Exercises

Explosive power occurs when you make a short, powerful movement in one direction, such as moving forward off the snap of a football or leaving the starting blocks at the start of a race. Some people refer to any exercise that includes speed or quickness as explosive, but exercises that require the coordination of multiple muscles are more commonly referred to as reactive, or plyometric exercises. To train your explosive power, perform exercises such as deadlifts, bench presses, box squats, box jumps, standing broad jumps and one-leg, split-squat jumps. Using 50 percent or less of the weight you can lift for deadlifts and box squats, perform five repetitions of an exercise per set, and three sets per workout. For jumping exercises, perform six to eight reps per set.

Reactive Power Exercises

To make explosive moves that require you to move in two directions, such as down and up for a slam dunk, serve or spike, or side to side for a baseball, golf or tennis swing, perform plyometric exercises. Helpful choices include jump squats, reactive squats, depth jumps, sprinting, bounding, skipping, medicine ball throws and 1-2-3 jumps. Perform six to eight reps of each exercise and three sets of each exercise during your workouts.

Interval Training

To train your cardio system for the cardio demands of anaerobic activities, use intervals. Intervals are short, high-intensity bursts of activity, such as sprinting, pedaling very fast on a bike or rowing quickly on a rowing machine. Start with 30-second sprints at 80 percent to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate, followed by two or more minutes of recovery at a walking pace. Increase your interval durations or intensities as you improve your conditioning. Consult with a health professional before starting this type of training.

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