MAD Training Philosophy amidst a global pandemic.

As our company enters its fourth month training online the only thing we can be certain of is uncertainty. With no idea of when facilities will open, when and if leagues will restart, this can be a frightening time for all athletes. Amidst uncertainty the MAD Training philosophy hasn’t wavered. We aim to maximize our athletes health and performance. Although we don’t know if and when their respected seasons will start we aim to have them healthy and prepared for that moment.

Maximizing health starts with our daily High Performance Health Survey. See last week's issue explaining the HPH. The MAD HPH creates an athlete's awareness of their everyday health - i.e. hydration, nutrition, sleep, time in nature, and time on tech.

Our programming is rooted in a proactive approach to strength training. Every session is started with breathing exercises which then flows into a complete trunk stability and mobility segment which all our athletes have grown to love. Regardless of equipment limitations, we can make sure our athlete’s trunks are rock solid for whenever they return to sport.

Strength training at home certainly has its limitations, but we make best with whatever equipment our athletes have available. We utilize compound (full body), closed chain (feet or hands on the ground) lifts that mimic an athlete’s sport to again make sure they’re ready to return and stay healthy in their sport. While we may not be able to overload our movements with weight, we can certainly still improve speed and power. We practice sprinting mechanics and sprinting drills to improve technique, even if we can’t sprint. Finally we program large amounts of proactive exercises usually seen in a physical therapy clinic to attack the problem joints (ankle, knee, hip, shoulder) before there is ever an issue.

The next few months will be an interesting time in the world of sports. As athletes begin to return to practice and eventually sport, we may see a rise in injuries due to inactivity and high variance in training protocols during the Shelter-in place period. MAD is doing all we can on our end to make sure our athletes don’t fall into that category ( and we’re highly confident they won’t). Strength coaches should be overcautious as athletes return to the weight room and closely monitor training intensity and volume on an individual level. Even with veteran lifters, overreaching and overtraining can lead to serious injury, and are a strong possibility following periods of inactivity. Sport coaches must do the same, athletes haven’t competed in months, trying to accomplish 3 months of lost work in 1 month of training is a recipe for disaster. The onus is on coaches to make sure our athletes safely return to sport.