American Football Absolute Strengths

There is a serious debate in the track and field community as to whether there is more benefit, namely increased distances, to be gained in the throwing events from improvements in technique versus improvements in strength. While this debate focuses primarily on the shot put and discus events, the events studied in this research, it is equally true for all the throwing events. As a significant part of the throwing community, the United States is thought of as a nation that focuses too much on strength, at the expense of technique.

In “What is the Safest Sprint Starting Position for American Football Players?” a research article from Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, authors Bruno Bonnechere, Benoit Beyer, Marcel Rooze, and Jan Serge Van Sint, argue that out of the three sprint start positions in football (2-, 3-, and 4-point), the 2-point stance is the least dangerous. To prove this, a study was conducted on these positions and compared each to the safety levels in relation to American football. The results justify that the 2-point stance is safer than the 3-point or 4-point positions.

Football and track and field involve repetitive bouts of quick acceleration for short and long periods, sudden changes in direction of maximum force may contribute to the high rate of hamstring strain commonly found amongst these sports. (Ropiak & Bosco, 2012). Regardless of all the aforementioned studies, there is not one exact cause of injury during high speed, kicking sports (Lees, Asai, Andersen, Nunome, & Sterzing,

Spectators at sporting events come to watch athletes compete at their best during a game or meet. However, there is more to sports than just “playing the game”, “running the course”, “performing”, or whatever the case may be. Athletes understand how important sport specific workouts are; cross country is one sport that focuses on this. Most people think that “all you do is run”, although running is indeed the task, it takes a combinations of different workouts to build up an athlete’s body in order to be race ready. It is beneficial for cross country runners to do workouts that focus on speed, strength, and endurance.

Besides hand length, some other factors could also affect the strength of hand grip. Thus this experiment is done to investigate if athletes’ strong upper limb muscles also contribute to their high grip strength. The difference in the maximum right hand grip strength between college athletes and non-athletes were compared. The null hypothesis is that the maximum right hand grip strength is the same for college athletes and non-athletes. The alternative hypothesis is that the maximum right hand grip strength is different between college athletes and non-athletes.

So in this presentation, we discussed four components with two pairs of comparisons: Speed & Cardiovascular endurance, Power & Muscular strength. Speed is the ability to travel promptly; it is found in soccer and cross country. Cardiovascular endurance is how oxygen travels in your body. Both components results in your distance limit and speed. Power is the maximum force exerted quickly, and is utilized in boxing and tennis. Muscular strength is the resistance of the muscles against force. Finally, the strength determines the power of the

This article is about the typical time when sports scientists have been struggling with the employing the training load. It is generally recognized that well organized training program is important for best performance in athletes. Now days, it has been very hard to measure the training loads in athlete teams due to the difficulty in determining the numerous types of pressure faced during training and competition.

The kinematic factors that affect field athletes vary per sport. Every athlete in every sport require a different set of speed skills to maximize their performance. For “American” style football players every position requires a different skill set. Line men require more instant explosive speed to get off the line while receivers require a more stamina based speed. In other sports such as soccer the requirement is more endurance based as opposed to flat out speed. So by comparison speed is more important to a football player that a soccer player in the sense that explosive speed requires more from the muscular system in the initial 2 to 3 seconds that a soccer player does. Football player, for the most part, require a shorter stride length

The aim of this research is to compare each of these stretches, dynamic, static, and no stretching and to examine the effect these different warm-up routines have on performance in the vertical jump test. In a recent study with female collegiate athletes (ages 19 and above), all athletes were tested for a total of three weeks and each had to fulfill three procedures with one session per week along with one week in-between sessions. There were no specific order in the stretching as each were tested with a “five-minute light jog as a warm-up, followed by 8 minutes of one of the stretching protocols” (Dalrymple, Davis, Dwyer & Moir, 2010, p.149). Following the warm-ups, athletes were given five attempts of the countermovement vertical jump test along with one minute rest periods. All jumps were recorded and according to the calculations of the jumps, “there were no significant differences between the static stretching, dynamic stretching and no stretching” (Dalrymple, Davis, Dwyer & Moir, 2010, p.149).

Peak propulsive power (PP) has been identified as a determinant of athletic performance and training to develop peak power has become common practice in professional and amateur sport (Cronin & Sleivert, 2005; Haff & Nimphius, 2012; Hansen, Cronin, Pickering & Douglas, 2011; Kawamori & Haff, 2004). A countermovement jump (CMJ) has been established as an valid and reliable measure of PP (Markovic, Dizdar, Jukic & Cardinale, 2004; Sheppard Cormack, Taylor, McGuigan, & Newton 2008). Performance of CMJs on land under progressive loading produces a power curve displaying peak power and the decline of PP as the load increases (Haff & Nimphius, 2012; Kawamori & Haff, 2004; Sheppard et al., 2008; Stone et al, 2003). As the popularity of an aquatic environment increases as a training and rehabilitative tool, the purpose

With speed being a primary element of fitness for soccer players, developing the proper types of speed is important. In soccer, developing both acceleration and linear speed is significant in the first few steps. According to research, sprints in soccer are mainly performed over short distances, involving repeated acceleration up and down the field (Milinkovic, Sporiš, Trajković, James, & Šamija, 2013). This explains why various components of speed such as running speed, reaction speed, and acceleration speed need development in soccer players. The next area of focus would be quickness. Both speed and quickness go hand and hand in most sports especially soccer. When developing quickness in soccer players, ensuring the athlete can produce a rapid response time during training and competition is

Buhrle and Schnidtbleicher, (1977, cited in Hoff, 2005), observed that a significant relationship between an individual’s one repetition max, acceleration and speed exists. They found this to be reinforced by results of various jump tests. Acceleration and speed ability are important in a game of football, with sprinting taking place for 1-11% of the total distance covered in a typical match (Hoff, 2005). It was reported by Bangsbo et al., (2006) that sprint speeds have the potential to reach peak speeds of 32km km-h-1 with the average sprint distance being ~

Dennis Roscoe (2009) states that power training is an exercise that requires maximum force exertion. The reason power training is controversial is because of an issue Faigenbaum (2010) highlights in his research –‘Power training among young athletes’. Power training can cause huge stress on tendons and ligaments, which can have serious negative repercussions later in an athlete’s career. In modern sport there has been a huge push towards power training and weight training which has resulted in more and more young athletes taking part. Although there are potential issues with power and strength training, one way to improve explosive speed is to increase the overall functional strength throughout the entire body. This is because Zatsiorsky, V. (1995) explains improving overall strength levels will allow athletes to produce greater amounts of force while at the same time decreasing the time spent in contact with the ground. Being able to fully utilise the strength gains obtained through training in a powerful motion is imperative to improving explosive

Hand grip strength is often used as a predictor of whole body strength. Hand grip strength is a general term used by strength athletes, referring to the muscular strength and force that they can generate with their hands. The strength of a hand grip is the result of forceful flexion of all finger joints, thumbs, and wrists with the maximum voluntary force that the subject is able to exert under normal biokinetic conditions. Hand grip strength is a physiological variable that is affected by a number of factors including age, gender and body size among others (Koley et al., 2009). Handgrip strength is a general indicator of muscle strength and linked with premature mortality (Cheung et al., 2013). Reliable and valid evaluation of hand strength

These two athletes are trained differently due to the different physical demands of their sports. Soccer players have to train more footwork and leg muscles than basketball players. Basketball players need to focus more on vertical jump than soccer players. The significance of number of sets, reps, rest intervals, weights used, and frequency of training, should be discussed to help establish a line of thinking as to why and how the programs were designed.