Coach Kenny’s Pick: The Burpee
Why: It teach’s efficiency, mental toughness, attention to detail, and endurance. As an added bonus, you need zero equipment.
When do you use it?
It’s hard to beat as a basic conditioning tool: you don’t need anything but your own body and gravity, but boy do burpees get the heart going. Furthermore, to do this movement well, you have to to be efficient and move in rhythm. If you’re not very good at these things to start, after practicing burpees you’ll get better.
There’s also some nice symbolism about getting back up when you get knocked down.
Coach Brandon’s Pick: The TRX Body Saw
This is a challenging abdominal exercise that requires you to keep your entire core tight and contracted for the whole set. While many people think to do things like sit-ups and crunches for abdominal strength, exercises that emphasize control and stability are more much useful and important, especially for an athlete.
Athletes need to manage forces from all angles and in unpredictable positions, therefore challenging the core to remain stable with a moving base of support is an excellent exercise.
When do you use it?
Anytime you are looking to burn out your abdominals in a short time period. Many other abdominal exercises require a lot of reps before your core reaches fatigue, three sets of 10 reps of this exercise is sure to get the job done!
Coach Yo’s Pick: Single Leg Box Squat Series
Why: These exercises expose any weaknesses in an athlete’s unilateral strength and let the athlete work on strength at a specific range of motion.
This series is an especially good tool for those athletes who struggle with single leg balance and stability. It can also be a good way to see how much “functional strength” they have. As a coach, it is very important to understand and see if your athletes have good control (strength and stability) during a movement as well as good range of motion (mobility).
When do you use it?
When someone struggles with any of the following:
- basic squat pattern (depth, posture, and lumbopelvic control)
- Single leg stability and balance
- Change of direction at a sharp angle (like 5-10-5 agility test)
- Coming back from ankle/knee injuries