When I ask the question, "when to strength train", I am referring to if you should do it before or after practice or in a completely separate session.
Is this even important?
Really, the most important thing is to get the work done, right?
Yes, get the work done and get stronger but you need to understand the potential consequences of your actions.
The main concern with doing your strength practice before your sports practice is that you may be increasing your risk of potential injury by fatiguing key stabilizers.
Do it after sports practice and your strength training suffers.
So when should you do it?
The best is to do your strength training in a separate session. As an example, you could do your strength training in the morning with your sports practice in the evening. For the professional athlete, this should not be an issue and this is what I routinely do with the pro basketball team I currently work with.
It also depends on what you actually do in your strength training session and how fatiguing the session is.
One of the things I have also done this year with the same pro basketball team, especially when the game schedule is very busy is to do several short strength training sessions right before practice. So, instead of doing a 60+ minute strength program 2-3x/week, we would split that up and do a 30 minute session which includes a warm up and 1-2 exercises before every practice. Is this fatiguing them? Absolutely, but are they in a completely fatigue state when they leave the strength room or are they just feeling activated and ready to hit their sports practice hard?
The research:
Researchers from the US Army, looked at the effect of rotator cuff fatigue on shoulder joint mechanics. They found that when the rotator cuff was fatigued (via strength training) the space in the shoulder decreased which could lead to more impingement type injuries.
Not good for the overhead throwing athlete (e.g. Water Polo, Hand Ball, Baseball).
The entire article can be downloaded for free here.
For another commentary on this research, you can go to Dr. Mike Reinold's blog. It's a very good read especially for all the sports medical geeks out there (like me!).
Be Well,
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