Our summer Speed, Strength & Power (SSP) Camp just wrapped up its fourth week. All the kids are moving more efficiently. Which translates to faster foot speed and less fatigue. Some are learning faster than others but the interesting thing is how much faster the younger kids are learning than the older kids.
This is probably because we have unlearn all the bad habits the older kids have while with younger kids, there are not many bad habits to fix. So things are going good. But today they got great.
All 4 groups met out at the pool at CSUB. Most thought we would be swimming all day long. So they were kind of excited, but mostly they were just looking forward to getting out of the bakersfield heat.
What they got was more than they bargained for.
The beauty of perfoming speed and power drills in the water is that it slows everything down and makes it much safer to do plyometric exercises and speed exercises. The water produces the resistive forces against the jumps and movement, but also produces the force that slows the athlete down.
Some may say, well doesn't moving slow produce slower players. Well yes and no. If athletes are chronically using heavy resistance that does not allow for use of the entire muscle contraction and speed spectrum then you will start to see a decrease in movement speed and power. But when providing resistance such as water the athletes intend to contract quickly and the water simply slows them down. They are not moving at "slow" speeds. Simply slower than out of water.
Give it a shot. I'm going to have 40 high school athletes that will have an entirely new view of aquatic exercise.
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