SAQ Training - More Bang For Your Buck

The sport and fitness industry is constantly inundating us with new catch phrases, training ideas, and exercise equipment, mostly in an attempt to garner your hard-earned dollars.  Most prey upon our relative ignorance when it comes to training, and it is often difficult to distinguish between effective and “gimmicky” products and services, as it is easy to make them all sound so relevant to your personal fitness needs.

                The term “SAQ” (Speed, Agility, and Quickness) is continuing to gain popularity in the sport conditioning environment, and with good reason.  A properly delivered SAQ program can have a profound effect on an athlete’s athletic development and, ultimately, their sport performance.  With athletics becoming increasingly competitive, individuals and teams are looking for that that training edge that will put them a step ahead of their competition.  Most of this time and energy has been spent on the practice field, developing technical skills and game strategies.  There is no disputing the importance of understanding how to play the game, but much of this practice may be done at the expense of overall athletic development, resulting in a higher incidence of injury, and athletes who tend to tire of a sport that they are potentially playing/practicing 4+ days/week. 

                SAQ training gives athletes the opportunity to improve in areas such as first-step and multi-directional quickness, explosive sprinting speed, agility, dynamic balance/coordination, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness, in a fun and competitive environment, without having to worry about technical skill acquisition at the same time.  In fact, the increased athleticism and body awareness resulting from SAQ training usually makes the acquisition of technical skills much easier!

                The wide variety of movement skills presented in an SAQ training session makes the training “all-sport-specific”, meaning that there is significant carry-over of movement skills to a wide variety of sports.  The nature of the training is to train the nervous system to become more efficient at recruiting certain muscle groups in a particular order to perform a multitude of movements.  Young athletes (8-18yrs old) stand to make the most significant gains from SAQ training, as their nervous systems are still developing.  SAQ training is a proven method to improving sport performance, and offers great cross-training benefits.  Coaches, players, and parents looking to find a valid way to spend their training dollars, should look to a quality SAQ program to ensure they are spending their money wisely.

 

 

For more information on SAQ training, please visit www.pursuittraining.com, or call Mike at 604-574-2895.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Wilson

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