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Previously I talked of smart training over many years for athletic/player development as per the stepped approach in the graph. However, invariably what happens is that athletes typically are time poor in-season and don’t retain gains achieved in the off-season and therefore their strength, power, speed, etc. returns to baseline biological status. This can happen year after year and as a result there is zero to little change in those physiological qualities thought important for improving athleticism/player performance as seen in blue in the diagram.

Smart training options are needed to develop and retain sport specific strength, power, etc. One such smart option is using wearable resistance (WR) so that strength, speed and stamina training occur as part of your on-field practices rather than separate to it. I have shown in previous posts that WR is the real deal in terms of a strength and metabolic stimulus and discussed the research that used it as part of an on-field warm-up in soccer players to significantly improve sprint times. Hot off the press is an article by Feser et al. showing how force, power and speed measures were retained in the WR group training ~1session/week, whereas the unloaded group detrained on all measures.