Mile Run Fitness Tests

Tracy Fober http://ironmaven.blogspot.comhas some good posts on the mile run test for basketball and also frames in the context of the general lack of fitness in today’s kids. I do not believe in mile run, two mile run or Cooper tests as fitness tests for intermittent sprint or transition game athletes. First they send a message that to be successful in these sports is only about endurance. Training for endurance, which they have to do to run reasonably well on any of these tests makes you slow. The last things I want to see are slow basketball or soccer players. Endurance is one part of the equation. I would prefer a Beep test to test fitness. Bangsbo’s Intermittent Recovery Test is a good test. It is an incremental stage test of 20 meters shuttle runs with a five second break between each shuttle. This gives you a starting point to see where the player is in terms of fitness. It is a test that can be incorporated throughout the season. My philosophy of fitness testing is to not use it to disqualify someone, but to determine where they are and develop a program that will get their fitness to a high level in the context of the demands of the game they are playing. In my new book there is extensive treatment of this concept. Also with a team I am more interested in how the TEAM performs than the individuals. I will determine a team average and standard deviations from the mean results and then set team goals for improvement. It is the team that wins or loses not an individual. For some reason this is a hard for coaches to accept, but it works. Remember also that the order of training is to get strong, get fast and then get fit. When you do it that way getting fit is much easier. Oh yea, don’t forget to play the game. That will do wanders to get you fit for the game. See the Girls basketball program on the Resources page of www.gambetta.com fitness was never an issue with this team. They got strong, got fast and then got fit. Never any work over thirty seconds. They kicked ass and took names.