Get Game-Ready With These Conditioning Workouts for Athletes

Every rec league has that one player who goes ham during warm-ups, but later, you catch them doubled over trying to catch their breath (no shame if that's you, you're in the right place). You might be strong and fast for about four minutes, but when your conditioning sucks, your strength, speed, and skill will go offline later in the game.

Good conditioning workouts are a lot more targeted than running laps and doing a few high knees. You need to train with the same effort that your sport demands, while also building power and speed with lifting, all while ensuring your program lets you perform at your best on game day.

What Is Conditioning?

Conditioning is structured training that builds your body's capacity to do hard work, repeat it, and recover quickly in between. Your aerobic system (longer, steady), and anaerobic system (short, intense), and movements you need for your sport like sprinting, cutting, and jumping are all included. While regular cardio usually means anything you can keep doing for a long time at the same effort, conditioning is more sport-specific, with more intense efforts coming closer together.

Compared to typical strength training, which increases the ceiling on how much force you can produce, conditioning is what limits how many times you can hit that ceiling before you're completely wiped. Both boost your aerobic base, which speeds up recovery between sprints, shifts, or rounds.

Who Needs Conditioning Workouts

While pretty much anyone can benefit from conditioning workouts, if your sport requires repeated hard efforts, you definitely won't want to skip them. Field and court athletes are the obvious group, along with fighters (here's our guide to MMA strength training), hybrid racers chasing a faster HYROX time, and anyone preparing for a fitness test (the 20-minute military workout is a good place to start).

Endurance runners can also get a lot from conditioning workouts, as can basically anyone who wants to feel more athletic in everyday life (if that's you, you're in good company, because strength and conditioning is having a moment).

Conditioning workouts that look like your sport are best (known as the rule of specificity), so a soccer player and a wrestler shouldn't be on the same program. If you're brand new to exercise, spend a couple of months on basic strength and easy cardio before you add jumps and heavy sleds. A base of strength comes first because if you try explosive training when your mechanics aren't solid yet, you're very likely to get hurt.

How to Build Strength and Conditioning Workouts

The best strength and conditioning workouts will get you strong and teach you to use that strength quickly, while also building an engine that lets you repeat it.

Get Strong First

Stronger athletes sprint faster, jump higher, and change direction better, so heavy compound lifts are the foundation. Add in squats, deadlifts, presses, and rows for 3 to 5 sets of 6 or fewer reps at around 80 to 85% of your max, twice a week. If you're newer to lifting, this doubles as your power training, since heavy squats alone improve jumping power as much as explosive jump training in weaker athletes.

Add Jumps and Sleds

Doing both heavy lifts and plyometrics improves sprint speed and jump height more than doing just one or the other. One popular way to set this up is to do a heavy set of squats, rest two to four minutes, then hit a few box jumps while your nervous system is still fired up.

You'll need a plyo box for this, like the REP® 3-in-1 Soft Plyo Boxes that have a foam cover over a wood core to protect those shins from scrapes.

Resisted sprints are ideal for building acceleration, and work better than lifting alone. You can do this with a heavy weight sled for your first few steps and then go lighter when you're trying to build top speed.

Train Cardio Like Your Sport Needs

You'll want to train your cardio the same way you need it in your sport. For instance, a hockey shift is about 45 seconds of chaos followed by a couple of minutes on the bench, so you'd want to train for bursts of high intensity, with rest periods. Meanwhile, a soccer match is 90 minutes of jogging interrupted by sprints, and so on.

Build intervals on a bike, rower, or sled that copy the kind of work and rest periods you need to be able to do (REP's conditioning equipment lineup offers many creative ways to suffer).

Get the Order Right

Sprinting before lifting led to better acceleration and power than lifting first, while doing plyometrics before strength work slowed sprint times in young soccer players. So sprint first while you're fresh, lift second with your jumps slotted in after the heavy sets, and save lung-burning circuits for the end or another day.

In season, two lifting sessions a week is plenty to hold onto your strength, and I like the 48-hour rule, which is the minimum most pro strength coaches leave between hard training and competition. During the off season, you can increase your volume using a periodization plan to map it out.

Read More: How to Build a Hybrid Training Program

A Full Body Strength Workout for Athletes

This full body gym session includes strength, power, and a conditioning finisher. Rest two to three minutes between heavy sets. Ideally, do this workout or a variation of it twice a week.

• Back squat or trap bar deadlift: 4 x 4-6
• Box jump: 4 x 3 (one set after each heavy set, once you’ve rested)
• Hang power clean: 4 x 3-5 (kettlebell swings work if nobody has coached you on cleans)
• Bench press or push press: 4 x 5
• Heavy dumbbell or barbell row: 3 x 6-8
• Sled push: 6 x 20 yards, resting 60 to 90 seconds

Functional Conditioning Workouts for Home

You can get a lot done at home with a kettlebell or a couple of dumbbells. Circuits like this research based one increase strength and muscular endurance while improving body composition. Do two to three rounds with a minute of rest between rounds.

• Walking lunge: 10 per leg
• Kettlebell or dumbbell swing: 15
• Step-up or low box jump: 10
• Push-up: 10-15
• Plank: 30-45 seconds
• Jump rope or high knees: 30 seconds, fast

If you're a beginner, start with two rounds and do step-ups instead of jumps (stop if your form starts to crumble). Separate circuit days from your heavy lifting days when you can, because lots of high-rep work can cut into strength gains. A good week for most athletes is two strength days, one or two conditioning days, your sport itself, and at least one day of nothing more athletic than walking the dog.

Takeaway

Conditioning is what lets you use your strength for the whole game. A good way to program your training is to lift heavy twice a week, adding jumps and sled work to develop speed, and cardio that is similar to your sport. Be sure to take it easy in the 48 hours before you compete. After a couple months of this, you'll be much less likely to be that guy breathing out his back end halfway through a game.

FAQs

What are the most effective conditioning exercises for athletes?

Resisted sled sprints, plyometric jumps, Olympic lift variations, and sport-style intervals give you the most carryover, especially alongside heavy compound lifts. Combining heavy strength work with jumps in the same session improves sprinting and jumping in team sport athletes.

How does strength conditioning improve athletic performance?

It makes your muscles and nervous system better at producing force quickly, which shows up as better performance in sport-specific tasks like sprinting, jumping, and throwing. It also builds the energy systems that let you repeat those efforts and recover between them.

What are the best strength training routines for endurance runners?

Two sessions a week of heavy lower body lifts such as squats and deadlifts, ideally with some plyometrics added, is the best-supported approach for endurance runners. This kind of training improves running economy and time trial performance without adding bulk.