….from a personal trainer in NYC……
…..been having an “argument” at my gym about the importance of power endurance for the sport of basketball, or for any sport for that matter……It seems to me that power endurance, which I think is your ability to increase average power output over a game, and work capacity are interchangeable terms. Are they not? The lines seem blurred to me as to what the definition of power endurance is. I think power endurance and being in shape to play the game are the same. It also seems that training it in a gym setting wouldn’t be as beneficial as playing the sport.
Am I on the right track? Are there any other resources you would recommend moving forward on the subject, and do you train your athletes for power endurance?
If it doesn't have a racket, bat, club, or a uniform, it's GPP.
I would agree that this elusive definition of “power endurance” lies somewhere in GPP.
Are they the same? Maybe not 100% the same because GPP can mean dozens of different things for different individuals and different activities.
I don’t know if there is a formal agreed upon definition of power endurance, but I would suggest it is the ability to deliver consistent power output over a period of time. It’s actually quite paradoxical as power is elite when time is diminished. The more prolonged period of time in this working definition would apply to multiple repetitions or actions.
I definitely think maintaining a peak power per rep over time is valuable.
Maintaining a high(er) average power in test and post-tests could be a valuable way to look at it as well.
So is it important for basketball? Without a doubt.
Is it important for pretty much any activity? Without a doubt.
I think you can argue that limit strength can have a shift away given the nature of most field sports, but there is still huge accelerative and deccelerative movements that are impacted greatly by limit strength.
There’s probably a good, better, best approach to developing these qualities.
Is on the court better than in the gym? Hold a gun to my head, and I will say yes.
But I will also take that gun and point it back at you and say that the gym work will raise the starting platform for the on the court work.
And I may ask you to think that when you add loads not exemplary of the sport, you can get the training effect will a variant of movement. This variation will take you away from the repetitive use of the same “good” patterns of the sport.
No matter the quality you are blocking to train, I always think the entire spectrum of the Force-Velocity Curve is applicable. There will be shifts left or right at different times of the training cycle, but the entire spectrum is of value.
Heavy DLs will improve your limit strength so you can swing a KB for 20 minutes instead of 18 minutes which will increase your gas tank for when you are playing pickup basketball. It all started with some adaptation to make the 24kg kettlebell feel lighter.
(What’s interesting though is that it probably doesn’t work in the reverse. Playing pickup won’t get your stronger.)
Bottom line that it’s all important for Power Endurance. All of it.
And don’t forget also that the fewer physical limitations you have before you do anything, the more energy that can be funnelled to strength and speed and less to battling the lack of joint centration. Cleaning up your movement will increase Power Endurance.
Again it all matters.
