SAQ Sports Conditioning

What is SAQ, you ask?
Speed
Agility
Quickness

SAQ workouts consist of short, intense drills that require you to accelerate or decelerate quickly, while moving backward, forward or side-to-side.  SAQ improves balance, power and neuromuscular firing patterns so that your movements become fast, dynamic and precise.  You’ll notice improvements in your response time and your ability to change direction lightning fast.  These workouts are great for athletes!

There are many other sports are explosive—and explosive sports must be trained explosively.

SAQ training helps protect you from injury when you are trying new sports or adding new challenges to your routine.  If you teach your muscles to fire contrary to what they are used to, you will prepare your tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints for the unexpected.

What happens to your muscles?
The central nervous system (CNS) sends messages to a muscle’s individual motor units to team up and recruit more muscle fiber –and that’s a good thing.  The only thing to be cautious about is too much CNS activity, because when you go 90% or faster, it puts a tremendous amount of stress on your CNS and muscles, which makes you stronger, but which also can cause deep fatigue in your body.  So make sure that you recover between SAQ workouts—it takes about 72-96 hours to recover.

Getting ready for SAQ drills:
For the first three weeks do multi-directional movement patterns into your routine. These are fundamental skills that move you up, down, forward, backward, laterally, and diagonally—on flats, hills and stairs.

Weeks four and beyond add SAQ drills 2-3 times per week.  You will want to begin 6-8 weeks before your sport.

Time / Reps

• Beginner/Intermediate:  30 seconds for each drill, with 30 second active recovery of walking  (1-3 sets)
• Intermediate/Advanced: 30-60 seconds for each drill, with 30-60 second active recovery of walking or light jogging. (5-10 sets)

For more on SAQ training, please contact me!