Are you making this fundamental mistake in your training?

One of the biggest mistakes many people make is to ignore working on their strength.

In some sports, strength work is still seen as a hindrance to the "real" work of endless sub-maximal monotonous drills and training runs.

It's such a shame. Because strength is crucial. It's the basis for speed, power, agility, and of course the ability to generate force. You need it whether you're swimming, running, cycling, or playing a team sport like football or rugby.

•  If you want your muscles to explode with power right WHEN you need it most, you have to train those muscles to react...

•  If you want to avoid fatigue, which affects your judgment and technical ability, then strength training is crucial.

•  Strength is also an important factor in injury prevention. For example, one of the reasons that females are four to seven times more likely than males to suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a lack of lower-limb strength.

Strength training does not necessarily mean you have to do intense heavy lifting. Instead, you can use dynamically challenging exercises that require hand-eye and body-limb coordination.

Even if you're an experienced athlete with many years of training in different forms of exercise, it's still worthwhile doing strength work in the off-season, to keep you fresh and work on the areas where you were weakest during the season.