Shooting is a complex movement for all water polo players. The shot begins in the lower body and ends with an aggressive follow through with your shooting arm. Many water polo players make the mistake of training only rotational and forearm exercises. However, strengthening the entire kinetic chain of muscles is crucial for not only power production, but also for injury prevention. Any weak link in the kinetic chain can send all the force into the wrong area, compromising technique and exposing the body to acute injury. Implementing specific exercises in your dryland program will improve a player's shot. 

Hard work in the gym results in better performance in the pool. Water polo-specific dryland training programs designed for each player’s position, their strengths and weaknesses, and the team’s competition calendar are paying off big time in the pool. Coaches can see the difference in terms of wins and losses. They are also seeing a reduction in injuries and an ability of their players to go hard all season long. Here’s a four-step guide on how to build a water polo-specific dryland program:

Optimize athlete engagement and communication of your strength and conditioning plan with the BridgeAthletic strength training software. Maintaining a steady stream of athlete engagement can be challenging even at the highest levels. The school year delivers never-ending schedule conflicts and stressors to young athletes, while the off season and distraction of the summer months can cause an equally frustrating lack of enthusiasm. Similarly, communicating the purpose for your plan and the importance of compliance and engagement can be incredibly difficult given these complications and disruptions. With BridgeAthletic's strength training software and app to seamlessly log, track, and communicate their progress directly from their mobile devices, athletes are able to engage with their training on their schedule wherever they are, improving compliance and excitement.

The purpose of BridgeAthletic’s software for strength coaches is simple: it’s to empower you as a coach to do more in less time. We strive to deliver a platform that equips you with a way to seamlessly develop your S&C program in real time, as your athletes develop. At the heart of every strength department are the programs, which is why we’ve made the Content Manager the heart of the Bridge platform. Create your own exercises or use our built in library, build out days, weeks, and seasons of training, saving templates along the way to come back to next season or use as a starting point for another one of your teams. When you’re done, review the load analyzer to make sure the program progresses as you intend. Then, quickly schedule your training and deliver it to your athletes, no formatting necessary, leaving you with more time to coach and less time spent on the computer.

Strength coaches must be flexible and efficient when training with their athletes. Academic priorities, travel schedules, injuries, and other commitments can understandably conflict with workouts. That’s why Bridge created the Edits on the Fly feature, which will allow you as the coach to make edits to your strength and conditioning program directly on your iPad! 

The ability to track your athletes' progress and evaluate your program thorought the season is at the center of BridgeAthletic's software for strength coaches. While mapping results across many seasons is crucial to your team’s success, having the tools to communicate and examine your programming can serve as an equally important factor when assessing results and planning your next steps. The BridgeAthletic software for strength coaches not only allows you to track your athletes' success, but the analytical features enable you to compare those results to the composition of your programming.

Delivering an individualized strength and conditioning program to each member of a team used to be difficult. Often, we found ourselves calculating percentages based on each athlete’s 1 rep max equivalent (%1RME) and then creating unique lifting cards, containing each individual’s weight prescriptions. However, strength training software and the BridgeAthletic builder does away with these calculations. Simply choose to prescribe weight based on %1RME and deliver your workout to every athlete at once, allowing each value to automatically calculate, based on the percentages assigned. No more mistyped Excel formulas. Spend your time on the floor, not the computer.

Communicating with your team can be a challenge. Accounting for last minute scheduling conflicts, relaying workout descriptions in the off season, and generally keeping track of a high volume of athletes can be a challenge. That’s why we’ve created software for strength coaches and the Team Stream feature to help streamline all communication with your individual athletes as well as the different parts of your department, from sports coaches to trainers. While this simple messaging system can significantly impact your athletes’ engagement and your tracking of their success, BridgeAthletic’s communication features also enable the rest of your training staff to collaborate more effectively.

Testing your athletes is crucial to measuring the success of your strength and conditioning program. While it can be time consuming and difficult to collect data and analyze your team's stats, the BridgeAthletic software for strength coaches allows you to compile, organize, track, and examine your athlete's tests against each other and over time.