Coaches straddle two worlds when it comes to elite athletics—coaching the sport they love and managing the administrative tasks associated with being part of a greater athletic department. Communication within the athletic department can be far from easy. We’re here to help you navigate best practices in communication so you can set your sights on training, competition, and winning national titles.

Elite athletes have fantastic cardiovascular endurance. They can sustain cardiovascular exercise, such as swimming, running, cycling, etc, over an extended period of time. All too often, we refer to lung capacity as one of the primary drivers of cardiovascular fitness, when in reality, there are several larger factors that determine one’s endurance.

Wearable fitness technology is fast becoming an integral component of elite athletics. BridgeAthletic created this guide to help coaches and athletes make a well-informed decision on the fitness tracker that will give them a leg up on the competition. When deciding upon relevant parameters to measure for elite athletes, consider which metrics most closely relate to performance. Accessory measurements like steps taken or calories burned are interesting to know, but they do not directly apply to an athlete’s performance in a game, race, or event. Heart rate and sleep monitoring should provide key information to coaches and athletes to help them train with more specificity and efficiency.

Stability is a critical component of athleticism. No matter what sport you play, good stability enables you to move quickly, fluidly, and safely. Elite athletes develop this trait to protect themselves from injury, improve their technical prowess, and harness their performance potential.

I was recently approached by an athlete who asked me how to put on more muscle mass. He wanted to bulk up a little bit, and was curious to know how his strength program could accommodate this goal. My usual response to this is, “Do you want to get stronger, or really just bulk up?” for how you define your fitness goals usually affects the end result. Athletes and non-athletes alike should seek to build strength, in which hypertrophy can be a happy byproduct, over bulk. Since these terms are often used interchangeably, let’s take a look at how to distinguish them to fit your strength goals.

13-Step Duke Lacrosse Dynamic Warm-Up

All lacrosse players warm up before competition and training sessions. Or at least I should say, all players go through the motions of a warm-up. The best lacrosse teams, like the 2-time NCAA champions of Duke Lacrosse, activate their muscles through a rigorous dynamic warm-up that truly gets the blood flowing. How do they do it? And why? Carl Christensen, strength coach for Duke University Lacrosse and a BridgeAthletic Performance Advisory Board member overseeing BridgeLacrosse, frequently sees young players dismiss this critical part of their preparation. He says, “Watching high school camps, many kids don’t even warm up. Or sometimes, only half the team warms up, while attackmen go shoot on the goalkeeper—and then they start playing.”

VO2 max (also referred to as maximal oxygen consumption, peak oxygen uptake) is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption as measured during incremental exercise, usually on a treadmill or cycle ergometer. Maximal oxygen consumption represents the aerobic physical fitness of an individual and is important in determining his or her endurance capacity in prolonged athletic activity. Given this definition, it should be easy to measure your VO2 max and see how your cardiovascular fitness stacks up, right? The answer, however, is not so obvious.

In the culture of swimming, it’s often expected to “train through the pain” in order to get to the top¹. If you consider yourself a competitive swimmer, you likely have experienced shoulder pain at some point in your career, with it being the most common musculoskeletal complaint in swimming with an incidence ranging from 52% to 73% in elite swimmers². A competitive swimmer usually exceeds 4000 strokes for one shoulder in a single workout³! Needless to say, the shoulder can make or break a swimmer’s season and athletes should focus on prevention to avoid a season-ending injury.

Swimmer’s shoulder usually involves impingement or pinching of the rotator cuff muscles by the acromion bone as they pass through a narrow opening called the subacromial space (see figure below).