Anaerobic/Aerobic Coaching Tip

Jim Kielbaso MS, CSCS

If you coach a sport in which most of the action is fueled by the anaerobic energy system, don’t spend too much time on long distance running.  Sports such as football, basketball, baseball, soccer and volleyball, where most of the movements are short and explosive, should be trained in a way that is going to develop the appropriate energy system.  While an “aerobic base” can be beneficial, most of your conditioning time for those sports should be spent on high intensity activities that involve starting, stopping and directional changes.

Whatever activity is being performed, the human body is constantly using energy.  The more intense the activity, the higher the energy demand.  The anaerobic energy system is utilized primarily to provide energy very quickly when the demand is high.  Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for this system, and it will allow the body to work very hard for about 2-3 minutes.  The trade-off for being able to supply energy at high speed is that the anaerobic system can only keep this pace up for a short period of time.  If an activity is going to be maintained for longer than a few minutes, the intensity will have to decrease so that the body can make energy fast enough to keep up with the demand.

When the intensity of the activity lowers, the aerobic system starts to play a larger role in energy production.  This system can sustain activity for an extremely long period of time.  The downside of the aerobic system is that it cannot produce energy very quickly, so it can only sustain activity of a lower intensity. 

These two energy systems have very different metabolic processes in the body and need to be trained differently to improve their function.  It’s pretty simple.  If your athletes need to perform short, explosive bursts of energy, train at a high intensity for short periods of time.  If you are trying to train the aerobic system, train at a lower intensity for a longer time.  Keep in mind that in between sprints, when your athletes are recovering, they are using the aerobic system to fuel the recovery.  So, even when you are doing sprints (which primarily stress the anaerobic system) the aerobic system is being trained during the rest periods.

Try doing activities that require accelerating, stopping and plenty of directional changes.  Use patterns that are as close as possible to what the athletes will actually be doing in competition.  There are thousands of drills available.  Just pick the ones you feel will benefit your team and implement them with as much enthusiasm as you can muster up.