Athletic Strength for Women

248 pages published: 2005

About the Book

With women’s sport performance at an all-time high and continuing to rise, you need to be faster, stronger, and more agile in order to compete. Yet, until now, no training manual has specifically addressed female athletes’ physiological, biomechanical, and anatomical needs.

Athletic Strength for Women presents effective exercise prescriptions to help you build a strength base and then convert that strength to speed and power in competition. The result is not only better performance but also fewer injuries. For example, exercises and programs for the lower body will improve hamstring and quadriceps strength ratios, providing enhanced takeoff power and landing strength and better protection for the knee. More than 120 targeted exercises and drills are provided to improve

throwing, striking, swinging, and other upper-body skills;

starting, stopping, jumping, cutting, turning, pivoting, and other lower-body maneuvers; and

overall power and speed.

Written by David Oliver, former strength and conditioning coach for the U.S. women’s soccer and basketball teams, and Dana Healy, department head for strength and conditioning at the United States Olympic Committee, Athletic Strength for Women contains general fitness and sport-specific performance tests. These tests are accompanied by normative tables that enable athletes to gauge strengths and weaknesses against those of their peers and set improvement goals.

The book also includes in-season, off-season, and preseason programs for all the major participation sports, including soccer, volleyball, basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, swimming, and track and field. No matter what your sport, prepare your body to perform at full potential. The programs in Athletic Strength for Women will help you achieve a new level of athleticism.

About the Authors

David Oliver is the president and founder of Oliver Sports Performance. He has worked at the high school, collegiate, professional, and Olympic levels as a coach and athletic trainer for over 15 years. He has worked as the conditioning coach for the U.S. women’s national soccer team and served as strength and conditioning consultant to the U.S. women’s national basketball team. He has served as an athletic trainer on medical teams assembled for major events like the U.S. National Skating Championships, the World Triathlon Championships, the Citrus Bowl, and the NBA All-Star Game.

Oliver also spent seven years with the NBA’s Orlando Magic basketball team as the strength and conditioning coach and assistant athletic trainer. Oliver is a certified member of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA), the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He is also certified as a U.S. Weightlifting Federation club coach (USWF). He speaks nationally at camps, clinics, and seminars and is well regarded for his innovative training techniques.

Oliver is the coauthor of Conditioning the NBA Way and NBA Power Conditioning and has written articles for Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Women’s Health and Fitness, and numerous other publications. He has also been featured in Women’s Sports Illustrated and Conditioning for Women’s Basketball.

He lives with his wife, Shelly, and sons, Zachary and Ryan, in Orlando, Florida.

Dana Healy is the department head for strength and conditioning at the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). In this position she oversees the strength and conditioning programs at three Olympic Training Centers (OTCs) and consults with teams that do not reside at the OTCs. She has been with the USOC since 1997 and has trained numerous Olympic and world medalists.

Before joining the OTC, Healy worked as the assistant strength coach at Brown University. She is a certified member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and U.S.A. Weightlifting (USAW) and has been a contributor to Men’s Health, Outside Magazine, Sports Illustrated for Women, and Performance Conditioning.

Healy lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.