What is conditioning?

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I train some athletes who are funded, and an allocation of those funds is for "strength and conditioning". A sailor recently asked me "I know what strength training is, but what is conditioning training?"

I replied like a politician "that's a good question, and I am glad you asked me." But then struggled to come up with an "elevator pitch" type one liner.

It is easier to understand what conditioning may involve in MMA (as pictured), and most of the fighters involved would probably not ask that question, but more difficult to comprehend in sports like sailing.

So, how about this?

"Conditioning is the ability to reproduce skillful work at the right time, under pressure, throughout a competition."

There might be some room for "fast, powerful, movements" too. There is no point being brilliant in the first five minutes, then getting gassed and letting the opposition beat you in the last 5 minutes.

Another aspect of conditioning to consider when designing sports training programmes, is the ability to sustain skill during the technical and tactical sessions. If you have a 2 hour volleyball training session, which is much longer than the match, then you need to have the conditioning to be able to train throughout.

The down side of this is that the athletes might get into the habit of pacing themselves to last the training (common when there are 6 hour training days) and then can't adjust to working at a faster pace during competition.

The answer to this is to make the training sessions replicate the intensity and pace of high level competition- but that's another story...