I just finished week 22 of the program which was the first week of phase 3, the peaking phase and boy was it worth waiting for. After 21 weeks of 3 times a squatting mostly in the 70 - 90% range, this phase goes no heavier then 55%.
It also coincided with the first full week of footy training and the second week of basketball after the Christmas break so a fair bit of fatigue build up from those 2 which would have made another heavy week very hard (especially when my knee wouldn't let me walk Thursday morning - still played basketball Thursday night though as I'm a very quick recoverer!!).
In my previous post I also talked a little about breaking up my training into strength qualities and training them rather then muscles like most players do and movements like I normally do.
Here's how my lower body set set up looks:
Lower Body Days
Hip Flexion paired with Hip Abduction
Glutes
Eccentric Overload
Sprint Starts
Triphasic Training
Foot / Ankle Stiffness
Now after the first week I changed a few things going forward for the next 4 weeks to allow for some better recovery and spread things out a little more.
In this post I wrote about what I did for hip flexion using band hip flexion isometrics and why I did them. I have put these in again to keep improving my seeing phase which has gotten better even after the 6 times I did them in my last phase of training.
I added in some hip abductor work as I have a weaker glute medius on my right side which I think stems from a ankle mobility / foot tripod issue I'm working on too.
For glutes I'm doing barbell hip thrusts 3 times a week and just aiming to increase the weight each session. For some reason I've never really done these for an extended period of time so I haven't gotten any impressive numbers with them yet but they'll be a staple in the in season plan so I'm getting in early.
Now some of you might be wondering what eccentric overload means? Well if I can go back a bit, the more force you can absorb, then the more force you can put out. Think of your muscles and tendons as rubber bands and when you go to jump and you dip down, think of that as pulling the rubber band back. As you transition jump up the leaving the ground, that is you letting go of the rubber band and watching that sucker fly.
Now the harder and more force you pull the rubber band back with, the further it will go once released so if you can absorb a great amount of force then you'll be able to put that force out presenting as great sprinting speed and jumping ability.
For this I'm doing some high frequency swings 4 times a week with moderate load switching to overspeed eccentric swings at the half way mark of the phase (2 - 3 weeks). As a side note I touched a basketball ring off a 2 foot jump last Thursday for the first time ever at 168cms so we'll see if these swings can improve upon that. My reach is about 216cms so with a basketball ring being 3.05m that puts my leap at 89cms or 35.6 inches. Not bad for a 34 and a half year old if I do say so myself.
About a month ago I purchased the Joe Defranco and Jim Smith Speed manual which I've been waiting to be released for a few months now. I'm doing starts 3 - 4 times a week using the progression from that manual.
Lastly I have foot / ankle stiffness which is kind of similar to the eccentric overload stuff but also a lot different. Stiffness in the case of the foot and ankle refers to being able to absorb eccentric forces and to quickly transition into putting that power back out. For instance watch your reserves ruckman or big full forward who's probably a few kilograms overweight try and do a u-turn and note the giant turning circle. Now watch your best midfielder change direction and see how effortless it looks.
What makes it look so easy is that the elite players can contract and relax quicker then anyone else which is why you can watch Ablett and Cotchin at full speed and they just look like they their jogging in the park, even with someone on their hammer.
For my training I aiming to improve the ability of my feet to absorb the force I can put into the ground while sprinting and with minimal deformation of the foot, put the force back out (think of kicking a flat footy versus a pumped up footy). For this I'll be doing straight legged switching lunge jumps to training for foot / ankle stiffness and also the actual joint angles of sprinting 2 a week.
So my week for lower body looks like this:
Monday AM - Gym / PM - Footy Training
Wednesday AM - Gym / PM - Footy Training
Thursday PM - Basketball
Friday PM - Gym
Saturday - Track + Swings + Foot / Calf Stiffness
That's 7 lower body sessions per week of varying intensity so I hop I haven't tried to squeeze too much in but if I feel run down a bit then I can take some stuff out if I need to.
In my next post I'll detail my upper body training for this phase.
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