Month 3, Week 1

We're almost 1/2 way through the 5 months and the training is starting to show some results.

This appeared on the Herald-Sun website today:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/weapon-of-mass-destruction-high-performance-guru-dean-robinson/story-e6frf9jf-1226217676548

It's good to see some good old fashioned weight work being done in the AFL. I think that getting your body strong and resilient enough to get through a 9 month season is JUST AS important then being able to run the tan in sub 10 minutes.

For me personally I can't run distance for shit and even in my late teens and early 20's when I did run for footy, within a 3km run I'd have a break of some sort at about the 2km mark and then I'd burst home. Now that I'm 33, I basically focus on being strong, explosive and most important, injury free. So while other 33 year olds are playing forward pocket and icing every joint in the body post game, I'm playing center half back at 168cms while playing an offensive half back flanker type game and doing gym training on a Sunday during the season.

Being strong and conditioning my muscles for high intensity exercise has definitely allowed me to do this at my age. Running for 6 months will not. It will get you fit but it will also play havoc with your joints and the limited range of motion that running has, overloads the small amount of muscles actually doing work and all of a sudden you're struck down in April with shin splints, plantar fasciitis and osteo pubis.

You can actually get a solid aerobic fitness base pretty quickly with a concentrated block of aerobic type training, so I don't think you need to start running marathons in October.

Get fit to run, don't run to get fit.

With pre season training starting I've made a few scheduling changes to the program to cater for the extra training volume:

1 - Tuesday is now assistance exercise night where we'll do most of our hypertrophy based training which is also being done a lower volume because this night is sandwiched between Monday and Wednesday night training so we don't need or want to go overboard and take away from either training mode.

2 - Thursday is now max effort night for upper and lower body.

3 - Friday is now performance night where we really focus on acceleration with the contrast sprints in and outside.

I only have vision of Tuesday night as I forgot the camera Thursday and then it was full on Friday!

If you've got any questions on anything that we're doing during the program (why are we doing a particular exercise, technique questions etc) then please feel free to fire them through.