Where to Start with Your Pre Season Training

To train means replicate activities to improve on them.

To improve is to have an end result greater then what you started with.

In footy reference to footy I think too players miss the boat on the training portion.

Why?

Insanity.

Surely footy players aren't insane?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Couldn't be any more true.

If you're a player who's fitness lets you down then starting your training the Thursday before round 1 will not cut it.

If you're a player who's kicking is a bit loopy and inaccurate then continuing to kick loopy and inaccurately is only feeding your weakness.

This off and pre season do something about it.

Are you too weak. Get stronger.

Are you too small? Get Bigger.

Are you too slow? Get faster.

Are you too unfit? Get fitter.

Are you injury prone? Get your body right.

Read this blog from start to finish and if you still don't find the answers, then purchase the Off Season Training Manual ($60 - order through Paypal to lange_troy@hotmail.com) and / or the Pre Season Training Manual (order from the Paypal icon on the right hand side of the page) for a step by step guide on how to improve your game for season 2013.

Pre Season Training Manual Contents

First off I have to thank all of you that have purchased the Aussie Rules Training Pre Season Training Manual. It has far surpassed what I thought it would sell this quickly.

Secondly for those who haven't purchased it but sort of want to but want to know more about it, here's the contents of it:

Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Warm Up

Page 3 - Sprints

Page 4 - Sprint Races

Page 5 - Repeated Sprints (8 Week Program)

Page 6 - Repeated Agility (8 Week Program)

Page 7 - Tempo Running (7 Week Program)

Page 8 - Repeated Sprint Endurance (4 Week Program)

Page 9 - Auto Regulation Endurance (4 Week Program)

Page 10 - Other Pre Season Drills and Idea's

Page 12 - Pre Christmas Training (4 Week Program)

Page 14 - Post Christmas January Training (2 Week Program)

Page 15 - February Training (4 Week Program)

Page 16 - March Training (4 Week Program)

There are videos that are included in this program to precisely lay out how each drill is meant to be performed.

This is the exact program that my own football team will use this pre season which is why the length of training programs are what they are but if you start earlier or later then just follow the sequence of the program from month to month.

Also continue to follow the program sequence if you will train right through Christmas.

It has been designed in a way that a full team can use it and individuals so it is the ideal manual for any team coach, fitness coach or player and is the only one on the market (as far as I know - why is AFL training information so limited? Dunno but that's why I do this blog.)

So if you just want something that is all laid for you and you just have to turn up and do it, then this is the right manual for you.

Order from the Paypal link on the right hand side of the page and once notification of payment comes through to my email, I'll email the program right to you.

For $50 bucks it equals out to $1.79 per session! You can't afford not to have it.

5 Things Missing from Your and Your Teams Pre Season Training Program

It's the start of November and with that comes pre season training for every football team in Australia.

In general training for footy at the grassroots is far behind the times with a lot of what's been done in the past still be done today, regardless of it's effectiveness.

I'm sure there's still a team out there somewhere doing the 100 meter sprints x 100 with no focus on quality or speed but just to flog the guts out it's players.

Not a great idea.

#1 - Footy Specific Running

Running the Tan. 3 kilometer Time Trails. 400's. The Beep Test.

What do they really train?

Will running 3.8 or 3kms at a slow to moderate pace be replicated on the football field?

Will run 400m in a straight line all in 1 effort?

Do you start the first quarter off at a walking pace only to ramp up the speed in the last quarter?

I hope not.

Aussie Rules Football has specific running requirements and the above options aren't any of them. That means that each running requirement needs it's own specific training. You can't run the Tan and expect it to make you any better at anything but basically running the Tan, or for 15 - 20 minutes continuously at a slow to moderate pace.

That will leave you with 0 possessions come Saturday.

#2 - Go, Stop and Go Again

This IS the most underrated form of footy fitness by far. The ability to sprint to a contest, contest the ball, get tackled, chase the spilled ball again, tackle an opposition player, get the loose ball and run away with it again is what wins game.

Doing a 100 meter sprint, resting and repeating is not going to help this because with the ability decelerate, stop and go again is crucial, especially in a contested situation.

This obviously needs to be trained through multi directional sprinting, just running one way will leave you gasping for air after 1 effort.

Get better at turning corners 2 or 3 times in a single sprint because you know the next bloke will only have turn in him at most.

#3 - Speed

I think I've posted about this before but there is an element of time in football that no one keeps in mind in that you need to get to the ball or to position first. That means you can't just "get there in the end", you need to get there first to give the best chance of getting the ball.

That means that the need for the speed is pretty much at the very top of the list for football.

I think we all know of the player that didn't make it because he was a step too slow, regardless of his Tan lap time.

#4 - Work Against the Clock

To get better at anything you need to use progressive programming. You can't get around it. You can't just do 10 x 100m sprints at any old pace with the same rest and expect to beat you tan time, get faster and/or lose some weight.

Why?

Because you'll always do 1000m with no change in your training stress.

So what should you do?

Increase the distance per set ? Shit idea because the longer you run, the slower you're running.

Increase the sets with the same distance? No because now your running a little further at the same speed.

What should you do then?

Do more work in the same amount of time or the same amount of work in less time.

#5 - Be Good at All Forms of Running

Piggy backing off point 1, football requires a lot of different "types" of running. There are high requirements for speed, repeated speed, speed endurance, agility and tempo type running.

Do you train any of even 1 of these?

Bonus Tip #6 - This Program

20 Weeks of programming.

All facets of footy fitness taken care of and all laid out for you.

Efficient workouts enabling you to train everything that is required for footy.

Stop pounding the pavement and move into the 21st century.

Order from the Paypal link on the right hand side of this page.

Your Program Sucks Part 4 – While You’re There...

Don’t Go to Failure - If there’s one thing that the muscle mags have taught us it’s...opps, already said that. Anyway, do you know the line ‘failure is not an option”? Well you should think of this more often when you’re training. The heavier the load you use, the further away from failure you should stay or at least less often through very carefully planned programming. It’s fine to go to failure on delt raises and curls, but leave some reps in the tanks for deads, squats and benches. Oh, and only go to failure once in your workout, not for every curl set you do.

Deadlifts keep 2 – 3 Reps in the Tank
Squats keep 1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Bench Press keep 1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Military Press keep  1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Isolation and Arm Exercises you can go to failure once per workout per muscle

How to Prioritise – This is quick and simple. List out all of the muscles, movements or qualities you train then prioritise them with a 1, 2 or 3 into what you need to do the most (note: not what you WANT). Put all of the 1’s in first because they are your greatest priority, then the 2’s then slide the 3’s in where they can go. You can’t improve everything all the time so it’s best to bring up 2 or 3 areas at one time, then move them to a maintenance phase and bring something else up and so on.

Phase 1

Hip Dominant with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Quad Dominant with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 – 3/week
Horizontal Press with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 – 3/week
Vertical Press with a priority score of 3 so a frequency 1 – 2/week
Horizontal Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Vertical Pull with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week
Core with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week

Phase 2


Hip Dominant with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week
Quad Dominant with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 - 4/week
Horizontal Press with a priority score of 3 so a frequency of 1 - 2/week
Vertical Press with a priority score of 2 so a frequency 2 - 3/week
Horizontal Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Vertical Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 - 4/week
Core with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week


Bringing Up a Lagging Bodypart – it’s sad to see but there’s still plenty of gym goers and even PT’s that use bodypart splits and I don’t know why. Unless the goal is bodybuilding then it makes no sense. Do biceps require the same amount of training time and rest as the quads? I wouldn’t have thought so. Bodypart splits aren’t the end of the world and really if you can’t get by on an upper/lower split at the most, then you’re doing it wrong and all that those entire specific muscle days end up doing is building up more fatigue from all the endless sets of shitty exercises you do to fill in each session. That being said you’ve got to be flexible with your split or even you’re days.

If you need want to bring up your chest (a novice idea, hey?) then increasing from 20 sets in your Monday workout to 25 sets probably won’t get the job done because if you’ve already done 20 sets, and close to 200 reps then you’re flogging a dead horse. What you need to do is train chest more often which makes perfect sense because now you can let it rest. Recuperate then hit it hard again in 3 to 4 days time. This will allow a greater weight to be used and yes I do know that it’s not all about the weight you use in the quest to get big, but rather the tension you can achieve, a db bench press performed with perfect tension at 50kgs will increase a muscle far more then the same thing done at 40kgs. It’s not going to interrupt your sleep if you have to do 5 – 10mins of extra chest work on your leg day (by the way are you doing one of those?).

Multiple Stress Angles – if you are going to go the bodypart split, although I’ve talked you out of it, then think long and hard about how you stress whatever muscle you’re working. So for a bicep day you might do bb curls, db curls and preacher curls but what is the difference between each exercise? You can only flex the elbow one way so you need to alter this a little. Mix up your types of contractions through your workout and/or your training week for optimal gains.

Here's a short list of different ways to do a bicep curl and a sample exercise for each:

Free Weights - DB / BB Curl
Cables - 1 Arm / 2 Arm Curl
Bands - 1 Arm / 2 Arm Curl
Eccentric Focus - 5 – 10sec Eccentric Contraction
Isometric Focus - 3 – 5sec Isometric Contraction
Concentric Focus - Explosive Concentric Contraction
Fast Tempo - Speed Reps Chad Waterbury Style
Stretch Position - DB Incline Curl
Contracted Position - High Cable Curl

Programming Movement Patterns - much like bodypart splits, determining your exercise selection by muscle groups also doesn’t make much sense, mainly because it overlaps into using other muscles that you don’t intend to hit with a “tricep” exercise. What ends up happening here is that your accessory muscles actually end up doing more work than they can recover from.

Below shows the muscle being trained, the exercise being used, the sets and rep scheme for each exercise, the total volume for each exercise and lastly the accessory muscles used for each exercise.

Chest: Bench Press 3 x 10 = 30 Reps (Triceps)
Chest: Incline Press 3 x 10 = 30 Reps (Triceps)
Chest: Crossovers 3 x 20 = 60 Reps (Anterior Deltoids)
Triceps: Skullcrushers 3 x 12 = 36 Reps
Triceps: Pushdowns 3 x 15 = 45 Reps

In the table above chest is the main focus of the session which receives 120 total reps for the session. If we take our attention to the tricep exercises it has a total volume of 101 for its own specific exercises. This is not a true indication because if you look at the accessory muscles used in the chest exercises, 2 of them involve the triceps so now you have another 60 reps for triceps for a rep total of 161 and your chest day has really turned into a tricep day.

A better idea is to program your exercises to train movement patterns.

Hip Dominant - Deadlift Variations
Quad Dominant - Squat Variations
Single Leg - Step Up / Lunge Variations
Horizontal Push - Bench Press / Push Up Variations
Horizontal Pull - Rowing Variations
Vertical Push - Military Press Variations
Vertical Pull - Chin / Pull Up / Pulldown Variations
Glute Activation - Isolated Hip Extension Variations
Scapula Stability - Push Up / Horizontal Pull / Horizontal Pull Variations
Core Stabilisation - Prone Position Exercises
Core Anti Rotation - Pallof Press Variations
Core Anti Extension - Roll Out Variations
Upper / Mid Back - Face Pulls / Shrug Variations

Learn the Difference Between Fatigue and Intensity – these are nowhere near the same thing. Intensity refers to the load you’re using in accordance with your repetition maximum. Fatigue is the breakdown of the muscle and it’s energy reserves during training. Do not confuse the two although most do. Some will say “I increased the intensity today by running for an extra 5mins” or “I increased intensity by dropping the wt and doing more reps” which is not correct. They induced a lot more fatigue but at a lower intensity. To increase the intensity of your workouts you need to increase the weight you lift or the amount of times you lift a specific weight over time. For cardio you need to do more work in the same amount of time or the same amount of work in less time. Yes you will get more fatigued doing both of these, but above all you’ll have increased your intensity and work output, thus the demands on the body and all of a sudden you’ve sparked some new muscle growth or fat loss.

Program Balance (or Imbalance) – as a shift in program design towards “functional” training (I hate that term) the concepts of equalling up push and pull movements for the upper and lower body has been popular. Unfortunately not many people have moved with the times and progressed in that time. When you take a closer look at it simply doing 2 exercises for push and then 2 for pull doesn’t add up most of the time either. You need to take into account total volume (sets x reps) and total load (load x reps).

Old Option Exercise Total Volume / Load Training Total
Push Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Push Incline Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 60kgs = 1800kgs total training load so 4200kgs for chest

Pull Bent Row 3 x 10 @ 40kgs = 1200kgs total training load
Pull Rear Delt Raise 3 x 15 @ 10kgs = 450kgs total training load so 1650kgs for back

As you can see, when you take a closer look at the entirety of what’s going on you’ll see that you’re actually doing almost 3 x push training then pull training. For 99% of us out there we actually need less push then pull because of our already kyphotic postures so this is not going to work. If you are imbalanced then you’ll need an imbalanced program, not a balanced one because even if we still get our pull training up to the 4200kgs that push is, you’ll have evened up the immediate training effect, but you will not have gotten on top of your past training mishaps. So you might need something like this:

Push Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Push Incline Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 60kgs = 1800kgs total training load so 4200kgs for chest

Pull Bent Row 3 x 10 @ 40kgs = 1200kgs total training load
Pull Rear Delt Raise 3 x 15 @ 10kgs = 450kgs total training load
Pull DB Chest Supported Row 3 x 10 @ 20kgs = 600kgs total training load
Pull Seated Row 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Pull Cable Scarecrow 3 x 15 @ 30kgs = 1350kgs total training load so 6000kgs for back

So with this new set up you can now start to beat that kyphosis down and straighten yourself a bit. Another tid bit is that lat pulldowns do not even out kyphosis as they attach on the humerus so they are actually internal rotators which will exacerbate your kyphosis, not remedy it so if they are somewhere in the program then you’ll need even more correct pull work (external rotation).

Warm Up Properly – the pyramid system has been around almost as long as the pyramids themselves and usually involved something like a set of 15, 12, 10, 8 then a top set of 6 or so which is fine except you’ve already done 45 reps before reaching your money set and most gym goers go far too hard during their warm ups so if you’re aiming for a top set of 6 reps, try warming up with 6 reps or less, there’s no real need to go higher unless you’re top end set if 3 or less.

For a top end set of 3 or less reps then do warm up sets of 5,4, 3 and 3
For a top end set of 4 - 6 reps then do warm up sets of 6,5 and 4
For a top end set of 7 - 10 reps then do warm up sets of 5,5, and 5
For a top end set of 10 or more reps then do warm up sets of 8 and 8

Also for the benefit of your joints it’s definitely a wise move to use some myofascial release via a tennis and foam roller as well as some joint mobilisation and muscle activation for the muscles you’re about to train for that session as well anything that causes you issues (daily).

Match Exercises with Sets and Reps – there is no actual rule to this but generally some exercises fit better rep ranges then others. Taking deadlifts for example, it puts the body under the most stress out of any exercise you can do in the gym just about so you don’t want to be building up a lot fatigue from doing 100 reps (10 x 10 anyone?) of them first up in your workout then having to try and function afterwards. A good way to go is to use deadlifts in a traditional strength sense then use a less demanding exercise that trains the same muscles as your hypertrophy builder.

Hip Hinge Strength - Deadlifts / Hypertrophy - Romanian Deadlifts, Hip Thrusts
Quad Dominant Strength - Back Squats Front Squats / Hypertrophy - Single Leg Variations, Goblet Squats
Horizontal Push Strength - Bench Press / Hypertrophy - DB Bench Press Variations, Push Ups, Dips
Horizontal Pull Strength -Bent Row / Hypertrophy - DB Row, Cable Row, 1 Arm Row Variations, Inverted Rows
Vertical Push Strength -Military Press / Hypertrophy - DB Military Press Variations, 1 Arm Press Variations
Vertical Pull Strength -Weighted Chin Ups, Weighted Pull Ups / Hypertrophy - Chin Ups, Pull Ups, Lat Pulldowns

How to Design a Program Template – Shit I love templates, I really do. They just make stuff easy and time efficient and you’ll never really need to stray much from it once you tweaked it enough to suit your training, just plug the exercises in off you go. Now that you have all of this juicy information I’ve given you your very own template should be well on its way. If you’re still a bit confused then try this step by step process which involves a few things that we’ve already touched on.

1. Choose your main goal (priority 1)
2. Choose what total volume will achieve that goal (strength, hypertrophy, endurance etc)
3. Choose what sets and reps your total volume will be broken up into
4. Choose what exercise will be of the most benefit

No, you don’t choose exercises first because an exercise doesn’t provide the training effect, the loading and volume of it does.

So that's it for the "Your Program Sucks" series. There's a fair bit in all of this (5000+ words I think) so if you need to read some it s few times to really "get it" then do so and as always shoot me through any questions you have on any of this.

Your Program Sucks Part 3 - Exercise Selection

Mixing It Up is a Shit Idea – if muscle mags have taught us anything it’s how to not make any progress so we’ll keep buying them and one thing they always say is this. When you mix it up all the time you’ll get nowhere (unless you’re getting “assistance”, then it doesn’t matter what you do).

When you start a new exercise you’ll see a pretty rapid increase in strength which is your nervous system learning the movement and becoming more efficient at it. Now what people get disappointed at is that they may have increased the weight for 6 weeks in a row but I’m not seeing any size gains yet so they’ll do something else instead. In fact you are now about to hit the getting big part which is what you’re training for in the first place (I assume). Once the nervous system recognises ever increasing stress put on a muscle and it realises that it can’t handle all of that stress at it’s current size, only then will it give the OK for the muscle to increase in size. Unfortunately you’ve now swapped those squats for leg extensions and you still look like needle leg man.

Justification – the most important factor in your exercise selection is the justification of using that
particular exercise. The questions you need to ask are:

• Does this exercise fit the client?
• Can the client perform it safely and correctly?
• Can I get the same outcome with another exercise?
• How can I modify the exercise the client?

I love deadlifts and I have all my clients do them but I also have 5 or 6 variations in my arsenal because not everyone can pull 100kgs from the floor. By modifying the height that you have your clients lift from, they too can perform deadlifts and get most of the benefits of them. In the end I’m training a hip hinge, not a deadlift so it doesn’t matter what variation I go with so long as it teaches the client to hip hinge correctly.

By the way those deadlifts where you start standing like a romanian deadlift but you simply drop your knees forwards keeping your torso upright are moronic. Get a better teacher, preferably not the one from your 6 week PT course.

Weak to Strong Exercise Progression – I have a progression for each movement pattern pretty much set in stone that I follow with my clients of which I will go into detail about in the next few points. I don’t really like trisets in the way they are performed traditionally. Just throwing 3 or 4 exercises together because they train the same muscle is a little haphazard for me so good way to go is to use exercises that train the same movement pattern but order them in the order of mechanical advantage. What I mean is that some variations of the same movement pattern are easier and allow for more weight to be used than others. So you would start your tri or giant set with the hardest variation and finish with the easiest.

For the lower body a hip hinge would look like this - single leg deadlift, romanian deadlift, sumo deadlift, rack pull

For the upper body a shoulder press would look like this - db military press, 2 db military press, 2 db push press, 1 arm db military press, 1 arm db push press

Regression / Progression – when plugging in your exercises for your programs, it is crucial that you also have a regression and a progression for your staple exercise in case you need it, especially when training small groups as not everyone will have equal abilities.

For a floor push up your regression would be to elevate the hands to decrease the amount of bodyweight required to lift and a progression would be to elevate the feet which increases the bodyweight you're required to lift against a regular floor push up.

For an inverted row your regression be similar to the push up where you'd have a higher setting for the bar or handles and a lower setting for a progression so you're almost lying flat against the floor.

For the deadlift your staple lift is from the floor with your regression being pulling from a mid shin to knee height setting in a squat rack to progressing to deficit deadlifts where you stand on a 2 - 3" platform to increase the range of motion you lift over.

Lastly for splits squats you'd progress to step ups as they require no eccentric contraction and progress to bulgarian split squats.

Progressing Exercises through Increasing Stability / Leverage Demands – Please do not think that this involves bosu balls or dura discs because I’d rather plant my own DNA at a scene of a crime then have people stand on them while they juggle puppies. What I refer to when I say increase stability demands is to actually stability adding in a dynamic component. This works best with single leg training and core training.

For single leg the progression would go step ups, split squats, reverse lunges, walking lunge and dynamic lunges.

For lumbar stabilisation you'd use a stability hold, add on hand taps, add on toe taps, add on a lateral shuffle and then repeat the sequence through from a push up position.

Exercise Selection and Rep Range Relationship – I believe that certain exercises suit specific rep ranges, not all of them, but most of them. Let’s take a single leg exercise for example. I bet we’ve all seen a lunge prescribed in a program for something 4 x 15 reps each leg with a 211 tempo with 90secs rest between sets. It pretty much looks like we’ve got all bases covered there but let’s look a bit closer. At 15 reps per leg, or 30 in total, at a tempo that works out to be 4 seconds per rep. This means that each set will take 2 minutes to complete. If you couple that with 90secs rest and the entire exercise will take over 10 minutes of training time. A client paying big money probably doesn’t want 15% of their hour dedicated to lunges and nor should they. Taking into account the aerobic capacity needed to perform a decent set of lunges and the muscular endurance required to maintain form during the entire set also means that anything over 8 reps is probably not the way to go. 

I don’t do anything over 8 reps for deadlifts and will very rarely go over 5 reps per set. If I want a hypertrophy effect then I’ll move to a hip thrust or single leg variation for extra volume. For squats I’ll do the same, low reps for the squats and higher reps for a single leg variation. For bench and military press we’d do the traditional exercise for low reps and then a db or bodyweight exercise for higher reps. Above all it’s just safe practice. So use the staple exercise for a movement pattern for low reps as it will let you load it up the most and then use an easier variation for higher reps.

Your Program Sucks Part 2 – Rep Selection

Rep Goal - Set a rep total with a specific load to suit your goal and do as many sets as you need to reach it more so then ‘I have to get 3 sets of 3 or I’ll die in my sleep tonight” even though the last set
had your spleen shooting out the sides of your undies.

Strength: 5 - 15 Reps Per Exercise/Movement
Hypertrophy: 25 - 50 Reps Per Exercise/Movement

Density Training Charles Staley Style – by either setting up a circuit, a pairing or however you want to do it, you have 2 options. Option 1 is that you can do the same amount of work in less time each successive workout, or you can go with option 2 which is to do more work in the same amount of time each successive workout. I use these with my clients all the time because it ensures that eventually, they’ll train as hard as I want them to.

Option 1
Exercises + Reps/Sets - Jump Squats 3 x 10 / Push Ups 3 x 12 / Inverted Rows 3 x 15 / Prowler Sprints 3 x up and back

Week 1 - 4min35secs
Week 2 - 4mins 07secs
Week 3 - 3mins53secs
Week 4 - 3mins 46secs

In option 2, you would set the stop watch for a time limit that stays the same each week. You pop some exercises at the start and that also stays the same. The kicker exercise is the last one, in this case the prowler. Everything else stays the same so it’s all about getting further with the prowler each successive workout.

Option 2
Exercises + Sets / Reps -  Jump Squats 2 x 10 / Push Ups 2 x 10 / Inverted Rows 2 x 10 / Prowler Sprints x Max 3 laps

Week 1 - 3 Laps
Week 2 - 3.5 Laps
Week 3 - 4 Laps
Week 4 - 4.5 Laps

Alternatively you can go the traditional route and just pair 2 exercises together and use either option
too.

Exercise Progression Rate – some exercises will progress for weeks, months or in the case of deadlifts and squats, maybe years. Other exercises, especially light weight exercises like side and rear delt exercises will have about 4 weeks of progression through increasing weight and an increase in reps can often mean a decrease in technique which for small muscles is crucial. In this you can do 2 weeks of the same weight, sets and reps before increasing anything. Then come week 3 you can change what you want but only make it 1 variable so that you get a longer progression period.

So a Side Lateral Raise might look like this:

Week 1 - 3 x 10 @ 10kgs 
Week 2 - 3 x 10 @ 10kgs 
Week 3 - 3 x 12 @ 10kgs 
Week 4 - 3 x 12 @ 10kgs 
Week 5 - 3 x 10 @ 12.5kgs

And just to show how a different exercise, in this case a Rear Delt Raise, can be progressed using the same principles but with a different method:

Week 1 - 3 x 10 @ 5kgs 
Week 2 - 3 x 10 @ 5kgs 
Week 3 - 3 x 8 @ 7.5kgs 
Week 4 - 3 x 8 @ 7.5kgs 
Week 5 - 3 x 10 @ 7.5kgs

Rep Speed Chad Waterbury Style – piggy backing off the rep goal point above, this takes a step further where set your rep goal and the weight you’ll use but then you will stop each set once your rep speed slows down from 1 rep to the next which enables to recruit the high threshold motor units without killing yourself with a load of 85% or higher every time you train (although I do!!). This ensures that your successive sets are as good as your first so you’ll have a focus on quality, not quantity, of training.

Sets for Time – not a huge of fan of how this is traditionally done like do push ups for a minute, rest and do them again. A better way to go is to count how many reps you do in your given time frame and try and beat it each week. You can go the other way and time how long it takes to do say 8 reps with a progressive weight each week but then you’ll need a stop watch and gets a little nitpicky (and I’m nitpicky enough already).

Don't forget the Aussie Rules Training Pre Season Training program to be released in the week or 2, more information here.

And only 73 more view til 35,000!!!