A Look at My Training Right Now

Since the start of September I have intermittently posted about the training program I'm following called Triphasic Training. I posted about it's principles here.

Although Triphasic Training outlines a full program for 3, 4, 5 and I think 6 day options, I am doing just the lower body portion that covers 3 days a week and filling the rest of the training for upper body and core on my own. I've actually been emailing one of the authors Ben Peterson and his sister actually plays Aussie Rules over in the states so he actually has a little experience with our local game. He suggested to put all your efforts into the lower body and keep the upper body days sub maximal so that is what I have done.

So as of right now, Wednesday, I have just completed the 2nd session in the 3rd phase of the 2nd block of which there are 10 more sessions left. Block 3 is a straight 5 week phase where the intention is to really carryover the gains made from the 1st 2 blocks into actual on-field performance.

So Monday, Wednesday and Fridays are all lower body day squatting days. Yep squats 3 times a week which sounds horrible, and at times it was (like in 41 degree heat last Friday after the busiest week I've had all year from Christmas to New Years!!) but block 1 is uses an intensity of 80% and above, block 2 uses an intensity of 55 - 80% and block 3 uses an intensity of 25 - 55%.

So you start heavy and the load actually decreases while you use the strength gains from block 1 and attempt to actually transfer them into athletic endeavors such as speed and explosiveness.

For assistance work on lower body days I'm also isolated hip flexor work to improve the swing phase of my sprinting mechanics, isolated glute work because you never do enough glute work...ever.

As part of the Triphasic Training program I am using what they term French Contrasts which incorporate various explosive exercises in case where you were wondering where my explosive work was coming from (not that everyone actually needs explosive work though.)

I have also started some stuff from my Aussie Rules Pre Season Training Manual where on 1 of the lower body days I do the sprints and the repeated agility drills and on another day I do the repeated sprints and tempo running drills.

As for upper body I've pretty much come to the conclusion that only minimal upper body work needs to be done for footy, if you're covering the basics. All that I'm doing is Jim Wendler's 531 for Bench Press and Chin Ups with some rows thrown into the mix as well. Curls? No. Triceps? No. Shoulder Raises? Definitely no. I was doing military press 531 for a bit but I had a shoulder thing happening so I took them out. I'll probably add in some single arm db military presses into the mix with the rows.

Core is trained every session with more advanced variations such as front levers, l sits and some rotational work. These variations are only to be used once you've masters basic stabilisation and motor control then anti rotation and anti extension exercises like I've displayed here.

So at the moment I'm doing 4 sessions a week as I have bit a knee thing happening which has been diagnosed as a foot issue on that side so I'm just holding out on too much of anything else to get through this last block. Footy training and basketball start back up in the last week of January too so it will be all go from then.

I've also read a lot about intermittent fasting in the last year or so. I'm not really gonna give it a run because in it's traditional sense but I might use a principle or too from it. Usually I eat about the same amount of calories each day. Actually I pretty much eat the same meals each day!! So on days I don't train I'll limit to eating only when I need to. On the weekend I pretty much only eat 3 times a day anyway but on weekday non training days I'll also try it and see if I can drop a kg or 2 before my training doubles and then I will not go near it with 2-a-days x 2 - 3 per week.

So that's my training as of right now. I hope you can take something out of it and improve your training program and let me know what you're doing and why your doing it.