5 Things You Don't Know About In-Season Training

I assume most of us are getting the practice games on either currently or in the next couple of weeks which means the actual season is very close and with that comes the shift of your training from your pre-season model to your in-season model...although not too many teams have one!

Because of the requirement to be 100% every Saturday come game time, there are specific things that need to be taken into account.

1 - Goals of In-Season Training

The goals of in-season training is not only to get ready for Saturday game time but also to build on, or at least maintain the improvements gained from your off and pre-season training.

Above all, your main goal is to stay injury free. We can't predict or protect against collision injuries but you can and should be able to avoid non-contact and soft tissue injuries. A good idea is to measure your range of motion throughout your notorious tight joints/muscles prior to the season starting and then maintain that range of motion throughout the season. As soon as the range of motion starts decreasing then it's a big sign that you're overloading that area in some capacity which will ultimately lead to an overuse issue like OP.

On the track you should aim to maintain your acceleration, max velocity and both aerobic and anaerobic capacities.

In the gym you should aim to maintain strength and body weight.

At a bare minimum, stay within 10% of your off/pre-season personal bests.

2 - Auto Regulation

Auto regulation refers to regulating your training to fit your current neurological state. It's fair to say that you'll have greater training intensity potential on a Tuesday then a Sunday but fr those of us who like to train more then just Tuesday and Thursdays on the track, you can only build up so much stress before lack of recovery gets the better of you.

In the real world this means on a Monday you might head to the gym for your main workout of the week but you don't want to go so hard that it affects the other training sessions, and potentially the following game, later on in the week.

So if you have squats on the agenda for example then you want to set some form of baseline of when to call it quits. You don't want to do too much to hinder recovery but you don't want to do too little and under train either.

You'll have good and bad days during the season so you want to take full advantage of the good days but do the bare minimum on the bad days.

A few ways you can auto regulate is to work up to a certain rep number with progressive weight, work up to a certain weight and do a number reps stopping the set once you hit a certain point such as decreased velocity, a change in technique etc.

3 - Neural State Testing

On the back of auto regulation is neural state testing which you can use to break things down even better. It involves performing a neural test at various times during your training to auto regulate your session. So a sample exercise might be the low squat sprint exercise.

So you'd this exercise and over a period of time you'd find your average of reps you can perform in 10secs. Once you enter the gym then you'd do this before and after your warm up then also between sets of your main lift for that day. Once you drop below 90 - 95% of your reps average then stop the main lift right there as the decreased output tells you that nervous system fatigue has started to set in so you'd better cal it a day. Finish off with some low intensity accessory work and head home. You're much better off doing less and staying fresh then too much, especially during the season.

4 - Training Residuals

Even though this point 4, in my opinion this is the most important part of this post, and in-season training programming.

During the off and pre-season we have all the time and resources (energy) to train many qualities at once, the stress of a weekly game far greater then anything you'll do during this time so it leaves plenty of energy to cater to other qualities.

Training residuals is a refers to how long a specific strength and fitness quality stays with you and how frequently it needs to be trained to be maintained.

For example aerobic endurance will stay at certain level for 30 days with an over flow of 5 days either side of that (25 - 35 days). What this means is that for all you blokes who bang out 10km runs on a Monday can cut this to once a month and use that time to work on more glaring weaknesses.

By using these training residuals you can easily set up your in-season training program because you know when something will need to be trained and you just plug it in.

Remember it's the off/pre-season, you don't have the time or resources to train everything!

5 - Exercise Selection

This one is easy - try to limit the amount of new exercises you introduce to your training program. New exercises means you have a much lower tolerance to the movement meaning soreness. You get sore enough from a game let alone from your training which can affect your natural mechanics which could lead to injury.

You might have noticed my new paypal option just under the main banner...yeah I know you did! Well that's the link you need to click on if you want me to do all of your programming for you. I've already sent this out to my list and have had a pretty good response and with only 25 spots available right now, I expect these to fill up pretty quickly - my list is 10 full pages of email addresses I've complied since I started the blog.

If you're interested then drop me an email at aussierulestraining@gmail.com.