Last week we covered training residuals, lower leg stiffness, the big toe, consolidation of stressors and overspeed eccentrics so lets finish this list off.
Be Activated - this isn't a new thing by any means but the way this is done is. It's the brain child of an ex-pysio from South Africa named Douglas Heel. I caught onto this about this time last year and then read as much as I could on it (there's not a lot to go on really) and then purchased his DVD set which made a lot of things clearer. He came to Australia earlier this year bit for some reason didn't make it to Melbourne so I missed out on seeing him in person which as I've been told by other 'activators" is far better then the DVD's on their own. It refers to activating the body through a specific series of muscle activation points. This muscle activation can wake up the body and free it from defensive postures brought on by physical and emotional stress. For example when the body is stressed in anyway, breathing becomes shallower and your posture changes (hunched over). This effects your breathing efficiency as now your breathing has moved from being performed by your diaphragm to your chest, shoulders and neck. The all important diaphragm is the center of the body and is directly connected to the psoas. This crucial because our body has 2 main functions it will do above all else - it will breath (hopefully through the diaphragm) and will move (hopefully through hip flexion which is the action of the psoas). If these 2 area's can not do their jobs then the body will find another, but less optimal way to do this. This results in the aforementioned stress and tiredness mentioned above. This can also eliminate the need for stretching as an activated muscles is a long and strong muscle.
Rate of Perceived Exertion - RPE has been around for a while and is used to gauge your personal effort level for certain things but it's now being used for training. % based programs (3 x 5 @ 75% for example) doesn't take into account the daily levels of fatigue you have which means that 75% can be 65% on your great days but 85% on your not so great days. Using RPE can ensure that you are training at the level you want to, respective of the state of your training readiness for that particular day. So instead of using % based programs, try using the REP scale. An RPE of 10/10 is a single-max-grinding rep. An RPE of 9/10 is heavy but leaving 1 rep in the tank. An RPE of 8/10 is pretty heavy but leaving 2 reps in the tank. An RPE of 7/10 is heavy-ish with 3 reps left in the tank. So you can plan your week with a mix of easy, moderate and hard days based on RPE. Start practicing now as this can take a bit of trial and error to get right.
Heart Rate Variability - I posted about this and the way I do it earlier this year but it works in conjunction with RPE a fair bit. So immediately upon waking you test your daily HRV which tells you your readiness to train on that particular day. As I said above, the same weight can feel different on different days depending how well you recovered from your previous session and/or lifestyle habits. If you've got a max strength day planned but you feel lethargic and can barely get yourself out of bed then that 90% is gonna feel like 120% and you won't even move it an inch, which can send your recovery back even further. Once you get a handle on your HRV and get an idea of where it should be when you do everything right, then you can assign an RPE to the different results you get. So if you get a HRV score better then you're average or baseline, then that's gonna be a good day to hit a 9 or 10 RPE. If it's below your average HRV then you'll need to play around in 6 - 8 RPE range.
Energy Systems - you know how badly some blokes work out at the gym with 3 chest and arm days? Well I think there are footy players and coaches training just as bad, if not worse, in regards to energy systems training. In a nut shell your main goal should be to improve speed. AFL players do the same that we all do, but faster. Once you improve your speed then you want to be able to use it in a game repeatedly with as little speed fatigue drop off as possible. Now most blokes will think straight away 'let's do 10 x 100m sprints with no rest.' WRONG! For starters 100m sprints are game specifically at all as you'll never run as fast as you can for 100m in a game of footy - EVER! Secondly you might be fast for the first 100m sprint but you won't be for the others so you've trained speed for 12 - 15secs then nothing but fatigue build up from then on. Surely I don't need to tell you that the biggest performance killer is fatigue. You're next port of call is to train your aerobic system to improve your recovery between bouts of speed. So you wanna train short and fast or long and slow. Training in the middle is too slow to gain speed gains from but too fast to use oxygen exclusively for energy. It also builds up the greatest fatigue which means you can't actually do it for often or for very long before recovery becomes a huge issue.
UPDATE - I have used the "be activated' protocol pretty much everyday for the last year. In fact my warm up game days is 5 - 10mins of this and then I'm out on the ground for my active warm up. I've never been a huge stretcher anyway and have never suffered a soft tissue in my life so getting rid of that bit didn't tear me up too much!
I'll be using RPE's during the season this year in accordance with my HRV, no doubt. It's all about Saturday and if you've done the work in the months prior, then you should only have to do the minimum required during the season.
For ES I should add that there is a place for lactic work and it is a requirement of footy thus it does need to be trained but if you aren't already fast, don't have an adequate aerobic energy system for recovery purposes and have more then 3 - 4 weeks before you're first practice game then leave "training in the middle" for skill and drill work.
