So I'm now officially 37 as of about 3 weeks ago and still the oldest on the senior/reserve list at my club.
As I've written about previously my season ended early with a pretty severe hyper-extension of my left knee in the final home and away game that caused me, for the very first time in 29yrs of footy, to miss consecutive games - and finals games no less.
Going out in straight sets as the top team didn't sit well with me either - especially from a spectators point of view!
So my training started way back on August 16th - yes I've been training for 2 months already - and even with this knee that won't go away I've completed 30 sessions with a multitude of home issues happening (death in family, wife and son with hospital stays!!)
Here's a breakdown of what I've been up to:
August - I've always been an excellent "recoverer" and when I did my knee I still had the thought process that I would play again in 2015, whether it be a preliminary or a grand final. I couldn't run but 3 days post injury I was back deadlifting and hip thrusting, even if it was very light relative to my normal numbers. I tried to train the Tuesday before the prelim but couldn't and rules myself out of Saturday that night. The grand final was all I had left. Unfortunately we ran into a team that was the clear 3rd placed team this year (having not beaten the top 2 sides at all during the year) whose senior team had already made it straight through the GF so they dropped 5 players from that team (and would play and win a senior GF the very next week) in the 2's and we got done. Shithouse.
September - so with footy over and my knee still cactus I battled on with a focus on getting my strength back up to pre-season levels. By the end of September I had deadlifted 140kgs for a single and Front Squatted 80kgs for 3 reps. The knee is fine lifting heavy in the gym, it's the jolting on running it doesn't like.
October - Now with all footy completed it was time to introduce aerobic capacity. This would usually be done by 99% of players by doing some 5 - 10km runs but I hate running with 2 good knees, and machine cardio is even more boring so I play basketball with a little sequence I follow. I wear my heart rate monitor to ensure that I staying withing aerobic capacity heart rate ranges to ensure I am getting the training effect I'm actually after. I discuss the importance of heart rate training in the new 2016 Ultimate Footy Training Manual.
November - I'm gonna have to get this knee imaged I think - it's just not going away like I thought it would! I'm 99% there's no damage that needs to much attention but maybe I just need to stay off right off it but I'll get it looked at to make sure - I don't like making guesses and missing training if I don't have to! I've got my strength up so I can take some time off for legs and let them recover without too much un-training and I can probably just focus on some bro-training for a while - as boring as that is!
You can follow my workouts on the main Facebook page for this blog as I'm posting them up each session I do and dolt forget the early bird price for the 2016 Ultimate Footy Training Manual finishes this weekend. Click the Buy Now button up top to purchase.
