In-Season Part 4 - My Game to Game Weekly Lay Out

Yesterday I posted about my post game recovery to be 100% for round 1 this Saturday.

Today I'll let you in on how I'll schedule my week from game to game (Saturday to Saturday).

Saturday Game Finishes at 2pm

• Protein shake immediately after game
• Decent lunch from canteen, usually a roast meat roll or salad roll + sports drink
• 750ml water throughout the afternoon
• 6 weetbix, 400ml milk and sugar once I got home
• Hot bath with Epson Salts 
• 4 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 pieces of toast and a bowl of veggies
• Another 750ml water
• Relaxed on the couch from 7pm til bedtime by midnight

Sunday

• 8hrs sleep
• A slow walk with the family to the garden park where I did a very easy core and stretching workout on the grass to facilitate recovery some more - 15mins tops
• Back on the couch from 3:30 til bedtime at 10:30
• All meals were classed as 'pass" meals so no fast food, chocolate, pastries or anything.

Monday

• 6.5hrs sleep or so s I start at 6am at the studio but I need to get to bed earlier then I have been as 30mins extra a night = 3 - 4hrs extra sleep, and thus recovery time, per week.
• Recovery based aerobic session in the park later this afternoon staying between 120 - 150 beats per minute for about 20mins to again facilitate recovery. Even though my HRV reading was excellent (8.1 up from 6.3 yesterday - reading is the image above), my resting heart rate was still in the low 60's this morning so I need some aerobic training to let the body know it can go into rest mode. This will be classed as a low day in the high / low training system.
• All meals will be clean again today as I want to drop about 5kgs in the next 5 - 8 weeks to ease the stress of the knee.

Tuesday

• I'm attempting an aerobic capacity session using only upper body exercises tomorrow which I'm not sure how it will go as I find it hard to get my heart rate up with upper body exercises alone. I've tried to set it up so all exercises require some, but not great, stability which will increase muscle use and thus energy expenditure. I'll also be mixing in some upper body cardio stuff to keep the heart rate ticking over so we'll see how we go with this one. Hopefully I can stretch this out to 30mins at 130 - 150 beats per minute. Again this will be classed as a low day.

Wednesday

• I've put Wednesday as my high day for training where I'll do the most demanding stuff of the week and it;s where recovery from last weeks game finishes and preparation for the next game begins. I'll be doing front squats in the gym and sprints in the park on this day, flying sprints for max velocity specifically. You'll rarely, if ever, hit your 100% max velocity speed in a game so to increase your operational output (game running) you still need to improve your mechanical output (straight line sprinting).

Thursday

• Upper body power workout where it's all quality over quantity.

Friday

• Lower body potentiation power day for low volume but high intensity. I used this session last week but then had a full day in the hospital with the wife which wiped me out (with a 5yr old in tow) and I was cooked by half time Saturday. I'm not sure if the potentiation session had anything to do with it as that session felt great but I';ll cut the volume down for it this week and see how it goes.
• Hopefully get myself to bed straight after the footy finishes at 10:15ish, listen to the Triple M rub in bed and lights off at 11:30ish.

The aim is for 90% of all meals to be classes as "clean" to help with fat loss going forward and to ensure the body is being fueled with the right stuff for optimal performance.

So that's what I have laid out for this week but it's always subject to change (as it should be during the season) depending on my HRV and resting heart rate readings.