In-Season Training Part 5 - Train Monday Instead of Tuesday?

As most of you know I don't train with my tram because of work commitments which means I'm free to schedule how I like throughout the week.

Earlier this week I posted about my weekly set up to date which in a  nutshell looked like this but bear in mind I'm 37 and a half so my recovery rate is no where what it was 10 years ago:

Saturday - Game

Sunday - Rest day but do some breathing and stretching work to facilitate recovery

Monday - Easy active recovery day

Tuesday - Harder but still easy recovery day

Wednesday - My 'High' day of training for the week where I'll sprint

Thursday - An easy to medium day which is upper body power in the gym

Friday - Lower body potentiation day for tomorrow's game

My HRV tested best on Tuesday but instead of doing my 'High" day earlier I stuck to the plan but in future if I record a god HRV on a Tuesday I'll do my high day then.

Anyway as you can see my schedule isn't anywhere near what yours probably is with team training on a Tuesday and Thursday.

So what I'll discuss today is the pro's and con's of training Monday or Tuesday as your first team training session of the week.

As a little side note I think most AFL teams do their main session on a Wednesday. Don't quote me on that but I've players and coaches say this in various interviews and besides the teams need to be in by Thursday so they need to see how players pull up from the main session to see who is right to be picked.

Pro's of Training Monday

• Provides more time to train other "stuff" during the week on your own
• Ensures that the coach can implement a proper recovery plan which I class as more important then actual training during the season, of which a Monday session could be based on 
• More time between training sessions and thus, better recovery from training
• If you train again on the Wednesday then you have more time between training and game time ensuring players are fully rested and ready for game day
• Players might "behave" better on the weekend if they know training is on Monday

Cons of Training Monday

• Less time between games and training
• If doing your 2nd team training session on Thursday then it makes it hard do longer duration, intense training but do you need a lot of this during the season?
• You might be relying on players do some training on their own between sessions that as a coach you might feel "needs" to be done and would want to make sure is done.
• More time between games and training means some players might lose "touch" with that long between handing a football 
• More time between games could also have a negative affect on how you mentally prepare for game day where at the moment once Thursday comes around it's "footy time" to 5pm Saturday

That's just a few off the top of my head and I'll add to this as I think of them but please chime in with your own pro's and con's of using this set up on our Facebook page.

A lot of this comes down to player commitment and trust but all training does. Training Tuesday and Thursday means that are trusting players to do their own recovery work so that they are 100% for Tuesday but every night there's still blokes who don't train for whatever reason.

I would love for a team to try this out, if even just for a month and with a little data collected during this time, see how it ends up looking against the traditional model. If you;re a coach and would like to chat about this some more then let me know!