What I'm Doing With My Week Off - Week 1 Training

My league has a week off this weekend from interleague games where I usually use this time to focus on something specific while I don't need to worry about fatigue levels from and for games.

Since I did my left knee in the last game of the 2015 season, it's always lagged a little behind my right in regards to function and performance.

I'm 5 games in plus 3 practice games and like last year, the weakness in the left leg results in some tightness in and around the groins.

When you don't use your glutes as much as you need them to work, or they simply can't work hard enough for long enough, the stress of developing power and force when sprinting, jumping and changing direction is shifted to smaller muscles that are there to assist in those movements, not perform them.

Another little known aspect of muscle/movement imbalances is that this stress being shifted to the smaller muscles means your fatigue faster and you  also require more "output" to make it through training and games, resulting in far grater fatigue.

This fatigue presents as a major stressor in the body and you shift to sympathetic nervous system  dominance which means you never really recover as that is your "on" switch (parasympathetic dominance is your off switch).

So with 11 - 12 full days to train, my focus in that time will be on developing the muscle activation, strength and function of the muscles in and around the hip.

During the off-season I had a bloke from the US doing my programming for me that included a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally do such as a heap of ab work. There may be no correlation but since I;v taken it out, this groin issue has popped up so I'll be reintroducing some of that as well.

I've split my program up into 2 x 5 - 6 day training periods.

Week 1 will be fully gym based to take all stress out of the hip/groin area and no impact.

All exercises for week 1 will be 1 x 20 reps and I'll be repeating the same workout everyday with some wight increases where needed.

1 - Be Activated Warm Up + Banded Glute Exercises

2 - Single Leg Band Hip Extension, Seated Military Press, Semi Supinated Grip Chin Up, Reverse Crunch Flow (4 exercises x 6 reps each)

3 - 2 Leg Prone Off Bench Hip Extension, Barbell Band Floor Bench Press, Barbell Chest Supported Row, Hanging Knee Raise Flow (4 exercises x 6 reps each)

4 - Band Hip Thrust, Band Hamstring Curls, Lying Cable Tricep Extension, Ab Crunch Flow (4 exercises x 6 reps each)

5 - Jefferson Barbell Curl, Front Delt Raise, Side Raise Raise, Cable Hip Flexion

Week 2 will be all outside sled work using various sprint mechanics drills that I'll feature next week.

I assume most tams have a night off training this week so I strongly encourage you to get some extra training in while you can.