My Off-Season Training Part 3 - Block 1

When I develop my off and pre-season training program/s, I tend to use short blocks of focus of 2 - 3 max, so boredom doesn't set in and thus training motivation remains on the high end.

I also mix in different length blocks for different training aspects which makes it a "rolling" type of program as some things stay in for 3 sessions before changing and some things stay in for 4 - 6 sessions before changing.

I have 3 different types of training days:

#1 - Lower Body Gym
#2 - Upper Body Gym
#3 - Sprint Day

#1 - LOWER BODY GYM

Block Focus - General Prep for Weck Deadlift + Repeated Speed Fast Twitch Fibre Capacity Work

I am running a Triphasic Training program for the Weck Deadlift which is a deadlift variation developed by the guys at Weck Method so I needed to do some prep work for that to see where my %'s would be for the Triphasic programming.

I'm also running s full program for repeated speed prep developed by Cal Dietz of Triphasic Training with the first block focusing on capacity where I used a band resisted step up exercise:

You simply do an explosive rep every 2secs or so (pretty much continuous up and down alternating legs) for 2 sets of 6 - 9mins. This sets you up for the hypertrophy block to come.

On these days I also continued with my function work described in my last blog.

I trained lower body gym 2/week with the Weck Deadlift being trained to a 5 rep max or so for 4 total sessions, the capacity work was increased 1min per session again being trained for 4 total sessions and the function work has 3 sessions before each exercise changes all throughout my training at this time.

#2 - UPPER BODY GYM

As I've mentioned before my upper body don't have a lot to them and I do them more for something to do in between lower body days more then anything as I have enough size and strength in the upper body so I don't really need to waste too much training energy, resources and time on it.

If you're doing more then 2 session incorporating upper body in the gym per week, then are you really training to improve your footy, or something else?

Also in prep mode for the Triphasic block to come, I was working up to a 5, 4, then 3 rep max each successive session.

I did 4 sessions of this for a 5, 4, 3 and 3 rep max.

The secret here is not to make your eyes bleed on the 5rm day, just get to a 8/10 perceived effort level and leave it at that.

In the next 4 session for 4rm, aim to get a little bit more load on the bar by end of the session but again stay in the 8 - 9/10 rpe area.

For the two remaining 3rm days, go to a 9/10 rpe on the 1st day, again going slightly heavier then the 4rm day then go hell for leather for the last 3rm day.

If you've done it properly, then you should reach a higher load each session.

I was then able to calculate my entire Triphasic Training block from these rep max numbers.

On 50% of these days I also did some 1 x 20 work on some assistance exercises like shrugs, face pulls, curls, etc - 7 exercises all up.

#3 - SPRINT DAYS

I blogged about my baseline testing week last week where I looked at developing a force velocity profile for sprinting so 1/week I will be doing a sled session at my personal speed load.

Just yesterday I completed my 4th session of this and set a PB for 5, 10, 15 and 20m sprint from a crouched start - so far so good!

All up I sprint 165m for this session with most of that resisted.

Next week block 2.