What this refers to is how you apply stress to the body over a long period of time.
Footy has a requirement to train to probably more aspects of physical fitness then any other sport in some shape or form, during a 12 month period which can make it hard to fit everything in, thus leaving what I call "performance gaps" in your game.
A lot of players are still yet to train speed correctly and thus have a performance gap of breakaway and top end speed during games.
If you don't train it then I really can't see why you;d expect to just display a physical aspect you never have before just because "you're trying to".
In the coming weeks we'll all see blokes we haven;t seen at footy training rick up to practice games and think they'll be good to go but the reality they then are the "performance gaps" within a team and will often be the weak link/s in the chains.
Unfortunately that's a part of local/amateur football.
Anyway I want to go through my training and show examples of how I consolidated stress to "get the most from the least" which should always be your aim.
That doesn't mean to try and get away with 1 hour of training per week, it means to try and organise "similar" types of stress as close together as possible which is why I'm a fan of block training.
My first session back after season 2017 was August 30th, 3 - 4 days after our season finished.
Block 1 was a GPP phase which has no specific goal other then to get the body back into some low intensity training using a lot of different movements that it may not have been exposed to for a long period of time.
This went for 4 - 5 weeks.
After some testing it was time for block 2 that had 3 main focuses being deadlift strength, sprint specific isometric holds and repeated speed aerobic capacity built through high intensity continuous training.
They were all of equal importance but as I'm a strength/power type, that type of work doesn't take much out of me physically and mentally but the aerobic stuff does so I had to plan my stress around the aerobic capacity workouts.
To do that I would do the deadlift and isometric holds on 1 day, aerobic capacity on the next day and then lay off legs completely on day 3 and do exclusive upper body.
As you can see I consolidated my lower body stress to 2 days in a row, and followed by a complete rest day.
To be honest I find upper body training quite boring these days and really use mostly as a filer day as I still like to do something almost everyday. So i was doing 2 set for about 7 - 10 exercises on these days to get an aerobic capacity effect but off legs, as well as building some strength back.
It was critical that this day allowed for some work to be completed but to not have any residual fatigue that would go into the 2 main lower body days.
This is how consolidating stress works - I lowered the stress on the upper body days to accommodate for the high stress of the lower body days - you can't do high stress every day, not should you.
Moving to more recent training, yesterday I completed the 6th and last session of my lactic capacity block which is THE total opposite of a strength/power athletes favorite activity type.
This means that this almost literally destroys me and I expect a performance decrease in all other forms of training from the residual fatigue, which did happen.
I times far slower in sprints then I usually do and HRV/general tiredness was noted as more more severe but again, to be expected.
What I couldn't try and do here was try and set speed and upper body lifting records while going through this block so everything went on hold.
I could have gone to footy training once but that would have put me over the edge and potentially wrecked my entire training block, and possible future training blocks.
Yep, even just 1 session, this is how far out of my comfort zone this type of training is.
I organised the block to last as short as possible to to lessen the effects of residual fatigue as much as possible, plus we have practice game this Saturday and I did not want it to run into that block either as games are priority 1, 2 and 3 right now.
So although the main focus was the lactate retention sessions I was also running a short 1 legged squat cycle after reading something from GWS Strength and Conditioning Coach Alex Natera so that was priorty number 2 and one that also needed to be completed prior to the practice game.
So I had to fit in lactic capacity, 2 legged squat, sprints and upper body all in this 2 week block.
Here's how that mini block played out:
#1 - Upper Gym x Low Volume/Moderate Intensity
#2 - Acceleration Sprints x Low to Moderate Volume/High Intensity (I can handle these days any day really) + 1 Legged Squat + Hamstrings
#3 - Lactic Capacity
#4 - Upper Gym x Low Volume/Moderate Intensity
#5 - 1 Legged Squat + Hamstrings + Lactic Capacity
#6 - OFF
#7- Max Velocity Sprints x Low to Moderate Volume/High Intensity
#8 - Lactic Capacity
#9 - Upper Gym x Low Volume/Moderate Intensity
#10 - 1 Legged Squat + Hamstrings + Lactic Capacity
#11 - OFF
#12 - Max Velocity Sprints x Low to Moderate Volume/High Intensity
#13 - Lactic Capacity
#14 - Upper Gym x Low Volume/Moderate Intensity
#15 - 1 Legged Squat + Hamstrings + Lactic Capacity
#16 - Upper Gym x Low Volume/Moderate Intensity
#17 - Acceleration Sprints x Low Volume/High Intensity (Friday the day before the practice game)
So as you can see I put my 2 main focus points on the same day (1 Legged Squats + Lactic Capacity) so my high stress was placed on just 6 out of 17 days with low to moderate stress placed on the other days.
As mentioned my sprinting speed was already compromised by these 6 days, imagine ho slow I'd have been if I'd have placed more stress on those other 11 days? It really wouldn't have been worth doing (the sprinting sessions), and in the end I'd have lost speed that might take longer to regain with a future compromised training plan, as you don't how you'll pull up from games (injuries, soreness etc).
So the lesson is this:
WHEN ADDING NEW STRESS INTO YOUR TRAINING, THEN YOU MUST ACCOUNT FOR THAT STRESS BY DECREASING EXISTING STRESS THAT IS NOT AS IMPORTANT, OR TAKE IT OUT COMPLETELY.
You simply can't keep adding stress and adding stress as it will result in a performance decrease, sickness, injury or all 3.
You need to look at your training, decide what the priorities are, and put all your big ricks into them, and scatter the other stuff around it, micro dosing if you will (future post that one).
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