IN-SEASON TRAINING DO'S #4 - COMPETING DEMANDS

You definitely know that it's the in-season when you're playing an 12 degrees, gail force winds and driving rain!

Today let's tale a look at what's called competing demands of training.

Competing demands of training refers to how the various aspects of football (strength, speed, endurance etc) affect each other when being trained in a maximal context, at the same time.

Let's say your on a pretty fixed income, like most of us are, and you're saving for a car.

Each weekend you can't help yourself and you hit the town, putting a dent in those car savings each time and ultimately taking longer to reach your ultimate goal of purchasing a car, or just not purchasing it all.

Your demand to save money and spend it at the same time ate in total opposites of each other so you end up with no car and no money.

Now take training for maximal speed and maximal endurance at the same time.

If you are aware of the high-low system (future post alert) then you'll know that sprint and endurance training are polar opposites as well.

Sprinting requires huge input from the central nervous system but little metabolic input.

It also results in huge nervous system fatigue in the short term.

Endurance training requires a lot of input from your various energy systems that can result in huge metabolic fatigue (lactate etc),but little stimulation to the central nervous system in the short term.

With inputs from both ends of the speed-endurance spectrum you've got a few issues to worry about.

#1 - When training 2 qualities s far from each other such as spreed and endurance, the body doesn't know hat it needs to adapt to which can result in a whole heap of nothing in the end. You'll feel like you've achieved something when you really haven't.

#2 - You finish training and have a good meal to facilitate recovery so you're good to go for your next session - nice job. When you go to bed the real regeneration and adaptation takes place which requires a lot of recovery capacity. Your not just born with recovery capacity, you need to build it through your current training program and you can also feed it through sleep, nutrition and other recovery modalities. When you don't have enough recovery capacity, then at some point you're going to under-recover which is what a lot of people call overtraining.

#3 - When training maximal speed and maximal endurance at the same time, not only does the body have no idea which quality to adapt to, but now you're using up all of your energy systems which then need all the different recovery methods to regenerate. putting a lot of strain n your body to regenerate everythng at once. Going back to my analogy above, now you're saving for a car, hitting the nightlife and saving for a house all at once - but on the same money as above as well.

By training the qualities that rely on similar structures and energy systems to perform, you can be ultra efficient with your training and thus ultra efficient with your recovery as now the body can:

A - Focus on adapting to 1 major quality instead of 2

and;

B - Put all it's recovery efforts into regenerating 1 major energy system instead of 2 or more.

This is not to say you can only train 1 aspect per session, but put the focus on 1 aspect per session and micro-dose (future post alert #2) everything else on a maintenance level temporarily.

Here are the ma qualities we all train:

Aerobic Endurance - low intensity but long duration and continuous activity

Anaerobic (Glycolytic) Endurance - high fatigue over long, medium or short duration activity with incomplete rest

Alactic (Sprint) Power - high intensity but short duration activity with full rest

Maximum Strength/Hypertrophy - any gym training that might might cover all of the above

Learning New Technical Elements - new skills and/or tactics being introduced

Now how we train these qualities together is what will make or break us sooo....

Aerobic Endurance - alactic power, strength endurance, max strength/hypertrophy (afterwards)

Anaerobic (Glycolytic) Endurance - strength endurance, aerobic restorative activity, aerobic/anaerobic (mixed) endurance

Alactic (Sprint) Power - aerobic endurance, explosive strength, max strength/hypertrophy (afterwards), aerobic restorative activity

Maximum Strength/Hypertrophy - maximum strength, flexibility, aerobic restoration activity

Learning New Technical Elements - prior to any other training

So if you've planned that sprint/lactate session for tomorrow night then think again.