Training Around Injuries During the Season 2

Let's now break these exercise modifications down a little.

Unilateral Exercises

These are exercises that are performed by using either 1 leg or 1 arm. The best single arm exercises include db bench presses, shoulder presses, rows and pulldowns. It is important to train the uninjured side as the nervous system activation can carryover to the injured side so you won't be set back as far as if you did nothing at all when you can return to your full training. They are also useful for still lifting a relative heavy load but as the stress is directed through 2 limbs independently, the nervous system isn't fatigued but the actual muscle is so they are great for in season training.

Using Machine Based Exercises

Machine based training takes keeping the nervous system fresh to a higher level then unilateral training as there are plenty of stabiliser muscle use during free weight exercises for balance and coordination purposes. I'm not a fan at all of machine although there are better machines and some even train the strength curve and provides resistance throughout the entire range of movement. The better machine exercises are pulldown and rowing machines. I don't class cables as machines either.

Deloading Programs

These are staples of powerlifting programs and are pre planned to give the nervous system, the joints and the muscles a rest week, of which usually becomes after a heavier or higher volume week. The aim is to over reach a little during the week prior and then the decrease in volume and/or intensity allows for gains and growth during the deload week and also ensuring your back to 100% freshness for start of the next training phase. Depending on how you feel during the "peak" week, you may need to decrease intensity by 10 - 20%, decrease volume 40% or both. For most of us you'll only need to deload the strength focused exercises but it also gives you a chance to get some technique work in with sub maximal weights.

Restoration / Recovery Programs

Athlete's especially need these at some stage during the year but they can be handy if popped in during the season as a form of deload week. During these phases of training you would emphasise and re-establish activation of various muscles (glutes, lower traps, core) as well as taking a lot of time to get soft tissue work done to iron out any trigger points and muscle tightness restrictions you may have developed so for during the season. During this time you would also use a lot of exercise from the unilateral, machine and cable lists from above to rest the nervous system.

Injury Prevention / Corrective Exercise Programs

This goes along the same lines as restoration / recovery programs but with a focus on rehabbing past and present minor injury and sore spots as well as using various dynamic flexibility and mobility drills to keep optimal tissue length and joint mobility. Exercises that may be included for rehab purposes include glute activation and low level glute strengthening exercises such as supine bridges, pull throughs and split squat and reach variations for the lower body as well as prone trap raises and serratus activation exercises to restore upward and downward rotation of the scapula.

I think most first round games are tomorrow so I wish everyone good luck and I hope you get a win.

Training Around Injuries During the Season

Piggybacking on my last post, let's go through and specify how we can modify out training when an injuries or sore spot presents itself.

Use Less Nervous System Intensive Exercises - the nervous system requirements of a spinal loaded back squat far and away greater then for a leg press which will tax the actual muscles more then anything. If you have programmed for a back squat but you don't really feel as though you can't really give your maximum performance because of injuries or soreness, then it's a great idea to keep fatigue at bay and use a lower load exercise with the perfect choice being a single leg exercise like lunge or step up variation which will train tour legs as hard, but with a lot less load.

Using Unilateral Exercises - these are the perfect choice for when you injure a knee or a shoulder in that it allows you train the good side hard, which can actually provide some nervous system activation to the side NOT being trained.

Using Machine Based Exercises - I'm not the greatest of fan of machine based training, but if you are really feeling run down then they are still a viable option. As a side note I don't class cable attachments as machines as they allow you to move in whatever path of resistance you naturally do, so definitely opt for cables before machines where you can.

Using a Deloading Program - deloading refers to decreasing intensity (the weight your using) and/or the volume (total sets and reps) at planned periods of time to rest the nervous system and the joints in preparation for the next phase of training. These should always included in your program, especially if your lifting heavy with squats, deadlifts and bench presses.

Using a Restoration / Recovery Program - I have a few of these made up for the times that I need them and they basically consist of activation, bodyweight, cable and light weight exercises. Run through these in a circuit fashion.

Using an Injury Prevention / Corrective Exercise Program - common sites of injuries are the ankles, knees, hips, lower back and shoulders so you would basically choose 2 - 3 exercises that will address each of them and run through them circuit style.

The basis is to always be prepared and if you need to break away from your planned training, then you'll have plenty of options to cover it.

In Season Injuires

Injuries and sore spots are inevitable during the season and to be honest, you should expect them which means that the program we are currently doing may not be able to be followed like it is planned out to be.

You need to be flexible in your training and programming as you don't know when these injuries, or what injuries, you'll sustain during any given season. I have been blessed to not sustain any serious football injuries during the year and couldn't have missed more then 5 games with an injury during my career. Even when I severed all my ligaments and tendons on my right hand right at the completion of the 2001 season, I played the first game of the 2002 season.

This makes it important that you have back up exercises or maybe a back up program during the season. Choosing an alternative method of training can include:

• using less nervous system intensive exercises
• using unilateral exercises
• using machine based exercises
• using a deloading program
• using a restoration / recovery program
• using an injury prevention program
• using a corrective exercise program

This set up provides plenty of options of what to do when an injury or a sore spot presents itself. If it is an injury then work around it, don't just stop training thew area. If it a sore spot then you may simply need to use a less intensive exercise for the day.

Maintaining Your Gains During the Season

We've previously touched on why we should maintain our off and pre season gains in strength and fitness as well as setting out some weekly schedules that we can follow to allow the time and energy to fit these in any given week.

Today we'll touch how we can specifically maintain strength, muscle mass, speed and endurance during the season all of them can be done if you dedicate a little extra time to train.

Strength and Muscle Mass

I'll pair these together as a lot of players think they are one of the same when they are really by products of each to a certain degree but are also attained with 2 very different types of training protocols.

Strength basically refers to how much weight you can lift for a certain exercise. It's all relative of course but generally a set that is 5 reps and under will be a display of strength.

Hypertrophy refers to actually increasing the cross sectional area of a given muscle and is attained by using sets of 8 - 15 reps using the continuous tension principle.

It basically comes down to the use it or lose it principle too. Give the body to use what you have and it will preserve it. If not then all your hard work was in vain.

So for strength at a bare minimum you should aim to perform one exercise for the upper and lower body each week. Now to keep fatigue at bay you want these sets to be low reps and also use low sets to keep the volume down. The important thing here though is also to keep the intensity high so if you built your strength up to 100kgs for a given exercise, then using 70kgs won;t maintain your strength.

You should strive to hit at least 90% of your off season maximum weight during one lower or upper body exercise per month.

For a host of reasons you might not be able to train at the level you did in the off season so you might need to use a wave like approach throughout each month and schedule that into your training, much like Eric Cressey does with a lot of his training:

Week 1 - high intensity which may equate to 80 - 85% at your heaviest wt

Week 2 - moderate intensity which may equate to 70 - 80% at your heaviest wt

Week 3 - very high intensity which may equate to 85 - 95% at your heaviest wt

Week 4 - deload / low intensity which may equate to 40 - 60% at your heaviest wt

As you can see you alternate harder weeks with easier weeks to fluctuate the training stress.

Now depending on your recovery abilities from resistance training (which will correlate with your training experience more then likely), you may opt to do 2 exercises for both upper and lower body or 2 for upper body and 1 for lower body each week respectively but if one of those options seems to be hindering your recovery before game day then less is better in this case.

Now that we have strength maintenance taken care of we can easily address muscle maintenance by simply ingesting enough calories to sustain what we have. The heavy lifting from the strength maintenance is enough for the body to realise that it still needs it's newly attained muscle mass so now you only need to fulfill the other factor in gaining muscle.

Of course this doesn't mean to just eat what you want, you still need a lot of high quality food to maintain a high performance level all year round. Not that I'm into calorie counting much but a ball park figure to go by for those who do would be about 17 - 18 calories per pound of bodyweight and see how that goes.

If you do see yourself losing strength from week to week then you're either not eating enough, lifting heavy enough or simply putting enough into your recovery overall.

Speed

As mentioned in the first post of this series, you don't need to spend a great deal of effort on developing speed but whatever you do do, each rep of each set needs to be of the highest quality. Now take into account that you'll do a fair bit of sprinting within your actual team training on a Tuesday and Thursday so it's a great idea to take some time on your own to maintain your speed though various low level, quick response plyometrics which can be as easy as 2 exercises performed after your warm up such as ankle hops, level ground and low barrier jump variations keeping all sets under 10secs in duration to minimise fatigue.

Endurance

Endurance is probably the easiest one here to maintain simply because we all have Tuesday and Thursday night training and a game on a Saturday.

Tuesday nights are usually reserved the longer ball drills and if you've been flogged on the weekend, another flogging on the track. This is the perfect time to try and get some extra kilometers into the legs so get involved in the drills, don't just stay on the hats. Run off to receive any fumbles or just be their support. Any running will be of help here.

Thursdays are usually reserved for quick, short and sharp sessions and is more a 'focus" and skills session then anything else.

Last year I played without training throughout the year (I might got down there once I think for a 30mins session on a Thursday) so the only running I got was during the game on a Saturday. Now granted I was only playing reserves but I was playing in the midfield for 75% of the year and thus had to run more then I ever have in years and I saw great boosts in endurance simply from that one game session a week. You tend to run harder and for longer during a game when the ball is rolling around so you can really make some in roads here if you start behind the others. Also make good use of split rounds, weekends off and byes as it essentially gives you 2 - 4 extra days to play with, training wise.

AFL coaches often play some top line stars in the NAB Challenge games out in the country simply to get more running volume into them if they need it.

This series has just been a brief rundown on what you can do to maintain your strength and fitness during the season. I never know why many players do plenty of weights during the off season but as soon as the season starts, the weights gather dust. I did that plenty of times when I was a youngster and then I'd have to start all over again when I started back up with them in October, essentially getting nowhere in the long term.

If your training is consistent, then you'll improve from year to year. If you stop training then you lose whatever you gained, thus you actually become a little more effective on the ground. This really underlines the importance of maintaining your strength and fitness during the season.

Scheduling Your In Season Training

A lot of players will think that they need to train at the same volume as they do in the pre-season which will set you back more then it will push you forward. As much as we try to, the intensity of a game cannot be replicated during training and even practice matches don't quite reach that level either.

As stated in yesterday's post, your main goals for the in season is to maintain your strength, speed and endurance. Early in the season you'll hear how coaches in the AFL manage game time for players at certain points of the year. This mainly occurs at the start of the year when a player has come off a short pre-season and needs extra work during a game, and at the end of the year when an older player might be rested for the finals.

Also stated yesterday;s post was that once you have gained that new level of a particular fitness component, then it's not too hard to maintain it with lower volume during the season to ensure you are at your freshest for actual games.

Here are some possible schedules that you could follow during the season to maintain these fitness qualities:

Option 1

Saturday - Game

Sunday am - recovery session

Monday am - main full body weights session

Tuesday pm - football training

Wednesday pm - moderate intensity full body weights session

Thursday pm - football training

Friday am - low intensity full body weights session

This schedule is ideal for someone who can train everyday. There is at least 24hrs between each session so it spreads the volume out throughout the week so with an adequate nutrition and restoration plan, this could easily be done during the season.

Option 2

Saturday - Game

Sunday am - recovery session

Monday - off

Tuesday am - main weights session

Tuesday pm - football training

Wednesday - off

Thursday am - moderate weights session

Thursday pm - football training

Friday - off

This schedule s ideal for those who cannot train everyday so what we do is put a lot of stress on our training days with 2 sessions a day (sessions to be at least 6hrs apart) but it also gives you 3 full days off a week so it allows for plenty of rest after the high stress days.

Tomorrow we'll discuss how we can maintain our off and pre season gains during the season.

The Season Is Here, But I'm Not Ready!

Round 1 for all of the AFL's 16 teams is over and done with and upon is round 1 for our own teams.

I'm sure you've all put in the hard yards up until now by getting stronger in the gym and increasing your work capacity on the track.

Some of us though are behind the rest of the pack for one reason or another and I'm one of them. I read on the Internet the other day on a forum where a player asked how he can reach peak fitness in 4 weeks.

Now you can run your little heart in those 4 weeks and limp into round 1 or you can take the sensible approach as organising your in season is a very delicate matter.

When you're organising your training, the most important thing is that you plan it out so that you can train hard, but not so hard that it exceeds your recovery abilities and this is even more important once the season comes around as your game day is the most important day and the one that you should be at your most freshest on.

What this means is that if you are trying to "catch up' in the fitness stakes, you need to be careful that you don't too much volume or use too much intensity that you can't fully recover between training sessions and games.

An overlooked component of restoration and recovery is overall training volume. A lot of players simply look at how much running they do or how much weight training they do on an individual basis. This is a big mistake.

Now during the in season your main goals are to maintain your new found strength levels that you improved upon in the off season as well as maintaining your fitness levels too. Now maintaining something is a lot easier that actually getting something so you don't need to use a lot of volume but it is wise to maintain, or even increase, intensity at planned stages of the year.

I actually deadlifted a personal best during the season last year, as was my dedication to my gym program/s.

Now I hate running. Despise it. Can't stand it.

Even at my fittest in my teens and early 20's, I could not run a proper 3km time trial without needing an "active rest" during it. The fact that I haven't ran continuously for more then 2kms (and probably nowhere close to it to be honest) in over 6 years just shows how much I hate it.

Last year when I made my long overdue comeback after 5 years off, I did a little running twice a week (sprints mainly, no long distance running) for the about 3 weeks before and after the start if the season and it was probably just enough to get me by. I didn't continue running during the season, even though I was playing in the midfield.

What I made sure of though was that if I wasn't going to do any running outside a game situation, I had to make sure that I got a lot of it during the game and this is where you should be getting a lot of your running volume if you're behind in your fitness base. This should also hold true during training. Instead of adding more volume to your training and simply running yourself down, use what time you do have effectively.

This means that you can aim at getting a full recovery early in the week and backing up with 2 solid training sessions on the track and 2 solid gym sessions (strength focused) in the gym each week.

Tomorrow we'll go through some weekly schedules that you can use during the in season.

Updates

If you've made it to this page then you must have passed by my little notification.

I have made up a short report titled '10 Things You're Not Doing, But Should Be, To Become A Better Footballer" which touches on 10 area's (funny enough) of Aussie Rules Football that you should take into account when planning your training.

I also have made up a Facebook group that you can join that can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=105772399457004

Hopefully we can build that page up with 100's of members from footy followers all over the globe.

The Swannies almost got over the line and we would have if we kicked those early goals but we gelled magnificently for a team with 7 new faces in the team so we're easily finals bound.