The Ultimate Pre Season Team Training Session

Off the back of the pre-season training starting up for most, if not all, footy clubs at the moment, here's what a perfect pre-season training team training session would look like IF I had total control over the team and session:

Before hitting the track everyone goes through the Be-Activated Zone 1 Activation Points with Diaphragmatic Breathing then run out as a team. This should take about 5mins.

In small groups or pairs (depending on how many footy's you have), make sure you get 100 - 200 touches (kicks + handballs) on your bad side and 50 - 100 on your good side. This should take about 7 - 8mins.

As a team do a lap plus some tempo runs with dynamic mobility drills thrown in at each end starting with ground based movements and progressing to standing movements as you progress through the warm up. This should take about 5 - 7mins.

Core and muscle temperature should now be raised with a light sweat so now it's time to prime the nervous system for the intense training ahead.

Now I'd set up stations for stiffness and single leg reactivity and break the team into 2 groups. Each station would have 2 - 3 exercises and performed for 3 - 5mins each station so 6 - 10mins total.

So all up from start to finish the prep work should take about 30mins but you've actually trained physical traits in this time in muscle activation, joint mobility, skill development, lower leg stiffness and single leg reactivity.

Now to the actual nuts and bolt of the session.

Next up is acceleration work over 10 - 20m for 5 - 8 sets with full walk back rest for 1min for every 10m covered per set (i.e. 10m = 1min, 20m = 2mins etc). You can do more stationary skill work between sets if you wish.

Next up we can work agility and change of direction with some small sided handball games in tight confines for 20 - 30sec intervals x 2 - 4 sets and then resting while other teams go.

Even though you'll have been training for 45mins or so by now there still should be limited fatigue build up as we've been predominantly working the alactic energy system which is covered with no longer then 10sec work periods with full rest so we're definitely going for quality over quantity here.

Next up you can throw some skill development in here with a good idea, depending on numbers, to run 2 drills at once. So use a bigger drill and a smaller drill and alternate your groups every 3 - 5mins. I think coaches can stick with some drills for far too long and players lose interest and get a bit bored. When setting up drills though try and make sure that players will get adequate enough rest for skills to maintained at a very high level. You can't improve technical aspects of any sport under fatigue, especially if you're skill level is low already. Fatigue will simply make skill level worse and no one gets better, no one gets fitter and they just get tired.

So after your skill work which may take another 30mins or so, I would now suggest you do whatever aerobic work you have planned because now it won't interfere with skill and speed, traits that can only be improved in a fully non-fatigued state.

To warm down you can go through some more dynamic or static stretches and finish off with some more deep breathing to get your players back into a parasympathetic state from a nervous system point of view which will get them into recovery mode straight after training.

To see how all this looks in an actual program then definitely check out the Ultimate Footy Training Manual on sale NOW!

3 Part Yearly Programming Webinar

I probably should have done this slightly earlier in the "season' but I only got around to it last week so what I've done is a 30-something minute webinar that gives you a template to use when developing your training over a 9 - 10 month season.

Aimed at coaches, fitness staff and players it looks at personal and team training through the off-season, pre-season and in-season.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments you have on on this through the Facebook page.

So with further ado - part 1!

And now part 2 -

Can You Keep Up? A 37yr Old with a Bung Knee's Off-Season

So I'm now officially 37 as of about 3 weeks ago and still the oldest on the senior/reserve list at my club.

As I've written about previously my season ended early with a pretty severe hyper-extension of my left knee in the final home and away game that caused me, for the very first time in 29yrs of footy, to miss consecutive games - and finals games no less.

Going out in straight sets as the top team didn't sit well with me either - especially from a spectators point of view!

So my training started way back on August 16th - yes I've been training for 2 months already - and even with this knee that won't go away I've completed 30 sessions with a multitude of home issues happening (death in family, wife and son with hospital stays!!)

Here's a breakdown of what I've been up to:

August - I've always been an excellent "recoverer" and when I did my knee I still had the thought process that I would play again in 2015, whether it be a preliminary or a grand final. I couldn't run but 3 days post injury I was back deadlifting and hip thrusting, even if it was very light relative to my normal numbers. I tried to train the Tuesday before the prelim but couldn't and rules myself out of Saturday that night. The grand final was all I had left. Unfortunately we ran into a team that was the clear 3rd placed team this year (having not beaten the top 2 sides at all during the year) whose senior team had already made it straight through the GF so they dropped 5 players from that team (and would play and win a senior GF the very next week) in the 2's and we got done. Shithouse.

September - so with footy over and my knee still cactus I battled on with a focus on getting my strength back up to pre-season levels. By the end of September I had deadlifted 140kgs for a single and Front Squatted 80kgs for 3 reps. The knee is fine lifting heavy in the gym, it's the jolting on running it doesn't like.

October - Now with all footy completed it was time to introduce aerobic capacity. This would usually be done by 99% of players by doing some 5 - 10km runs but I hate running with 2 good knees, and machine cardio is even more boring so I play basketball with a little sequence I follow. I wear my heart rate monitor to ensure that I staying withing aerobic capacity heart rate ranges to ensure I am getting the training effect I'm actually after. I discuss the importance of heart rate training in the new 2016 Ultimate Footy Training Manual.

November - I'm gonna have to get this knee imaged I think - it's just not going away like I thought it would! I'm 99% there's no damage that needs to much attention but maybe I just need to stay off right off it but I'll get it looked at to make sure - I don't like making guesses and missing training if I don't have to! I've got my strength up so I can take some time off for legs and let them recover without too much un-training and I can probably just focus on some bro-training for a while - as boring as that is!

You can follow my workouts on the main Facebook page for this blog as I'm posting them up each session I do and dolt forget the early bird price for the 2016 Ultimate Footy Training Manual finishes this weekend. Click the Buy Now button up top to purchase.

Contents of 2016 Ultimate Footy Training Manual Revealed!!

Here's the contents of the new 2016 Ultimate Footy Manual which is available RIGHT NOW for the pre-order price of $75 which will go up in 7 days time. Hit the link at the top of this page!!

#1 - Introduction + Resources List
#2 - Rehabilitation
#3 - Be Activated
#4 - Reset Program
#5 - Reset Program Spreadsheet
#6 - Coaches Corner Energy Systems
#7 - Coaches Corner Recovery
#8 - Coaches Corner Skill Optimisation
#9 - Coaches Corner Fatigue
#10 - Coaches Corner Ordering Your Training Sessions
#11 - Coaches Corner Accountability Board
#12 - Coaches Corner Monitoring Heart Rate
#13 - Heart Rate Variability + APP
#14 - Daily Monitoring Checklist
#15 - Training the Big Toe, Foot and Ankle Complex
#16 - Extensive Plyometrics
#17 - Single Leg Reactivity
#18 - Seconds Timer + APP
#19 - Low Load-High Force Gym Work
#20 - Month 1 Spreadsheet
#21 - Triphasic Training
#22 - Month 2 Spreadsheet
#23 - Month 3 Spreadsheet
#24 - 2 Week Xmas Break Spreadsheet
#25 - Full Body Total Reps Days
#26 - Month 4 Spreadsheet
#27 - Month 5 Spreadsheet
#28 - 2 Weeks Pre-Practice Game Spreadsheet
#29 - In-Season Training
#30 - In-Season Training Training Residuals
#31 - In-Season Training Auto- Regulation of Training
#32 - In-Season Training Model Spreadsheet

Footy Concepts You HAVE to Know About Part 2

I'm back with the 2nd installment of training concepts you may not know about, but HAVE to know about, to optimise your footy training program.

Last week we covered training residuals, lower leg stiffness, the big toe, consolidation of stressors and overspeed eccentrics so lets finish this list off.

Be Activated - this isn't a new thing by any means but the way this is done is. It's the brain child of an ex-pysio from South Africa named Douglas Heel. I caught onto this about this time last year and then read as much as I could on it (there's not a lot to go on really) and then purchased his DVD set which made a lot of things clearer. He came to Australia earlier this year bit for some reason didn't make it to Melbourne so I missed out on seeing him in person which as I've been told by other 'activators" is far better then the DVD's on their own. It refers to activating the body through a specific series of muscle activation points. This muscle activation can wake up the body and free it from defensive postures brought on by physical and emotional stress. For example when the body is stressed in anyway, breathing becomes shallower and your posture changes (hunched over). This effects your breathing efficiency as now your breathing has moved from being performed by your diaphragm to your chest, shoulders and neck. The all important diaphragm is the center of the body and is directly connected to the psoas. This crucial because our body has 2 main functions it will do above all else - it will breath (hopefully through the diaphragm) and will move (hopefully through hip flexion which is the action of the psoas). If these 2 area's can not do their jobs then the body will find another, but less optimal way to do this. This results in the aforementioned stress and tiredness mentioned above. This can also eliminate the need for stretching as an activated muscles is a long and strong muscle.

Rate of Perceived Exertion - RPE has been around for a while and is used to gauge your personal effort level for certain things but it's now being used for training. % based programs (3 x 5 @ 75% for example) doesn't take into account the daily levels of fatigue you have which means that 75% can be 65% on your great days but 85% on your not so great days. Using RPE can ensure that you are training at the level you want to, respective of the state of your training readiness for that particular day. So instead of using % based programs, try using the REP scale. An RPE of 10/10 is a single-max-grinding rep. An RPE of 9/10 is heavy but leaving 1 rep in the tank. An RPE of 8/10 is pretty heavy but leaving 2 reps in the tank. An RPE of 7/10 is heavy-ish with 3 reps left in the tank. So you can plan your week with a mix of easy, moderate and hard days based on RPE. Start practicing now as this can take a bit of trial and error to get right.

Heart Rate Variability - I posted about this and the way I do it earlier this year but it works in conjunction with RPE a fair bit. So immediately upon waking you test your daily HRV which tells you your readiness to train on that particular day. As I said above, the same weight can feel different on different days depending how well you recovered from your previous session and/or lifestyle habits. If you've got a max strength day planned but you feel lethargic and can barely get yourself out of bed then that 90% is gonna feel like 120% and you won't even move it an inch, which can send your recovery back even further. Once you get a handle on your HRV and get an idea of where it should be when you do everything right, then you can assign an RPE to the different results you get. So if you get a HRV score better then you're average or baseline, then that's gonna be a good day to hit a 9 or 10 RPE. If it's below your average HRV then you'll need to play around in 6 - 8 RPE range.

Energy Systems - you know how badly some blokes work out at the gym with 3 chest and arm days? Well I think there are footy players and coaches training just as bad, if not worse, in regards to energy systems training. In a nut shell your main goal should be to improve speed. AFL players do the same that we all do, but faster. Once you improve your speed then you want to be able to use it in a game repeatedly with as little speed fatigue drop off as possible. Now most blokes will think straight away 'let's do 10 x 100m sprints with no rest.' WRONG! For starters 100m sprints are game specifically at all as you'll never run as fast as you can for 100m in a game of footy - EVER! Secondly you might be fast for the first 100m sprint but you won't be for the others so you've trained speed for 12 - 15secs then nothing but fatigue build up from then on. Surely I don't need to tell you that the biggest performance killer is fatigue. You're next port of call is to train your aerobic system to improve your recovery between bouts of speed. So you wanna train short and fast or long and slow. Training in the middle is too slow to gain speed gains from but too fast to use oxygen exclusively for energy. It also builds up the greatest fatigue which means you can't actually do it for often or for very long before recovery becomes a huge issue.

UPDATE - I have used the "be activated' protocol pretty much everyday for the last year. In fact my warm up game days is 5 - 10mins of this and then I'm out on the ground for my active warm up. I've never been a huge stretcher anyway and have never suffered a soft tissue in my life so getting rid of that bit didn't tear me up too much!

I'll be using RPE's during the season this year in accordance with my HRV, no doubt. It's all about Saturday and if you've done the work in the months prior, then you should only have to do the minimum required during the season.

For ES I should add that there is a place for lactic work and it is a requirement of footy thus it does need to be trained but if you aren't already fast, don't have an adequate aerobic energy system for recovery purposes and have more then 3 - 4 weeks before you're first practice game then leave "training in the middle" for skill and drill work.

Footy Training Concepts You HAVE to Know About

Each year I learn about 1000 new things when it comes to training which means the stuff I did only 12 months ago can be completely different to what I do today!

While watching the Hawks spank the Crows (45 - 14 already in quarter number 1!) I'm brain storming idea's to put into my new manual but when putting something together for the masses like this, it can be hard deciding how technical to go and if it is "technical" then how can I make that simple?

Don't worry, that's my problem not yours so here's some things I'm mulling over, some of that have been mentioned in this blog before.

Training Residuals - this refers to the minimum frequency certain strength and fitness qualities need to be trained for, in order to maintain them. You can't train everything hard all the time so this is vital information to know, especially in-season when resources and time is lower then in the summer, because you don't what to lose in a future phase of training, what you worked so hard to gain in a previous training phase.

Lower Leg Stiffness - this refers to rigidity of the foot and ankle complex and the ability of it to absorb forces put through it during sprinting and to resist deformity. Think of how fast your newly pumped up footy bounces off your boot compared to when it's slightly deflated. Watch a 100m sprint in slow motion and watch their lower leg, upon ground contact the heel barely lowers towards the ground at all!

Big Toe - the big toe is THE connection from the foot to the glutes which is where all your power comes from in regards to speed and running economy. There's been plenty of ho-ha about minimalist footwear to increase the use of your toes and foot musculature but from what I've read, and by looks of the image of Usain Bolt below, I'm not sure that using all of your toes is as critical to performance as is mastering the usage of your big toe. It's not a great image as I took it off the TV, but you can clearly see the dominance of his big and second big toe while the others look all squashed together. I did a heap of big toe work in my training a few years back and the glute soreness during the season after games from this indicated that it definitely increased my glute usage.

Consolidation of Stressors - I first read about a coupe of years ago over at www.juggernaught.com and is connected to the training residuals point from earlier. As stated you can't train everything at 100% all the time because you only have so much recovery to go around, and once you exceed that then a decrease in performance is right around the corner. This means that once your recovery 'cup' is filled, then introducing any other stress will overflow it so you need to decrease a current stress to allow room for a new one. Too many footy players and coaches are at fault of this and in the end when you're after speed and skill development all you develop is fatigue, but none of the training adaptations you're actually after. No good!

Overspeed Eccentric - for max velocity sprinting speed and running jumps you want your tendons to do most of the work. Alternatively for acceleration sprinting speed and standing jumps, you want your muscles to do most of the work. In both cases the more you can put into the eccentric action of all of these endeavors, the greater the output you'll have. Now when most people think of eccentric contractions they think of loading up a barbell and doing a slow negative reps but it's the slow bit that won't do jack for your footy performance. A moderate to fast eccentric is what you want because if it takes you a relatively long time to build up the eccentric energy and turn it around into concentric energy, then the ball has been and gone while you're still loading up! I will be doing a few phases for this in my own training in the coming months.

So that's part 1 of this series and I'll be back soon with the rest. Let me know any questions you have via the Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/aussierulestraining.

UPDATE - although I didn't really care for the extreme glute soreness last time, I went back to the big toe stuff this off-season doing 57 sessions for them (3mins each). I also did a bunch of stiffness work as well for 22 sessions (5mins each). I've also done dome spasmodic overspeed eccentric work which I started to ramp up a couple of weeks ago before having my yearly lower back blow out last week which will put an end to that!

Read This Before Hitting the Gym This Off-Season

Here's to season 2016!

Quality 80's Scanlon Footy Card Pose!

After finishing on top with only the single loss for season we disappointingly went our in straight sets! To make matters worse I hyperextended my knee in the last round and missed our 2 finals games so I was pissed!! I've missed probably 5 games tops in my entire career through injury and I miss 2 with "my' best chance of that elusive premiership.

I frequent the health and fitness board on www.bigfooty.com and a couple of weeks ago a posted put this up:

"...Hi guys, I'm looking for some inspiration for a new routine. At the moment I'm still doubting between a push/legs/pull split (5 day cycle) or a push/pull split (3 day cycle with a lighter session every 3rd cycle). Does anyone have experience with this?..."

Here was my response:

Here's a few options:

Option #1 - train everything (movement/muscle) everyday doing 1 exercise for each muscle/movement at moderate to high intensity but low to moderate volume. 

Sample: 

Military Press paired with Front Squat 3 - 5 x 5 - 8 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your last set
Bench Press paired with Deadlift 3 - 5 x 5 - 8 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your last set
DB Row paired with Bulgarian Split Squats 3 - 5 x 5 - 8 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your last set

* repeat every training session

Option #1 is a great option for easing your way back into training in the early off season. You could do the same exercise each session or 1 variation for each session of the week.

Option #2 - train everything everyday but do 1 exercise for moderate to high intensity and high volume in each session

Sample:

Military Press 8 - 15 x 1 - 5 leaving 1 rep in the tank on your final set

Front Squat 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set
Deadlift 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set
DB Row 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set
Bulgarian Split Squats 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set

What you end up with is 1 lift exercise being the main focus of the day and the others are simply there to fill between sets of the main lift and to give them so extra volume but performed at an intensity that won't fatigue you for the main lift. You'll also notice that bench press has been taken out of this day as it is a competing lift with the Military Press as it uses the same muscles.

When planning this day out decide how many Military Press sets you'll do then spread the other exercise sets among them.

Option #3 - is the same as option #2 but you have 2 focus lifts per session at a slightly lower volume but the other lifts staying with low volume and moderate to high intensity.

Sample:

Military Press paired with Front Squat 6 - 12 x 1 - 5 leaving 1 - 2 reps in the tank on your final set

Deadlift 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set
DB Row 2 - 3 x 3 - 5 leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank on your final set
* can add in some biceps and core on this day for filler exercises

Option #4 - use a variety of rep types (not ranges) like isometric, eccentric, drop catch, rebound etc and rotate through them throughout the week. You can either do a full day of the 1 rep type or do 1 exercise for each rep type per session.

Rep Types - isometric, eccentric, pliometric (traditional rep style), high velocity, deadstop, drop an catch, rebound etc

So you could choose 4 - 6 rep types and do 1 exercise for each of them on each day

or

Choose 4 - 6 exercises and do 1 rep type for 1 exercise like this:

Military Press - High Velocity
Front Squat - Eccentric
Bench Press - Isometric
Deadlift - Pliometric
DB Row - Deadstop

Then rotate the rep type for the same exercise list the next training session.

So before heading off to the gm and doing your chest day have a look at what's above here and see how this could work for you.