In-Season Training Part 6 - Small But Important Tid Bits

So over the last few weeks we've broken in-season training to an inch of it's life but we've just got a few little tid-bits to cover.

If you want a complete program then tid-bits matter.

GET THE MOST FROM THE LEAST - as mentioned throughout this series of posts once the season rolls around you only have a certain amount of resources you can put towards training and preparation as games are so more intensive and fatigue building then training. After dedicating a couple of days to recovery from games and then another couple of days to prep for your up-coming game then it really only leaves 2 - 4 days for you to train. This means that every session must count towards something and everything you do in each of those sessions must count towards something too.

LEAVE OUT THE GARBAGE VOLUME - backing off the previous point any training volume that does not really need to be there should go and be replaced by more important training or just left out on it's own. There's no winners for who does the most training season, just winners of games on a Saturday. If you're trying to play catch up during the season for fitness or whatever then be very careful about how you go about it or at least let your coach know you're doing some extra work but hopefully it won't affect your on-field performance too much.

INDIVIDUALISE ENERGY SYSTEMS WORK - as a coach you should have a fair idea of what your players strengths are in regards to energy systems work. Players that dominate your time trials are aerobic based athletes where your best sprinters are exactly that. During the season the time to improve aerobic or alactic capacities is probably out the window at local/amateur level because of outside stresses. Having a sprinter do a lot of aerobic based work will have a far greater effect on him physiologically then your time trial professionals as their body's love short, intensive work which is why they are naturally good at it. On the other hand having your aerobic dominant players do a lor of short, intensive sprints might fry their nervous systems more then the sprinter type and the residual fatigue from a session like this could stay until game day, affecting on-field performance. I'd keep 70 - 80% of energy systems work to their strong suit during the season making sure that the non-dominant trait is trained only when in a non-fatigued state and early in the week to ensure that output can be high and that recovery can be made during the week. You might also need to ease up on a Thursday night too if you do this but it can be done.

PRIORITISE YOUR WEEK - I've mentioned training residuals before but if you're not going to abide your training by that (which I don't know why you wouldn't) then you need to list all the things you need to train for footy and then using a long term approach, prioritise what you need to train each week. So you'd break it up into aerobic (long distance and slow pace), lactic (med distance/pace but high fatigue) and alactic (short distance and fast pace) and then you'd break down activities into those 3 categories and rotate through them all in a 2 - 4 week block. Just remember that you can't train everything all the time1

STRENGTH TRAINING - the 2 major rules here is to keep intensity and volume in check and also to don't introduce too many new exercises into the mix. Intensity and volume should be decided based on your readiness for that day and stick to it. New exercises means you'll be training through a different range of motion which will stress your body differently which generally means soreness will ensue. Don't induce this soreness if it will affect your training. Gym improvements can be made during the season but not at the expense of footy training and then games.

NEURAL CHARGE WORKOUTS - by Monday you're probably refreshed a fair bit from Saturday (unless you're 37 like me!) but training isn't until Tuesday. A good way to prime your nervous system for Tuesday training is to perform a 10 - 15min workout the uses 5 - 6 explosive, but low impact exercises either Monday night or Tuesday morning. These workouts should not induce any fatigue at all as sets should be about 5 - 8asecs long. You could also use another of these workouts on a Friday or even Saturday morning but if you do the Saturday probably make it 7 - 10mins long.

TAKE FRIDAY OFF WORK - OK a long bow being drawn here but at the very least as soon as you finish work get home and put the feet up as you'll still be recovering from Thursday training even if you don't feel like it it needed recovering from. So relax and rest your body do tomorrow you wake up with high player readiness so there are no excuses not to make an impact on the ground.

That wraps up the in-season training series of articles.

In-Season Training Part 5 - Train Monday Instead of Tuesday?

As most of you know I don't train with my tram because of work commitments which means I'm free to schedule how I like throughout the week.

Earlier this week I posted about my weekly set up to date which in a  nutshell looked like this but bear in mind I'm 37 and a half so my recovery rate is no where what it was 10 years ago:

Saturday - Game

Sunday - Rest day but do some breathing and stretching work to facilitate recovery

Monday - Easy active recovery day

Tuesday - Harder but still easy recovery day

Wednesday - My 'High' day of training for the week where I'll sprint

Thursday - An easy to medium day which is upper body power in the gym

Friday - Lower body potentiation day for tomorrow's game

My HRV tested best on Tuesday but instead of doing my 'High" day earlier I stuck to the plan but in future if I record a god HRV on a Tuesday I'll do my high day then.

Anyway as you can see my schedule isn't anywhere near what yours probably is with team training on a Tuesday and Thursday.

So what I'll discuss today is the pro's and con's of training Monday or Tuesday as your first team training session of the week.

As a little side note I think most AFL teams do their main session on a Wednesday. Don't quote me on that but I've players and coaches say this in various interviews and besides the teams need to be in by Thursday so they need to see how players pull up from the main session to see who is right to be picked.

Pro's of Training Monday

• Provides more time to train other "stuff" during the week on your own
• Ensures that the coach can implement a proper recovery plan which I class as more important then actual training during the season, of which a Monday session could be based on 
• More time between training sessions and thus, better recovery from training
• If you train again on the Wednesday then you have more time between training and game time ensuring players are fully rested and ready for game day
• Players might "behave" better on the weekend if they know training is on Monday

Cons of Training Monday

• Less time between games and training
• If doing your 2nd team training session on Thursday then it makes it hard do longer duration, intense training but do you need a lot of this during the season?
• You might be relying on players do some training on their own between sessions that as a coach you might feel "needs" to be done and would want to make sure is done.
• More time between games and training means some players might lose "touch" with that long between handing a football 
• More time between games could also have a negative affect on how you mentally prepare for game day where at the moment once Thursday comes around it's "footy time" to 5pm Saturday

That's just a few off the top of my head and I'll add to this as I think of them but please chime in with your own pro's and con's of using this set up on our Facebook page.

A lot of this comes down to player commitment and trust but all training does. Training Tuesday and Thursday means that are trusting players to do their own recovery work so that they are 100% for Tuesday but every night there's still blokes who don't train for whatever reason.

I would love for a team to try this out, if even just for a month and with a little data collected during this time, see how it ends up looking against the traditional model. If you;re a coach and would like to chat about this some more then let me know!

In-Season Part 4 - My Game to Game Weekly Lay Out

Yesterday I posted about my post game recovery to be 100% for round 1 this Saturday.

Today I'll let you in on how I'll schedule my week from game to game (Saturday to Saturday).

Saturday Game Finishes at 2pm

• Protein shake immediately after game
• Decent lunch from canteen, usually a roast meat roll or salad roll + sports drink
• 750ml water throughout the afternoon
• 6 weetbix, 400ml milk and sugar once I got home
• Hot bath with Epson Salts 
• 4 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 pieces of toast and a bowl of veggies
• Another 750ml water
• Relaxed on the couch from 7pm til bedtime by midnight

Sunday

• 8hrs sleep
• A slow walk with the family to the garden park where I did a very easy core and stretching workout on the grass to facilitate recovery some more - 15mins tops
• Back on the couch from 3:30 til bedtime at 10:30
• All meals were classed as 'pass" meals so no fast food, chocolate, pastries or anything.

Monday

• 6.5hrs sleep or so s I start at 6am at the studio but I need to get to bed earlier then I have been as 30mins extra a night = 3 - 4hrs extra sleep, and thus recovery time, per week.
• Recovery based aerobic session in the park later this afternoon staying between 120 - 150 beats per minute for about 20mins to again facilitate recovery. Even though my HRV reading was excellent (8.1 up from 6.3 yesterday - reading is the image above), my resting heart rate was still in the low 60's this morning so I need some aerobic training to let the body know it can go into rest mode. This will be classed as a low day in the high / low training system.
• All meals will be clean again today as I want to drop about 5kgs in the next 5 - 8 weeks to ease the stress of the knee.

Tuesday

• I'm attempting an aerobic capacity session using only upper body exercises tomorrow which I'm not sure how it will go as I find it hard to get my heart rate up with upper body exercises alone. I've tried to set it up so all exercises require some, but not great, stability which will increase muscle use and thus energy expenditure. I'll also be mixing in some upper body cardio stuff to keep the heart rate ticking over so we'll see how we go with this one. Hopefully I can stretch this out to 30mins at 130 - 150 beats per minute. Again this will be classed as a low day.

Wednesday

• I've put Wednesday as my high day for training where I'll do the most demanding stuff of the week and it;s where recovery from last weeks game finishes and preparation for the next game begins. I'll be doing front squats in the gym and sprints in the park on this day, flying sprints for max velocity specifically. You'll rarely, if ever, hit your 100% max velocity speed in a game so to increase your operational output (game running) you still need to improve your mechanical output (straight line sprinting).

Thursday

• Upper body power workout where it's all quality over quantity.

Friday

• Lower body potentiation power day for low volume but high intensity. I used this session last week but then had a full day in the hospital with the wife which wiped me out (with a 5yr old in tow) and I was cooked by half time Saturday. I'm not sure if the potentiation session had anything to do with it as that session felt great but I';ll cut the volume down for it this week and see how it goes.
• Hopefully get myself to bed straight after the footy finishes at 10:15ish, listen to the Triple M rub in bed and lights off at 11:30ish.

The aim is for 90% of all meals to be classes as "clean" to help with fat loss going forward and to ensure the body is being fueled with the right stuff for optimal performance.

So that's what I have laid out for this week but it's always subject to change (as it should be during the season) depending on my HRV and resting heart rate readings. 

In-Season Training Part 3 - My Post Game Recovery

I played in our 2nd practice game yesterday against a team that plays in a higher league then ours, were more skilled and much bigger bodies then we're used to.

Suffice to say this post couldn't come at a better time for me!

I spent all day in the hospital with the wife Friday on a day that I was already tired and we ended up there all day and didn't get home til 6:30pm.

My HRV registered a 7.5 (medium for me - I'd like to be at 8, or closer to, on game days) with a resting heart rate of 62 which is 7 - 10 beats more then normal. This indicated that before I even got out of my bed that my body was working a lot harder then normal to offset the stresses of the preceding day/s.

That being said I still felt alright during the warm up.

The ground looked pristine but was harder then it looked in getting dumped twice in a tackle after the whistle had been blown didn't help either.

By half time I had blown up and was functioning at no more then 70% the rest of the game which looking back at my readings - made perfect sense.

A few blokes even asked if I was injured so it must been evident I wasn't moving as well as I normally do.

Normally after the last practice game you'd have a week off then start round 1 but with Easter being earlier this year we go straight into round 1 next weekend so essentially this week was round 1.

Pulling up wise yesterday I was dog tired throughout the day watching the 1's with a little bit of lower back stiffness (from the hard ground + tired body I suspect) and my usual leg weariness I get after every game and always have.

As soon as I finish a game I have head straight to my bag for my protein drink. I showered and followed that up with a roast beef and gravy roll and a Gatorade drink (blue if you're interested). During the day I consumed 2 bottles of water.

Once I got home I had 6 weetbix, about 400ml milk and a table spoon of sugar (my usual breakfast) and jumped in a hot bath with some Epsom salts which worked a treat for the short term.

For dinner I had 4 eggs, 2 pieces of bread, 2 pieces of bacon and a bowl of veggies and another huge glass of water.

I was asleep by just after midnight after Saving Private Ryan got the better of me on the TV (still a top 5 movie of all time).

I got up just after 9am which puts me at 8hrs of pretty good sleep with daylight savings ticking over last night where my back stiffness was still present and a sore neck had moved in which came from another front on tackle and post whistle dumping where the back head slammed into the ground so I have a whiplash type pain down the front of my neck.

So far I've had my usual breakfast as above and we're heading out for a family walk after I finish this up where I will go through some easy core stuff on the grass while I'm there before settling in for the footy from 3:20.

When you play an actual game you enter what is called the sympathetic nervous system which is the "fight' in the fight or flight response. Heart rate elevates, breathing becomes shallower and alertness increases which is what is meant to happen in times of stress.

What also needs to happen post game is to get yourself back into the parasympathetic nervous system which is the "flight" portion which is where you rest, recover and regenerate.

If you don't get into this nervous system state, then recovery will be compromised. My HRV was a 6.3 today (image above) which is very low so imagine if I went our on the piss last night and got in at 3am. I wouldn't be right to do an intense training session until the weekend which means I'll have missed an entire week of training essentially.

If you did head out and continued to train like normal on Tuesday and Thursday, then I can guarantee you'll have a less then poor outing during round 1 next week as you wouldn't even have fully recovered from your previous game before playing the next one.

Eventually something has to give which is soft tissue injury or sickness, both resulting in you missing games which doesn't help anyone and shouldn't happen when you have total control over this.

Granted I'm 37 and a half and don't recover like some of you young bucks do but the principles are still the same.

Buddy to kick 7 today against the much improved Blues!

In-Season Training Part 2 - The High / Low Training System

Who remembers Ben Johnson? 100m sprinter who was the first high profile athlete to be banned for steroid use after setting a new world record in the 100m at Seoul?

Well his coach was a guy named Charlie Francis who also happens to be one of the most highly respected strength coaches who ever lived. If you're in the strength and conditioning game like I am then you'd have heard of him for sure as a lot of his principles are still reinforced by today's current crop of coaches.

As part of his training methodology he devises the high / low training system. His reasoning was, for sprinters especially, to train all high intensity activities on the 1 day followed by all low intensity activities the next day.

These days would alternate throughout the week or training cycle.

His theory was that the high intensity work (95 - 100% fastest time or heaviest lift) had a high nervous system demand which enhances muscle fibre recruitment and requires a minimum of 48hrs recovery.

Low intensity work (75% of fastest time or heaviest lift) enhances speed through increased capillary density (greater oxygen distribution) and enhances recovery through activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.

This what constitutes the high and low days.

Medium intensity work 76 - 94% of fastest time or heaviest lift), where most teams and players train, is what he avoided. Basically, medium intensity work is too light or slow to get faster or stronger from (not in all cases though), and is too high an intensity to recovery from in 24hrs as it builds up the greatest amount of fatigue.

Here are a list of what he classified as high intensity activities:

• Sprinting
• Jumps
• Explosive Medicine Ball Work
• Max Agility Drills
• Explosive (Olympic) Barbell Lifts
• Lower Body Max Effort Strength Training

Here is a list of what he classifies as low intensity exercises:

• Tempo Runs
• Medicine Ball Circuit Throws and Passes
• Bodyweight Circuits
• Sub Maximal Agility Drills
• Range of Motion Work

If we're talking footy, which we do here, then our list looks like this:

High - Specific Sprint Training, Specific Jump Training, Specific Agility Training, Max Effort Speed/Strength Resistance Training

Medium - Long Skill Drills

Low - Aerobic Work, Short Sub Maximal Skill Work

At footy training you should be covering almost all of these at some point during the year which means Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are your high days.

This leaves as Monday and Wednesday as your low days with Friday and Sunday probably being your off days.

This means that any extra training you are doing needs to fit in line with your high and low days. So if you're a bit of an animal and love a few gym sessions during the week then your heavier stuff is probably best placed on the Tuesday which, yes means you'll train twice that day, but it also means that you've out all your high stress on the as little days as you can meaning more days for recovery - which is king during the season.

You'll also see that a lot of out skill drills from Tuesday and Thursday will probably fall in the medium intensity category which we can't avoid but we can avoid inducing even more fatigue with what you do outside of team training. 

Have a look at your training plan see how it all lines up with the high / low system and if you need a hand re-jigging things a little let me know via our Facebook page.

In-Season Training Part 1 - Training Residuals

I posted on this several times but it's still an unknown concept at elite levels let alone amateur and local level.

Training residuals refers to how long a specific strength or fitness quality can stay with you without being directly trained. When energy resources are capped as per the in-season period, this is a pretty important concept to know about.

Aussie Rules Football requires the need to train pretty much everything the body has to offer and probably more then any other sport in the world but obviously we can't train everything and we certainty can't train everything all the time.

Being the bearer of good news I'm here to tell you that you don't even have to and shouldn't even try to.

When talking training residuals we're referring to energy and nervous system demanding qualities such as;

• Aerobic Training
• Anaerobic Training
• Speed Training
• Strength Training

Each of these qualities has a lag time where max performance can stay with you without actually having to display it.

Here's how they stack up.

• Max aerobic performance will stay with you for 25 - 30 days with an optimal time of 30 days.

• Max anaerobic performance will stay with you for 14 - 22 days with an optimal time of 18 days.

• Max speed performance will stay with you for 2 - 8 days with an optimal time of 5 days.

• Max strength performance will stay with you for 25 - 35 days with an optimal time of 30 days. 

Looking at this should provide you with some training plan relief knowing that you don't have to cram a little bit of everything into each session and gaining little if any benefits for any of them.

During the in-season we have little outings called games that, no matter how game simulated you try to make training, is far more intense then training will ever be where you display most if not all of these qualities.

This means that depending on what position you play and the style of game you play, you need to take that into account as well when planning this out over a season.

For example I'm a sprinter type who pretty much sprints at 90 - 100% for the ball over 5 - 15secs as I play full forward. Compare this to a winger and they'll be running at something like 75 - 85% speed up and down the wings covering 50 - 100m in a single bout.

This builds up different types of fatigue, depending on your current fitness level and muscle fibre make up so it stands to reason for conditioning staff and/or a coach that there needs to be a little bit individualisation for some players which you would base of their player monitoring results.

Getting back to our residual times, it doesn't mean that you wouldn't train say aerobic performance at all, but you might perform some sub-maximal type aerobic work or set up your skill drills to incorporate longer running volumes.

But within the time frames provided you'll need to perform some dedicated, specific training for those strength/fitness qualities.

 So sit down and plan this out for your team's training sessions or of course it's all covered and planned out for you already in the Aussie Rules Training Manual and if you'd like to purchase it then let me know and I'll send you the link for it.

I'm picking the Cats by 22 today too!

Round 1, HRV Wrap Up and In-Season Training

How good is it when footy comes back!

Round 1 is here and with the mighty Swans coming a huuuggge win against a dodgy Collingwood team, it's time to shift our focus to how we train during the season.

Your in-season training model should start once your practice matches start as recovery is probably at it's premium from the exposure to game like intensity.

If you're not allowing adequate recovery for your players then some of then could be well on their way to fatigue-ville before round 1 even gets here.

This means that you shouldn't still be be,ting out endurance time trials and 400m sprints every 30secs (which makes little sense at anytime!)

Over the last month I've been going on about heart rate variability and player wellness which is crucial to determine player fatigue levels which in turn lets you know how you should be training them during them during the week.

Here's a list of those posts:

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/my-personal-story-of-overtraining-and.html

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/player-monitoring-is-everywhere-these.html

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/player-monitoring-system-now-available.html

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/my-own-heart-rate-variability-in-action.html

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/training-with-low-heart-rate-variability.html

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/what-i-do-with-your-player-monitioring.html

I'm still standing by knowing where you;re at from a fatigue level point of view is still more important then what training you do which is why I covered it all before diving into actual in-season training stuff.

In the next couple of weeks I'll be covering several in-season training topics such as:

• Training Residuals
• General to Specific Exercise Progressions
• High / Low Training System
• Individualising Energy Systems Work
• Recovery

and a few other bits and pieces to get you thinking in the right frame of mind. 

I'm just gonna add that I set some speed records today recording a 1.15sec fly 10m sprint time (my best ever) that included my best fly 5m time (.46secs). I also have a sprint start I call a 'footy start' basically because I'm a full forward so most leads come off a little lateral shuffle sort of thing into a straight lead which I also do over 10m where I recorded another all time best of 1.58secs.

It's amazing what a couple of days of no stress (work, time constraints etc) can do for performance readiness.

I'll be back tomorrow with our first piece on in-season training.