In-Season Training Musings

If you remember back to earlier this year I had a what I thought was minor blow out of my lower back. As it turned out it got progressively worse and resulted in me not being able to run, sprint and jump, as well as pretty much next to zero leg work in the gym, for around 6 weeks.

It only came good for practice match number 1 in mid March so I've spent the last 10 or so weeks trying to get myself back to the strength level I was at pre-back blow out.

So from that I have needed to alter my training to fit where I'm at physically. We're 5 games in with the 6th tomorrow and the back has been fine for the most part in each game but it can pull up a bit stiff in the days following games. Oh, and I'm almost 37 and not the spring chicken I used to be!

So my aim is now to be as fully rested for game days as I can be so my training is sub maximal at best and even when my HRV app says I can train intensely, I will only train with "intensity" on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

With all of that in mind, here's what I've been up to:

Rehab - for my lower back rehab I started using a technique that I'd been reading about for a while now but had never actually performed called Be Activated which is a muscle activation technique made popular by a South African physio Doug Heel. I'll probably do a long winded post on this very soon but you can read a bit about here. He's just come to Australia for the 1st tome this past April so it's very new to Australia but of course Jonny-on-the-spot (me) had his dvd's prior to that as I couldn't attend any of his courses. Anyway they're pretty fantastic and now serves as much warm up for training and games.

Lower Body Strength - so even though my lower back came "running/sprinting good", it has taken a lot longer to become "gym good", especially in regards to deadlifts and squats. The back just wasn't feeling spinal loading that well  so I had to find some alternatives. So to train the deadlift pattern I opted for romanian deadlifts after working up to those with 1 dumbbell deadlifts off a step - an exercise I use with 1st session beginner clients in the studio - that's how little loading I could use initially. I worked these up pretty slowly and have just "maxed out' this week on those. The 2nd alteration I had to make was to get rid of back or front squats and use a modified landmine / belt squat which worked sensationally up to a point.

It's a bitch to set up and to be honest you probably couldn't get it happening in a public gym but I own my studio so I can do what I want!! I think this set is with 105kgs which I could do no worries but when I tried to amp it up to 125 it was too hard to load up and move the step away on my own - with a partner it would be fine though. No spinal loading, no worries.

Lower Body Explosiveness - there is a huge correlation between standing long jump and acceleration sprinting speed.

 
So as my pulling up from games ability has somehow left me in the last year and a bit (upsetting), I need to find alternative ways to train speed. I'm playing deep full forward out of the square this year so all my running is pretty much 90 - 95% sprints during a game so I only need to supplement that with something to assist with speed development. So I have just come off a 3 week cycle of sub maximal standing long jumps which I will retest next week. Training sub maximally means you train at around 70 - 90% and the focus is on practicing the lift but with limited fatigue build up. I did 8 x 3 at 75% of pre tested distance, 8 x 2 at 80% then 8 x 2 at 85%.

Program Design - now that I have built my strength back up I can now program for strength maintenance through speed strength and strength speed methods but also with some auto regulation thrown in to manage fatigue and to make sure that only quality work is being performed to again minimise fatigue. I've made up 3 parameters that I'll use in my training:

Speed - more reps then secs time per set (5 reps in 3secs for example)

Power - same reps in same secs time per set (5 reps in 5secs for example)

Force - less reps then secs time per set (2 reps in 5secs for example)

I haven't quite worked this out yet but I have a fair idea of what my max numbers are so I can gauge what training effect I'm after for that day (speed, power or strength) then use the recommendation from above for whatever I choose to train.

Schedule - just a quick bit on my schedule you must be aware by now that I don't train with my team because of work commitments so I can set my own schedule which so far this year has been upper body Tuesday, lower body Wednesday and Upper body again Thursday which seems to be working well as far as being fresh for game day is concerned. I can't train everything I want to train though but that can be a good thing as then I'm only including the absolute necessities and seeing as though 80% of your results will come from 20% of the things you do, making that 20% is critical.

Amateur vs Elite GPS Comparison

Today I just want to point you towards 3 articles I've come across the last few weeks.

The first one is GPS data collected from an actual AFL team over 4 quarters from a world renown strength and conditioning coach's site Mladen Jovanovic and can be found here.

It can be quite hard to read but if you click on the csv file link in the first sentence you can have a look at it in excel spreadsheet and it makes a bit more sense.

It covers 199 different categories!

Do take some time to have a good look at it though as it may just help you with your own game in regards to what you do and don't do on a regular basis.

The second and third articles are both from the VAFA (the best amateur league here in Melbourne) that shows the GPS readings from 2 of their top line players and can be found here and here.

It shows the following for each player:

Amateur Player - Jack Bull

Position –Nomatic (midfield, wing, interchange)

Total Distance – 15.06kms

Average Speed – 6.21kms/hr

25% of running time @ 13.5km/hr or faster of which 600m of that was above 21.6kms/hr which is zone 6 running (highest velocity/top speed)

Sprint Efforts – 106 @ 16kms/hr or faster

Amateur Player - Tom Humphrey

Position – utility but deep defender who goes with the best forward runner

Total Distance – 14.7kms

Zone 6 Running – 285m

Top Speed – 30.71kms/hr

Walking – 1km more then Jack from ball being at other end

You constantly here of mates saying "this bloke could have played AFL if he wanted to' but that's simply not true. "Wanting to" includes wanting to work harder then everyone else and that;s exactly what you need to do to reach some of these numbers.

These amateur blokes are reaching AFL-type GPS readings but certainty aren't playing AFL but it shows how close you can be to 'the standard" but so far away for 1 reason or another.

GPS units are becoming more common in local/amateur footy so if you have the chance to get a hold of one definitely give it a go and see how you fare.

Heart Rate Variability

Keeping to the subject of personalising your own training to fit you and no one else, we move to heart rate variability (HRV) testing, which refers to assessing your physical and mental state of mind. This can be done through specific iphone app's which can help dictate how hard you should train on a given day. It could replace, or be combined with, using rate of perceived exertion and the manual method of monitoring fatigue during the season of which I have posted about previously.

To start with there are 2 regulatory mechanisms of the body, the autonomic nervous system (ans) and the neuro endocrine system (nes). The ans is then broken down further into the parasympathetic nervous system (pns) and the sympathetic nervous system (sns). Both of these are part of the fight or flight equation:

PNS - Flight

SNS - Fight

The ANS is stimulated when the brain senses any form of challenge and once it is activated, it stimulates the output of cortisol, a stress fighting but fat storing hormone. Adrenaline is also increased which keeps us alert by increasing heart rate and blood pressure by quickly mobilising energy reserves, while cortisol works more slowly to help replenish energy supplies.

All of these adaptive changes is called allostasis which refers to maintaining stability, or homeostasis, through change.

I bet we've all played with the bloke who has a bit of white line fever and gets quite ramped up during games - this is from him being in a very sympathetic state which for competition, is actually essential.

On the flip side we've all played with that bloke who looks like he's barely awake who pretty much stays in a parasympathetic state regardless of the "challenge'.

The biggest trick though is to be able to interchange through both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.

So you're on the ground and going like a bat of hell (how bad was Meatloaf that time?) and you blow up and it's time to head to the bench to recover. In order for you to recover in as fast a time as possible you need to swiftly move into a parasympathetic state to slow your rate down and to start shifting your body back to homeostasis (normal).

Thinking long term, training with high volumes and intensities means you enter a sympathetic dominant state very often which is fine, but during this time when you feel a bit rundown, have trouble sleeping and have a lack of appetite compared to normal, then you're getting stuck in the SNS and not shifting back to the PNS. This means that you're not really recovering enough and sooner rather them later, you're body might make you take a break through illness, or even injury.

Taking heart rare variability is something you do everyday to get a gauge at how your body is tracking against your playing stress, training stress and outside stressors because they all add up. Once you overflow the "stress" cup, it can take a while to get rid of this excess build up. This means that relationships, food quality and alcohol can also have a big effect on your readings.

I have recently started using an app called HRV4Training for my own heart rate variability. There are others on market such as bioforce and iathlete that are the go-to app's for this but they require a compatible heart rate monitor and mine is non-compatible.

HRV4Training provides a lot of funky readings but the ones I look at is the day's reading, how it compared to yesterday and also how it compares to my baseline. I also keep track of resting heart rate and rMSSD reading too which the creator told me is the equivalent of a HRV reading from the other app's. The app does this in 1 single 60sec measurement that you'd take immediately upon waking. I do it while I'm actually still in bed!

The home screen tells you your assessment today, yesterday's assessment and you're baseline based on the last 7 days.

It provides with 1 of 3 tips to program your training for the day.

#1 - Your condition has improved since yesterday and is above baseline so go hard today

#2 - Your condition has worsened since yesterday and its below baseline so take it easy today

#3 - Your condition has worsened for 2 days in a row so take today off.



So the app takes your daily reading then tells you what you should do with your training today. In the above image you can see that I registered 7.9 which was lower then the day before and also lower then my baseline so it suggests I take it easy today. So instead of doing that hard repeat sprint session I had planned, I would opt for a recovery based session today so hopefully I improve for tomorrow and can go hard then.

Now you don't have to live your life by what it tells you to do, it might be game day where it says to take a day off, but what you can do there is go back to your monitoring and rate of perceived exertion tables and find correlations between your scores and your 'low' days which should be able to help you alter your training and lifestyle accordingly.

UPDATE - I have read many times that you should never go against the HRV reading and yesterday was the proof in the pudding. At the moment I've just started a depth jumping cycle which requires pretty much stresses the nervous system more then anything of which I started last week. I was coming off a day off and 2 full days since my last depth jumping session so I "should" have been rested and ready to go. I did nothing on the weekend or new years eve so there was no reason to not get a good HRV score come Monday.

My test gave me a reading of 7.4 against the previous days 8.4 against my baseline of 7.9 which said take a day off training but being as it's the off season then I can train and make up the rest later if I need to.

About 3/4's of the way through my workout which was feeling fine, I felt a 1% twinge in the lower back between sets. Something I've probably felt a million times before without repercussion. Except this time! Language Warning!!

I did my 9th set of power cleans and the back went which it does probably once a year in the 1st part of the year when my training load is at it's highest but I was determined not to do it this year...and failed miserably.

The lesson is to not go against the HRV reading so if it says take it easy then limit any activities that have a history with making you sore, run down or injured.

Rate of Perceived Exertion

In the past I have mentioned the use of auto regulation in your training which refers to training "on the fly' but using a set point of load or rep speed to decide how far and how hard you'll push a particular session.

For example you might have a max of 100kgs but you reach 90kgs and it feels pretty heavy. The speed is slow so you have a fair idea that today isn't one for setting personal bests, or even trying them, so you might just do a few extra sets of 2 - 3 reps at 85 - 90% of that 90% and call it a day. 

Rate of perceived exertion is a similar concept but you assign "perceived effort level" to each exercise. You might have used %'s before but this method can be flawed as you would base the %'s off your max, but as described above, your 1 off max isn't your everyday max, so that moderately hard 85% day can quickly turn into a ball breaking 95% day which, in regards to recovery, could stuff your whole week up!

RPE refers to how hard a set feels or how far away you are from failure you are in regards to "reps left in the tank'. For example you might do a set of 5 reps @ 80kgs. After the set you think you could probably have done 7 reps at that load.

The table looks like this:

RPE x 10 = 0 reps left in the tank
RPE x 9 = 1 rep left in the tank
RPE x 8 = 2 or 3 reps left in the tank
RPE x 7 = 3 reps left in the tank with good bar sped and acceleration
RPE x 6 = fast bar movement with minimal effort

So instead of working up to a % of load which can be different each day as described above, work up to a rep number at a particular RPE such as 5 reps at a 9 RPE where you'd finish the exercise when you perform a set at a load that will allow only more rep.

Then move on to your assistance work.

To take this a step further you can assign RPE 's to your other sessions too for speed and aerobic / anaerobic conditioning and include this in your activity load monitoring from last week to again pick up on trends against increased and decreased performance.

Monitoring Fatigue During the Season

After a 3 - 4 month flogging it's finally time to get some actual game time with practice matches being scheduled to start in the next week or two for most clubs.

There's nothing like that first 5 minutes of the first practice match, especially if it involves a big tackle, to really take the wind out of your sails in a pinch!

With practice games comes 1 solidarity weekly goal, with that goal being game day Saturday. During the off and pre-season you can train continually regardless of fatigue build up (to a degree) with the end goal being how you perform in the months after you started training (during games).

This means that you can train any day you like and you can induce pretty much as much fatigue as you like because you can always throw a rest day or 2 in the mix. If you're a little tired going into the first team training session of the week then it's not the end of the world.

Come the in-season though and this all needs to change because you need to "peak" each and every Saturday for the next 20 - 25 weeks.

This will require personal fatigue monitoring each and every day.

All AFL, VFL and some of the upper amateur teams use some form of athlete monitoring to individualise player training loads so as not to prescribe too much for those not fully recovered, or too little for those who had less game time and thus less fatigue to recover from. If you have access to GPS data for training then this can work even better but 99% of us don't.

The advantage of using a personal fatigue monitoring is that by keeping track of various internal and external factors, you can correlate these with periods of tiredness and less then stellar performances on game day.

This means you can avoid insanity - doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

So each day as soon as you wake up you'll monitor the following:

Sleep - Duration of Sleep + Quality of Sleep. You could also track if you dream or not which is the point of your sleep where the best regeneration occurs and you don't have to remember what you actually dreamed of, just if you did or not.

Mental Stress - had a blow up with the missus? Someone stole your seat on the bus? Anxious? Big exam coming up? All these things can have an affect on your stress levels and thus performance output.

Soreness - lingering soreness from the weekend? New soreness from training? Nagging back pain that comes and goes?

Fatigue - hopefully you know what you're peak fitness feels like when you're at your at your absolute freshest.

Motivation - to train and to play. Are you keen as mustard to play today or happy that game day is still a few days away?

Mood - compare this to your normal mood/personality.

Apart from hours of sleep, rate each of these 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 with 1 being the best so with 6 sections to assess the highest score you can get is 30 which means you get the week off!!

Resting Heart Rate - take this each morning in bed as soon as you wake up. Take a 10 second reading and multiply it by 6.

Protein - 1 serve equals something about the size of the palm of your hand.

Veggies - 1 serve equals 1 cup

Fruit - 1 serve equals 1 piece or a palm size

Cheat Food/Drink - refers to all processed foods that come in a box and all drinks that isn't water or a low sugar sports drink.

Beers/Ciggies - put in how many you had on each day...BE HONEST!

Again what you're looking for is the correlation between your high scores, poor performance and (hopefully not), injury.

This way you can avoid the pitfalls next time around and at a minimum it will make you very aware of things like getting to bed earlier.

I'll be starting mine Monday morning.

Here's what it looks like in table form (click on to get the full table):

UPDATE - Even at the elite level, if you can have your best players play most, if not all games, then you'll have a successful season. At local/amateur level this is even more crucial because we don't have 30 senior made players on every list so games lost with injury can destroy your once optimistic finals aspirations. I'm actually in the process of putting together a pretty detailed but (hopefully) easy to use athlete monitoring program for local/amateur teams to use that won't require a professional strength and conditioning coach to use. Let me know if you're team might be interested in this!                                                    

A Simple Look at Aussie Rules Footy Fitness Part 2

Earlier this year I did a post that gave some insight into the different energy systems to train and how to train each of them.

This post will give you an insight into the order of which to train these energy systems during the year.

I'm going to write this out as though I am in charge of a footy team from the 1st day of their off season. This will mean that I won't be starting 'again" come team pre-season training, it will build on what is laid out from the off season phase.

Please refer to post linked above for recommendations for each energy system training requirement.

Off-Season Energy Systems Training

This refers to the time between you're last game and the 1st night of pre-season training so we're looking at about 8 weeks.

Goal 1 - Alactic Power

Goal 2 - Aerobic Capacity

Alactic power is the top of the pyramid in regards to energy systems for team sports. The fastest players are generally the best players and is what can set an AFL player apart from an elite VFL footballer. All things being equal, the fastest bloke will get drafted every time and some blokes get drafted purely on speed, in the hope they can be coached to an elite level.

You'll use a short sprints and mostly sub maximal intensity for 4 weeks then increase the intensity and then the distance slightly, in the next 4 weeks.

Aerobic capacity is what you probably already do by going for a few 10km runs per week which is fine, but you need to make sure that you're staying within a heart rate zone that will build actual capacity and not build up fatigue for 2 reasons.

Reason 1 is that speed cannot, and will not, be increased in the presence of fatigue. Reason 2 is that it's October and you can';t be breaking down the body 11 months from finals time or you'll find yourself in a hole you won;t be able to get out recovery wise.

You'll start at the low end of the duration scale and a heart rate of 130 - 150 beats starting at the low end and progressing to the top end over the 8 weeks.

Pre-Season Energy Systems Training

This refers to the start of team pre season. and we'll split this into 2 portions of pre and post Christmas.

Pre-Christmas Goal 1 - Alactic Power

Pre-Christmas Goal 2 - Aerobic Capacity

These goals remain the same but the training will be different. These 2 energy system qualities take the longest to gain so it stands to reason they get the longest training time.

Alactic power will shift to near maximal intensity and slightly longer distances then you ended with pre-Christmas. Just remember that actual max speed can only be held for 2 - 3secs max so use set distances that are too long for actual speed development erring on the shorter side if anything.

Christmas Break Energy Systems Training

This refers to the time between your last pre-Christmas team training session and you're 1st post Christmas team training session. We're looking at 3 - 4 weeks here which is plenty of time to slack off and lose a lot of your benefits from last year. Your goal here is to at least maintain where you are and with a few extra days off you might actually find yourself faster during this time from extra recovery.

Post-Christmas Energy Systems Training

Work back from your 1st practice game to the start of post-Christmas pre-season training to see how many weeks and sessions you;ll have between now and then which will determine how long each goal will be the main focus for.

Post-Christmas Goal 1 - Aerobic Power

Post-Christmas Goal 2 - Lactic Power

After 2 or so weeks of finishing up alactic power ans aerobic capacity development, we'll now move to a few more goals, while maintaining alactic power with low volume, high intensity training as you can maintain it with as little as 30 - 50% of the volume you used to build it, so long as intensity is maximal.

Aerobic development will also be maintained with some specific drills for it as well a greater emphasise on skill drills which can also be performed at an aerobic capacity type intensity.

Again remember when you're training the power side of anything you need full rest between sets so plan some easy skill drills between these sets.

After 3 - 4 weeks of aerobic and alactic power now we can head into alactic capacity. You can't build high capacity if you have low power so ensure that power is trained, and improved upon before capacity. If you're not fast for 1 set then how can be fast for 5 or 10 sets? You can't.

You'll need to be a programming demon at this point because you now need to address alactic power, aerobic capacity, aerobic power, alactic power and now alactic capacity all at once.

Plan the bulk of your energy systems work prior to your 1st practice match as those early games will build more fatigue then any other games you play for the year as the body gets accustomed to the intensity of change of directions and contact/bumps.

You'll also struggle to implement your game plan effectively if you're still slugging it out on the track 2 a week and going into games already half knackered so the focus for training is on high quality with "some" volume that will decrease from week to week until round 1 where you want to be at your peakiest best!

This is all laid out for you in the Ultimate Footy Training Manual so get your hands on one before it's too late to do something about it and round 1 is on top of you!

I've actually got a 25% off offer at the moment if you go via this link: https://payhip.com/b/VS0B

                                                     

How I Rehabbed in 24 Hours...Must Read!

My training is pretty full-on at the moment. I'm currently doing 5 gym sessions and 5 track sessions per week.

Last Monday saw me in the gym warming up for a lower body sesh when on my last warm up squat set, my back went. Technique was fine, the load was easily doable but still being a warm up set, the back wasn't into it.

Once, maybe twice a year, my back will do this for no real reason but I have had some pretty bad back pain in the past which I've managed to starve off from proper training.

I suspect that this time it was my body telling me to ease up a bit and it was making me do it - you can't tell the nervous system what to do sometimes, it will make you do things you don't want to do!

If you've read any of the pain science stuff coming out these days, a great deal of chronic pain is from your brain. For example if you had a lower back issue for a couple of weeks and it clears up then the injury is gone and so it shouldn't hurt again for no reason now should it?

Except every now and then it does of which I'll explain in a future post, but the gist of it is that your experiences, beliefs and even culture can influence how you deal with pain.

I am of the thinking that I can bounce back from an injury which I always do, and that simple act alone helps immensely.

Anyway I hurt my back during squats which registered about a 6 or 7 out of 10 for pain/discomfort compared to some other back issues I've had. I could walk right after it which was a good sign - I had an episode where i was on my own in the gym for about 45mins and I literally couldn't move - that hurt!

Anyway I went straight home and had a nap for about 90 minutes, which is actually when you regenerate.

During the day I heat packed until I had to go back to work with not a lot of improvement.

I went in early to start some rehab and here's what I done:

1. Supine Breathing x 10 breathes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Cmffcm5Tk
2. Breathing Long Lever Deadbugs x 8/leg - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXtV1Co6TaY
3. Band Glute Bridge 5 x 10 second holds (just wrap a band around your knees and don't let it push your knees in during the set) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c99KVL25K2s
4. Prone Stability Hold x 5 breathes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOUvzQkSpZs

That little circuit worked pretty well for a 5 minute rehab session. I dd 2hrs worth of clients and repeated that before I went home.

I heated again before bed, applied heat cream of some sort and went to bed.

I could still feel the back in bed during the night but I could move a bit without aggravating it too much, so another good sign there.

The next morning rolls around it feels a lot better but the pain/stiffness is still there. It's really more stiffness then anything because when there is trauma somewhere in the body the body will protect the area by tensing all the muscles around it to stabilise the area, and also to stop you trying to move into a position that could cause further injury.

This is the number reason why immediate rehab can be your best cause of action, not ice/rest/ice for days on end.

Fun Fact - ice really only works on reducing swelling for 8 - 12 hours of which then you want to turn to heating and moving the injured area to promote blood flow and thus healing.

So I did my morning clients and repeated the rehab stuff again and was feeling alright enough to do the upper body session planned for the day. I will always train upper body if I have a lower body / lower back injury and it also helps greatly, ALWAYS, so do it!

I had a bunch of testing to do the day before on the track so feeling alright I thought I'd head down and see what I could do, if anything at all.

So I hobbled through my first 20 meter sprint, which definitely was not a sprint and certainly wouldn't have looked like it. I timed it and recorded a 3.28 second sprint. Not bad I thought considering my personal best was 2.94.

I did 2 more sprints and my times kept increasing but the pain and stiffness wasn't decreasing at the same rate. My right side felt very unstable initially but came along to the point that on my 7th or 8th sprint I managed to record a 2.82 second 20 meter sprint. I was happy enough with that and called it a day for those.

I did a 30 meter sprint that tied at 3.97 seconds against a personal best of 3.72 seconds and again I was happy so I just did 1 set of those.

The back was feeling fine so I continued on with a 30sec aerobic power test followed by a 6 x 30 meters every 30 seconds repeat speed test.

Back was near perfect by the end of it.

Whatever perceived threats there had been had totally been destroyed by continuing to find a way to train. The worse thing you can do is stay still as the brain has no reason to release the protective tension.

I even managed to follow that session up with a 12 minute run for distance with no problems at all pain wise, but it had taken a bit out of me and I didn't really get the result I was hoping for. I improved but not quite as much as I was gunning for but I'll test again in a few weeks in perfect health and see how I go.

In the end after that Monday morning where I hurt myself I managed 9 sessions in the 5 days following the initial injury.

UPDATE - I wasn't doing any HRV stuff at this time but I'd guarantee my life on it that the day I hurt myself, my reading would have indicated a rest day and my resting heart rate would have been elevated far above my baseline figure. One way to avoid injury is to assess your body's readiness everyday day as you'll rarely, if ever, get injured when you're at your peak fitness - only when you're a underdone in meeting the demands of a game from time off from the game, low training base etc.