Training

As athletes if we are to separate ourselves from the pack the simple truth is that physical qualities such as strength, power and speed need to be developed year-round, In fact this is the standard in the era of modern sport science as you begin to push up to the higher levels. If we are to pursuit a career playing sport in the higher levels or even if we simply want to reach our highest personal potential as an athlete it makes sense to develop the same way. That is not to say that we perform workouts at a professional level standard and intensity but become accustomed to training in that format early.

But how do you squeeze it all in?

This is the greatest challenge for myself for a coach and where constant communication with the athlete is imperative. For higher level athletes they can have as much as 2-3 skills training sessions per week as well as games. This is where implementing high-low days can be a useful tool for example on a high day completing a high intensity-low muscle fatigue gym session in the morning and club skills/club session training in the afternoon. The following day after a big day of training (high day) the athlete will implement a low day. Ideally this could be a complete rest day or depending on the goals of the athlete and the stage of their development they could do a workout with low neural demand and low muscle fatigue such as aerobic work on the bike, mobility session or light skills drills. This prevents the athlete building too much fatigue during the week and the weekly split is organised so athletes are 100% fresh and ready to go for game day.

Training in-season the focus is taken from muscle hypertrophy (high volume high muscle damage) and shifted to high intensity low volume work such as strength and power development. Exercises such as compound strength lifts (low reps), Overcoming ISO’s and weighted jumps are perfect for developing strength and power in season as they cause low damage to muscle tissue. We can also hone in on any little niggles the athlete may have with mobility and rehab work, The second fantastic thing about an in-season program is it keeps an athlete on the track.

Strength is too important to neglect completely once the preseason period is over and an athlete who does that will have lost a lot of that hard-work put in over the summer by later on in the season. An in-season training program may not improve physical qualities at the same rate as the off season period however it will hold you well ahead of your opposition who has made the mistake of disregarding their gym work. By the time the season is over again an athlete who has kept training the whole way through will be miles ahead when the off-season period approaches again. This process is known as ‘stacking’ physical qualities year round.

Now that club training sessions are ramping up I have written this newsletter to hopefully act as a tool athletes can refer to and reflect on how the body is feeling and whether or not they are still in alignment with their goals.

Anyone can put together a brutal training program and it does not take any skill or knowledge to make an athlete tired and sore. Running a group of athletes into the ground or surviving an onslaught of endurance drills is not a badge of honour.

There is a window of opportunity when it comes to training where we hit that sweet spot to illicit an adaption without over training, this is called a ‘productive stressor’. More training volume on top of that in a given session is called ‘diminishing returns’ Ideally we want to dip out during the beginning of this process as the quality of the athletes training will begin to stagnate as well as physiological returns. If you continue to work past diminishing returns you will enter what is known as ‘negative returns’ this is completely undesirable as you will be working your way backwards from any effort you have put thus far into that session as well as inducing muscle fatigue that will inhibit the quality of the rest of the sessions for that week.

Monitor how you feel after a hard session that was built out of your own control and question whether you felt like the session was a productive stressor/diminishing return or a negative return. If you can hardly walk properly the next day I dare say it was the latter.

If you do too much and you can’t recover properly between sessions you will not improve!

Work hard, but work smart too and protect your goals at all costs even if it means making some tough decisions.
Kind regards, Marcus.

Utilising Pre-Game Primer Sessions for Athletic Performance

My athletes who already have a program with me will be accustomed to performing a pre-game day priming session around 24-48 hours before the match commences. These are an effective way to activate the athlete’s nervous system and fire up motor connections specific to game situation movements, This will have the athlete feeling primed up and ready to get an athletic edge over their opposition.

The sessions are short but high intensity. These can be aerobic, strength or explosive focussed workouts, I like to implement velocity/power based exercises such as sprints, wall switches and change of direction drills as this is generally the underdone quality for a lot of athletes in country WA. For my junior athletes we can get away with a little more volume if their fast twitch motor recruitment is not as developed. The athlete should not feel any fatigue after these sessions.

To a lot of athletes It seems counterintuitive to perform a workout the day before a game however studies showed use of a short and sharp priming session with controlled volume actually improved power output the next day by 5% (via a countermovement jump height test).

Simply by being up and about and moving the day before a game, priming sessions also have a positive psychological effect. When completely resting the day before a game to conserve energy it can have the compounding effect of feeling heavy and lethargic before the game, requiring more effort to ‘get going’ when the game begins.

If you want to perform on game day the key points to being primed and ready are to make sure you do activity (high intensity low volume is best) and make sure it is enough to have you feeling primed up and ready but not so much that it causes fatigue. If you would like some examples of priming session ideas feel free to contact me.
Thanks, Marcus.

The goal of training is to provide incremental workload on the body so that physiological adaptions can contribute to improved performance. To succeed in this, we must find the sweet spot between a healthy amount of workload whilst avoiding excessive overload with inadequate recovery.

It is also important to note that when it comes to training the body doesn’t recognise the difference between nervous system fatigue from physical exertion to external factors. External factors might include Illness, Hangovers, poor sleeping patterns, poor nutrition, injuries, stress and dehydration. If the body is fighting to try find an equilibrium from these external factors training performance is going to be reduced while recovery time is slowed. By trying to train through these issues you have now stacked another stressor on the body that the nervous system must deal with effectively sending yourself further backwards.

Long term training with excessive volume and/or intensity without sufficient rest and recovery or trying to recover under conditions of illness and nervous system fatigue is called ‘overtraining’. Depending on the extent in which an athlete has overtrained restoration of performance can take several weeks or months.
It is important for athletes to be able to recognise these signs early. It will begin in what’s called ‘acute fatigue’ (days to recover) then progress to ‘overreaching’ (days to weeks to recover) and eventually ‘overtraining syndrome’ (months). You’ll know when you are pushing into acute fatigue as you wont feel that usual ‘spark up’ after completing your first few exercises of your workout. Power will also be the first quality that will drop off ie jump height in a vertical jump will be significantly reduced.

The main point of this newsletter is to advise you that it is ok to put the pause on training whilst unwell and allow the body to heal and recover. During times of illness put effort into nutrition, sleep, hydration and even trying to get direct sunlight. Put time into the mind studying and reading about your sport/craft instead. If there is something in your life that is a constant stressor on the body work on trying to eliminate it rather than train through it. For me personally this was nightshift work.

Hope this helps, Cheers – Marcus.

Being brought up playing sport in Australia we have probably all been told at some point that in order to make it professional you need to be able to ‘run all day’. Or that you must do all your training under fatigue because it will simulate a game scenario. Training at F45 or doing HIIT or boxing classes might be encouraged because the muscles work while also getting some conditioning. Although being able to ‘run all day’ is certainly a good thing I’m going to explain to you why training under fatigue is only hitting one piece of the pie and how well our gym and velocity training at different rest periods actually ties in with sports performance by training all 3 energy systems.

The aerobic energy system contributes to slow and steady long term running capacity in games and improved recovery time between bursts of play. This system relies on the presence of oxygen to produce energy. This is developed with long slow steady cardio. Low intensity/ long duration.

The anaerobic energy system utilises carbohydrates in food broken down as blood glucose to deliver bursts of intense exercise that lasts 15-90 seconds, think laying a tackle or bouts of high intensity running. Example hypertrophy training in the gym or repeat effort running with 30 second rests.

The ATC-PC (Adenosine triphosphate – phosphocreatine) energy system is responsible for the most rapid production of energy. This is utilised when we need to apply a large amount of force very quickly and doesn’t last more than a few seconds eg jumping above the pack to take a mark. It is also the first energy system utilised during the first few seconds of exercise regardless of intensity. Eg Performing a 3RM squat with pauses between reps and 3 minute rest period, or maybe a 30m sprint with a 3 minute rest period. This can be summarised as high intensity, Low duration. This is the energy system that gets neglected the most when we do everything under fatigue yet will account for 40% utilisation of energy system demand in a game of soccer or Aussie rules football (Even greater demand in basketball and netball). Players like Dustin Martin and Patrick Dangerfield have a very developed ATC-PC energy system in that they can recruit huge amounts of force in a short amount of time – and they didn’t get there by doing mountain climbers or bicycle crunches over and over again.

Of course, these energy systems will all need to tie in and work together for each to function optimally. Lets say for a football athlete You suddenly need to increase your pace to get to a contest on the wing (ATC-PC/Anaerobic energy system) you then get there and fight for the footy at ground level before the ball spills over the boundary, you have a short rest to recover while the ball is thrown back in (aerobic energy system). Then the ball is thrown in and ball falls in your lap at the ruck contest, before you have time to think someone tries to tackle you and you aggressively fend them off with one sudden swift and strong high intensity push (ATC-PC energy system), You hand ball it off to a team mate, he kicks it up the wing and now you take off on a slow steady jog to get in position for the next contest (aerobic)

Do you see where I’m going with this?

A lot of us tend to see our own thoughts as a nonsensical series of images or inner voice that that doesn’t have much meaning. The truth is our collective of thoughts has a very real bearing on the reality that we create for ourselves and our collective of thoughts can either be used as a tool to create a reality that we desire, or an anchor that will drag us down.

Our collective of thoughts is what programs the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind has nowhere to hide in high performance sport. Examples of negative thoughts might include.

“I can’t compete with these opponents, they are more talented than me”

“I have a terrible set shot at goals”

“Why bother training so hard, its not like ill make it professional anyway”

These thoughts aren’t serving our goals so why do they need to be there anyway? By practising mindfulness and being aware of negative thoughts that don’t serve our greater purpose we can learn to block them out before they occur and build a robust strong mind that has no seeds of doubt come game day – Just you in the present moment and knowing exactly what skill to execute with pure focus and no delay. Also, with mindfulness we can practice self-love by understanding that mistakes are a part of the learning process and can be used as motivation to be the best athletic version of ourselves, not to beat ourselves up.

From here on when a negative thought process starts to come up think “stop” “Is this thought serving me and my goals” “is it going to get me where I need to be” and then replace it with the feeling of elation when a young fan asks you for an autograph or shivers down your spine when the crowd roars after you kick a goal from the boundary. If you believe in your goal with so much intent that you can visualise it so vividly then you better believe that goal is a reality for you! You just haven’t manifested it yet.