Today we'll touch how we can specifically maintain strength, muscle mass, speed and endurance during the season all of them can be done if you dedicate a little extra time to train.
Strength and Muscle Mass
I'll pair these together as a lot of players think they are one of the same when they are really by products of each to a certain degree but are also attained with 2 very different types of training protocols.
Strength basically refers to how much weight you can lift for a certain exercise. It's all relative of course but generally a set that is 5 reps and under will be a display of strength.
Hypertrophy refers to actually increasing the cross sectional area of a given muscle and is attained by using sets of 8 - 15 reps using the continuous tension principle.
It basically comes down to the use it or lose it principle too. Give the body to use what you have and it will preserve it. If not then all your hard work was in vain.
So for strength at a bare minimum you should aim to perform one exercise for the upper and lower body each week. Now to keep fatigue at bay you want these sets to be low reps and also use low sets to keep the volume down. The important thing here though is also to keep the intensity high so if you built your strength up to 100kgs for a given exercise, then using 70kgs won;t maintain your strength.
You should strive to hit at least 90% of your off season maximum weight during one lower or upper body exercise per month.
For a host of reasons you might not be able to train at the level you did in the off season so you might need to use a wave like approach throughout each month and schedule that into your training, much like Eric Cressey does with a lot of his training:
Week 1 - high intensity which may equate to 80 - 85% at your heaviest wt
Week 2 - moderate intensity which may equate to 70 - 80% at your heaviest wt
Week 3 - very high intensity which may equate to 85 - 95% at your heaviest wt
Week 4 - deload / low intensity which may equate to 40 - 60% at your heaviest wt
As you can see you alternate harder weeks with easier weeks to fluctuate the training stress.
Now depending on your recovery abilities from resistance training (which will correlate with your training experience more then likely), you may opt to do 2 exercises for both upper and lower body or 2 for upper body and 1 for lower body each week respectively but if one of those options seems to be hindering your recovery before game day then less is better in this case.
Now that we have strength maintenance taken care of we can easily address muscle maintenance by simply ingesting enough calories to sustain what we have. The heavy lifting from the strength maintenance is enough for the body to realise that it still needs it's newly attained muscle mass so now you only need to fulfill the other factor in gaining muscle.
Of course this doesn't mean to just eat what you want, you still need a lot of high quality food to maintain a high performance level all year round. Not that I'm into calorie counting much but a ball park figure to go by for those who do would be about 17 - 18 calories per pound of bodyweight and see how that goes.
If you do see yourself losing strength from week to week then you're either not eating enough, lifting heavy enough or simply putting enough into your recovery overall.
Speed
As mentioned in the first post of this series, you don't need to spend a great deal of effort on developing speed but whatever you do do, each rep of each set needs to be of the highest quality. Now take into account that you'll do a fair bit of sprinting within your actual team training on a Tuesday and Thursday so it's a great idea to take some time on your own to maintain your speed though various low level, quick response plyometrics which can be as easy as 2 exercises performed after your warm up such as ankle hops, level ground and low barrier jump variations keeping all sets under 10secs in duration to minimise fatigue.
Endurance
Endurance is probably the easiest one here to maintain simply because we all have Tuesday and Thursday night training and a game on a Saturday.
Tuesday nights are usually reserved the longer ball drills and if you've been flogged on the weekend, another flogging on the track. This is the perfect time to try and get some extra kilometers into the legs so get involved in the drills, don't just stay on the hats. Run off to receive any fumbles or just be their support. Any running will be of help here.
Thursdays are usually reserved for quick, short and sharp sessions and is more a 'focus" and skills session then anything else.
Last year I played without training throughout the year (I might got down there once I think for a 30mins session on a Thursday) so the only running I got was during the game on a Saturday. Now granted I was only playing reserves but I was playing in the midfield for 75% of the year and thus had to run more then I ever have in years and I saw great boosts in endurance simply from that one game session a week. You tend to run harder and for longer during a game when the ball is rolling around so you can really make some in roads here if you start behind the others. Also make good use of split rounds, weekends off and byes as it essentially gives you 2 - 4 extra days to play with, training wise.
AFL coaches often play some top line stars in the NAB Challenge games out in the country simply to get more running volume into them if they need it.
This series has just been a brief rundown on what you can do to maintain your strength and fitness during the season. I never know why many players do plenty of weights during the off season but as soon as the season starts, the weights gather dust. I did that plenty of times when I was a youngster and then I'd have to start all over again when I started back up with them in October, essentially getting nowhere in the long term.
If your training is consistent, then you'll improve from year to year. If you stop training then you lose whatever you gained, thus you actually become a little more effective on the ground. This really underlines the importance of maintaining your strength and fitness during the season.
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