An effective in-season training program should be about improving and continuing to peak your players for the end of the season – playoff time. Why would you want your players to be at their best for camp and only try to maintain their performance level throughout the season? With the added stresses on the body that come with being in-season, it can be more challenging. However, paying attention to a few key concepts and having a plan in place can go a long way. Understanding the athlete’s level of fatigue, recovery concepts, incorporating potentiating methods, and analyzing the actions that the athlete is displaying on the field will all help to insure that your athletes will be peaked for crunch time of the season and not just camp.
Before going any further, I would first like to define what I mean by improving during the season. It isn’t about building up their bench, squat, clean or decreasing their 40 time. It is about seeing their on-field performance and on-field speed continuing to improve. Is the receiver creating more separation? What is happening with the first step of the defensive lineman? How is the offensive lineman handling the point of contact? Does the running back still have breakaway speed? These are the type of questions you should be asking and analyzing to determine if the players are improving throughout the season.
In order to know how much stress you can put on an athlete during a training session you, as a coach, have to have some way to gauge how “fatigued” the player is. There are a lot of different types of fatigue that the player could be experiencing; e.g., muscular based, neuromuscular based, etc. Determining what type of fatigue the athlete has is beyond the scope of this article. The more important questions to answer are: is the athlete fatigued, and how much? Understanding these questions will help guide you in designing a program for constant improvement throughout the season. To measure this, I track the athlete’s Reactive Ability throughout the season. Reactive Ability is the switch from stretching to active contraction using the elastic energy of the stretch to increase the power of the subsequent contraction. (Verkhonshanky, Y. and Siff, M. Supertraining. Ultimate Athlete Concepts, 2009.)
I measure this by getting their Reactive Strength Index. Every session during the season I will have my players perform a 4 Jump Reactive test using a Jump USA jump mat. This allows you to get the average time on the ground as well as the average jump height for 4 consecutive jumps. To calculate the Reactive Strength Index (RSI) you divide the jump height by the ground contact time.
Average Jump Height/ Average Ground Contact Time = Reactive Strength Index (RSI)
The Reactive Strength Index will give me an idea of how their bodies are handling all of the stresses put on it, both physical (football activity and training) as well as mental and emotional that could be accumulating outside of football and training activities. The expectation is to have their RSI continually increase. This would tell you that their body is handling the stresses put on it just fine. If there is any drop off of the RSI number, you need to assess why. It could be they’re getting too much stress or the wrong type of stress, as well as many other things. The art of being a coach is figuring this out and making the necessary adjustments.
Arguably, the most important element of in-season training is recovery. An athlete that isn’t doing things to recover from the stresses of the season is just going to get worn down and his performance will start to suffer and you will see their RSI go down. There are a lot of different things that will help to speed up the recovery process. Making sure the athlete gets proper sleep and nutrition are of the utmost importance. Without those there is very little you can do as a coach in order to improve their performance on the field. I will have the players’ report their hours of sleep on a daily basis, so I can track any abnormal patterns and get on top of it right away. Most recovery methods will require the athlete to be diligent outside of training in order to truly be effective. Take myofascial release, which aims to relax contracted muscle tissue and improve blood circulation. Rolling out for just a couple of minutes every 2-3 days won’t change the muscle integrity. In my experience, I have found in order to change the muscle integrity, one has to spend at least 3-5 minutes in one specific area on a consistent basis, at least daily. However, even that will vary depending on severity and area of tightness.
There are a couple of methods in my in-season training sessions that I feel help get the athlete to recover for better performance on the field. The first, which I feel is the most beneficial, is always asking the question, “Is that the way I want it to look like on the field?” I do this with every exercise (from warm up to the session itself) performed during the season. It doesn’t matter if it is a squat, lunge, or deadlift. I want my players to be able to get through the range of motions and use the techniques that they will experience on the field. I have often found, without continual emphasis throughout the season, optimal positions will be lost leading to inefficient movement patterns. However, with just placing the importance on getting to the optimal positions that I want to see and that they should feel on the field, efficient movement patterns will go a long way to sustaining and even improving them.
The other recovery method is an exercise which aims to decompress the spine. It is a glute ham hang. You assume the bottom position of a 2 leg hyper extension and just relax everything in your body feeling your vertebrae decompress or pull apart. The real key in order to get the most relaxation is to relax your tongue or as I tell my athletes let your tongue hang in the top of your mouth. I have the athlete hold for at least 1 minute but let them continue to hold as long as they would like. This will aid in recovery through improved circulation as well as helping to lengthen the spine.
Assuming that an athlete’s RSI is at a level which allows me to continue to add stress, I will take the athlete through a potentiation workout the day before a game. Yes, the day before a game. It is actually the workout that will have the highest intensity of the week, but also will have the lowest volume by far. It is imperative to understand what the goal of the workout is. It is to make sure the whole movement is efficient. Then to optimize the actions (based of the position and individual) which means to “tighten” the muscles that will lead to greater output with a stretch load. Thus, it is different always based on the player and the position that they play.
As with any of my training protocols, the position that is being honed in comes first and foremost. This potentiating day is about grooving the body for how I want it to perform during the game. From there I will begin to work on grooving the ground reaction forces (GRF). This can vary from the directional forces to even reaction forces. I will then move into the actions that will occur for the given athlete on the field, both from a position standpoint as well as an individual improvement standpoint. The actions I’m talking about are Eccentric (loading) Speed, Reactive Strength, Rate of Force Development, among others. I look at this from a global (entire body) and local (specific actions at specific joints) standpoint. In the early part of the season I will focus mostly from a global standpoint, unless there is something that really stands out with a given athlete. As the season goes on, I will start to incorporate more local exercises. Actions that I focus on for skill positions tend to be more Eccentric and Reactive (speed and ability) in nature, where as I will focus more on Rate of Force Development and Eccentric Strength with linemen.
As far as GRF go, I will look at how the athlete is producing forces from a directional and reactive force stand point. If the athlete’s action on the field gets too high, then I will use directional jumps to groove how they should be pushing the ground. If a lineman fires out high, then I will use a horizontal jump from their stance position. Or, if a wide receiver is high out of his break, I will use a one legged jump in the direction of his break. It could be a 45 degree jump for a post corner or 180 degree for a comeback route.
Enhancing actions such as Eccentric Speed, Reactive Ability, and Rate of Force Development can be very demanding on the body so you need to prescribe and monitored the exercises closely. Things that will help with Eccentric Speed are anything that emphases the loading of the action. Kettlebell swings focusing on the downward speed, banded squats, Altitude Drops, and catching exercises are all ones that will focus on Eccentric Speed. For Rate of Force Development, I include things such as Explosive Isometrics, jumps from a pause position, and loaded jumps. I use things such as reactive jumps (single and multiple response), over speed concentric jumps, and with advanced athletes I use Depth Jumps, for Reactive Ability.
From a global to local standpoint and the transition from of one to the other, it is every tricky and to fully understand it is beyond the scope of this article. But, to give a glimpse into what I look at, it tends to be bilateral to unilateral and total body to just upper or lower body (bag catches to push up drops for Eccentric Strength for the upper body). Even in the later weeks of the season when you are focusing on local exercises for the athletes that can handle it, you should always end the session with a global movement. Have a receiver run the route you are working, have the defensive lineman do a pass rush, have offensive linemen come out of their stance and drive through the point of contact, or have a running back make a specific cutting action. As the player walks out the door, they should feel like they are ready to perform at that given instant more than ever before. That’s what a potentiating workout is about.
Correct in-season exercise prescription will depend on what’s happening on the field. You need to analyze it. The season is performance time. Look at what actions can be optimized and how. Is it a recovery or training issue? Are they local or global problems? Are the positions the athlete is getting to suboptimal for that individual? Do you need to increase range of motion of that action? It should be your goal to enhance your athletes’ movement. Understand it, and what’s happening, then enhance it.
All too often when the season comes around, athletic performance enhancement gets over looked from an improvement standpoint. As a coach you should always be trying to enhance what the athlete is capable of. Maintenance should not be a goal. Sometimes that might mean working on recovery methods. Other times it could be to potentiating the actions for the athlete. However, you will need to know what their body will be most responsive to whether it be recovery or enhancement methods. Prescribe correctly and you will have an athlete that is at their best during the crunch time of the season.