Do strength and conditioning coaches spend a proportionate amount of time considering the logistics of navigating a congested in season schedule in order to be able to provide any strength or power stimulus at all to your athletes, compared to the time spent scrutinising different methods you want to use to apply said stimulus? Possibly not. Here’s why they should.
Even most old school and “traditional” sport coaches can understand the benefit of doing extra strength and power work out of season. The off season is usually a period of focused strength work, where more time in a weekly schedule is allocated to gym work, and key for building muscle and strength in fields sports athletes. For those athletes, muscular strength and power underpins many of the physical qualities and actions that are required for their sport such as sprinting, jumping, changes of direction, and tackling. Therefore, it is vital that athletes build a good base of strength, power and muscular size during the out of season, in order to optimise their athletic potential in season.
However, we cannot simply just get as big and as strong as possible during the off season and then not go near the gym again for the rest of the year. From a technical and tactical point of view, if this was the case it would suit many coaches. But unfortunately for these coaches, they must allocate some of their contact time with players to gym work in order to at least maintain some of the muscle and strength built during the off season and preseason, or we risk our athletes becoming detrained as the season goes on.
For the S&C coach, planning in season strength and power training provides new challenges compared to the off season and preseason. All coaches love plans. Yearly, monthly, weekly, session plans, all thought out in advance, on nice, colour-coded spreadsheets. These plans are vital for establishing what you wish to achieve and creating a roadmap of how to achieve it, the principles of your training, the methods you will use, and the logistics of each session. This provides us with structure and gives us a reference point to go back to throughout the year should we get lost in the chaos of the typical field sport teams calendar. These plans are far easier to stick to out of season, with better coach and athlete buy-in, due to the stresses and strains of actual competition not yet being a factor.
However, come the in season, sticking to your original plan, no matter how well thought out it may have been, can become almost impossible for a multitude of reasons, therefore it is vital that you can be flexible in your approach to strength and power work with your athletes, in order to still hit your weekly targets in terms of the physical preparation of your athletes.
Before I discuss some of the obstacles that can get in the way of a well thought out training plan in season, let me first discuss some of the key areas we would be looking to maintain/improve in our athletes from a physiological perspective.
As previously mentioned, muscular strength and size, as well as force production capabilities underpins almost all of the important actions undertaken by athletes on the field from a physical perspective. Therefore, assuming you have managed to help your athletes attain these qualities in the off season, the focus should be on maintaining them as best you can, and further improving each if possible. How you do this is very much down to the coaches’ personal preferences, experience and resources available to the coach. In order to describe how it is possible to be flexible in your approach to in season strength and power training, I will give an example of what a typical week for a full-time athlete might look like in terms of the work needed to maintain/improve their physical capacities specifically, their muscular strength, size and power.
Typically, full time (and in some case part time) field sport athletes would perform 2- 3 resistance training based session with a focusing on moving heavier loads (75%+) to improve their absolute force production capabilities, high volume strength work in order to induce muscular adaptations with the aim of increasing/maintaining muscular size, and plyometric activities such as jumping, hopping, and bounding in order to the improve the athletes ability to absorb and create high amount of force rapidly.
Another key element to a field sports athletes’ preparation is the inclusion of eccentric exercises to improve the strength and capacity of commonly injured areas such as the hamstrings, quads, and adductors. The role of the S&C coach is to decide what variations of these exercises they wish to include, what frequency these exercises need to be performed, and at what volume and intensities. It is very hard to argue with the merit of this type of training for field sports athletes, and with a well-designed plan, these methods of physical preparation have been proven to increase the performance of athletes, as well as their robustness.
However, as previously mentioned, in contrast to out of season strength and power training plans, the design and implementation of an in-season strength and power plan, works far greater on paper than it does in reality. The evidence behind this type of physical preparation of athletes is well documented and very seldom disputed. But unfortunately, the many benefits of strength and power work do come at a cost. The methods of training mentioned above are all beneficial for the same reason. They provide a stress or a stimulus to the athletes, which elicits a response, and in turn an adaption to said stress, helping the athletes to their increase their capacity to cope with the demands of the game over time. This means that along with all the benefits to said training methods, there comes downsides too, such as soreness and fatigue, which is commonly an issue for athletes and sports coaches alike.
Having discussed how important this strength and power work can be for any team or athlete, let's discuss the wide variety of reasons it’s important to be flexible in your approach to getting this work done in season. One of the most common reasons why the purely physical side of training such as gym work may be scrapped on certain weeks is due to the frequency of matches that week. In sports like soccer, it's common that congested schedules may lead to athletes need to play games every 3 days, sometimes for weeks on end.
The same issues can arise for different reasons when it comes to GAA. In GAA games are usually spread out more, but it is also more common for athletes to play for multiples teams, be that school, college or county. A common theme for athletes at any level, is that once the games start to come thick and fast, gym work falls to the wayside. This may be acceptable to some degree, due to the priority of these competitive fixtures, but when this run of fixtures extends for weeks or even months, this can cause issues in terms of the physical readiness of the athletes. Because athletes are unable to take part in traditional gym sessions, they may be more likely to see a drop in their levels in strength and power, which can in turn expose them to a greater risk of injury on the field.
Traditionally, some athletes and coaches may feel, if the athletes can’t take part in formal gym sessions, then there is no strength work that can be done. This in fact isn’t the case. For example, if in your normal gym session, you aimed to work on eccentric strength of the hamstrings and quadriceps through the use of a deadlift and split squat variation, why not use a different variation of these exercises at a different time in the week. One solution to this specific issue is for the athletes to perform eccentric strengthening work for muscles such as the hamstrings and quads, on match day + 1.
Although this approach may not be ideal due to the athletes already being fatigued, and a possibly delay in the recovery process, if your schedule is heavily congested, it may be a valid option for minimising the loss of eccentric strength of these key muscles. Also this flexible approach may be more realistic logistically as coaches and athletes alike may perceive heavy loaded eccentric exercise such as deadlifts and squats to be damaging to performance in subsequent matches, whereas bodyweight eccentric exercises such as Nordics and reverse Nordics may not be perceived to be as much of a stressor to the athletes, despite still being a valid method for improving lower limb strength, therefore it may be easier to get greater buy in from athletes and sports coaches.
Another area that may suffer due to the priority of games and sport training over gym work is power development work. Many coaches include power work as part of their gym sessions, either as a block of work in itself, or combined with heavy strength training in the form of contrast training. Some coaches may feel that their athletes benefit more from contrast style strength and power work and may be worried about missing gym sessions, and the subsequent effect on their athlete’s performance. This is where it is important to focus the end goal of the style of training (making your athletes more explosive) as opposed to the method used to achieve it. Yes, gym-based contrast style training may be the coaches preferred method, however there are numerous ways to develop power in athletes outside of the gym. Plyometric blocks can be included as part of on pitch warmups, or in pre-hab blocks. They require little to no equipment, and usually aren’t very fatiguing once prescribed in the correct volumes initially.
This is where you may have to compromise on your ideal method of training in order to get some form of stimulus in, even if it is just the minimum effective dose. In the world of S&C, it's usually the athlete and coaches’ thoughts and opinions that take priority over those of the S&C coach. You can do your best to educate them on the “why” behind the need to do certain exercises or sessions on certain days, however this can fall on deaf ears, quite often due to either bad past experience with certain methods of training or even superstition. Building player buy in is one of the most important reasons why we need to be able to be flexible with our in-season approach to training. Often, we are so focused on our plan, we forget to think about the needs of the player and that often we may need to compromise in order to achieve the end goal in a way that the athletes feel is best suited to them.
If the star player on the team doesn’t like doing any strength or power work the week of a big game, but suddenly you find yourself with a run of very important games, extending a number of weeks or months, you’re going to have to find a way around this. Again, you can always try and educate the player on why they need to keep some of this work in their training week, however if they feel method of training you are using to provide the stimulus is going to affect their performance, it is a very hard sell. The inflexible (and stubborn) coach may deal with this by giving in and excluding the player from this work, or report it to management, highlighting it as a disciplinary issue, neither of these situations being beneficial to the athlete or S&C coach.
Whereas a flexible coach should be able to discuss the main areas of concern the player has in relation to the type of training they refuse to do and come up with a solution that minimises the possible negative effects the player feels, while still achieving the end goal of the coaches’ original plan for the whole team. This in turn builds player buy-in, and over time, players begin to appreciate your flexibility in terms of your own beliefs and the respect of theirs, which helps to build relationships with players making your job easier over time.
One caveat to what I have discussed in relation to flexibility of planning strength and power work in particular is that it requires the coach to be aware of the possible drawbacks of different methods of training, as well as their potential benefits to the athletes. You need to be aware that some methods of developing strength and power may be far more fatiguing than others. This needs to be factored into your approach as a novel stimulus from an already stressful exercise that may cause a lot of soreness or fatigue the week of a game is a surefire way to get yourself in the bad books of any players and lose some player buy in.
My aim here isn’t to highlight every possible reason you may need to adjust your in season training plans when working with field sports athletes in season. For that, you would need a series of books. The key point I’m trying to get across can be summarised by the quote below.
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” — Harrington Emerson
As a coach, you need to fully understand the principles behind what you’re trying to achieve when designing the in season strength and power work, and the many obstacles that the in season period can throw at you. Then you can create of library of different methods you can potentially call upon when certain obstacles are presented, such as congested fixtures, or player/coach attitudes toward styles of training. This way, you are still giving your athletes what they need (in some capacity) while also letting them think they are getting what they want. So, you should strive to try and build the plan that may not be perfect (as no plan will be for every athlete) but that is flexible and adaptable to many situations. As even the best plan, never acted upon, won’t have a chance to be effective.
Graham Norton is currently the lead strength and conditioning coach with Dundalk FC. He also works in Gaelic football with Castleknock GAA club and has previously been the head of strength and conditioning with Bohemian FC 1st team and U19 Squad. Graham is also co-owner and coach at New Era coaching which provides a range of bespoke coaching services both in person and online for all your training, coaching, conditioning and nutrition needs.
A huge thank you to Graham for this insightful article. Please get in touch with your views. To check out more of Graham's work you can follow him on social media -
Instagram @graham_newera.