It's interesting to look at the similarities in training concepts between very different sports. Competitive endurance runners training consists of a high volume of work at sub race pace speed and/or heart rate and a lower volume of work (usually consisting of tempos) at speed and/or heart rate above race pace. Competitive Olympic weightlifting athletes will do a relatively high volume of work at sub maximal loads (working on technique) and a lower volume of work at near max efforts. The late Charlie Francis, world class sprint coach, spoke of training his sprinters with lower intensity tempo work and near max efforts while avoiding what he termed the "dead zone".
It seems that within these 3 very different sporting disciplines there lies a common theme in training: Train low and train high, but limit the amount of training in the middle. In other words, "Polarize" your training.
I feel this is even more important for teams during their in-season period when they are playing competitive games. For the college men's soccer team that I work with, we typically play 2 games per week in the in-season. We have 1 off day each week, so this leaves us with 4 training days. A typical week looks like this:
Sunday: OFF
Monday: Training - Lo
Tuesday: Game - Hi or Lo
Wednesday: Training - Lo
Thursday: Training - Hi
Friday: Training - Lo
Saturday: Game - Hi
Our games are definitely high training load and relatively high intensity days. Typically I recommend 2 high training load/intensity days per week, although there are times when we will have 3 in a week. You can do 3 in a week for a short period of time (2-3 weeks) but I feel that consistently 3 high training load/intensity days results in too much player fatigue and loss of sharpness over time. What this means is that with 2 games per week, at the most, we have 1 training day that can be high training load/intensity. With the 4 available training sessions that we have in a week 2 fall the day before a game. On the day before a game training loads need to be relatively low.
Interesting to see Joel Jamison write about Hi/Lo training with MMA athletes as well. Great article!
http://www.8weeksout.com/2011/09/13/high-low-training-mma-fight-magazine/
Here's the kicker . . . looking back at our training sessions, the majority have been moderate load, moderate intensity! This is definitely not what I'm looking for. Problem is that regardless of whether we aim to make a day hi or lo intensity, soccer looks like soccer. We can talk about manipulating training variables of field dimensions, number of players, restrictions, directionality, etc. but what ends up dictating the training load outcome is almost always the duration of the training session.
Unless we do strictly technical work or tactical situations much like non-pressure pattern play or functional training. If we play any type of game or competition, soccer is going to look like soccer.
So how do we balance the training to be more "Polarized". Number 1 has to be limit the session duration during your "lo" days to a maximum of 60 minutes. Two, we have to supplement their training with "hi" intensity actions like repeated sprints or hi load weight training. However without doing number 1, number 2 becomes additional stress that will likely not be performed at high intensities and will again become more moderate training.
I'm still working on finding the right mix! let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions!!!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Assessing Training Intensity Using the Team 2
So I've discussed a bit on training load and I've given some guidelines as to the scale of what typically is a difficult training session as well as looking at the cumulative load over the week. As a quick review, we see training loads of around 320-350 for a typical 90 minute soccer match. I have colleagues in the field who have come up with similar training loads for games in the MLS. It's pretty clear that a game is a high stress event that cannot be repeated on a daily basis without significant fatigue, over-training and/or injury. So this value is represents the top of the scale for training load on a given day.
Having used the system for several years and comparing data with other colleagues using the system, I have found that our weekly cumulative training loads during the in-season range from 1000-1200. So doing some quick math, we can find that if we play 2 games per week we already have a training load of around 700. This leaves a training load of 300-500 to be distributed over 4 days (1 day off each week). Take a look at a typical week during the inseason:
Sunday: OFF
Monday: Training
Tuesday: Game
Wednesday: Training
Thursday: Training
Friday: Training
Saturday: Game
In this scenario 2 of the training days fall the day before a game, so let's make those days low training load days (less than 100). This leaves a training load of 100-300 for 2 training days. Wednesday is the day after a game so, for recovery purposes, let's make that day a low training load day. This leaves a training load of up to 200 available for the Thursday training session.
So really we have 2 high training load days (2 games), 3 low training load days (before and after games) and 1 moderate training load day each week. Three types of sessions each week . . . this is good as we like to see a nice undulation in the training load over the week. Monotonous training loads through the week and season are the quickest way to player staleness, fitness plateaus and even declines in fitness. So having an undulating structure to your micro-cycles (week of training) will help prevent this. But . . . if the only difference between training days is training load, meaning every session is the same the only difference being the duration of the session, you really are just stressing the same systems every day! There is a great deal of monotony with this type of training as well. So what's the other variable that effects training load besides time/duration? Intensity!
The intensity of the sessions should vary or undulate through the training week. From a pure heart rate standpoint, you can use the sport zones featured in the T2 software that define 5 intensity zones. >90%, >80%, >70%, >60%, <60%. (*you can also define thresholds for each player which would provide a more accurate assessment of intensity for each individual. Using these thresholds would require you to know each players anaerobic threshold and aerobic threshold. This would give you 3 zones; above anaerobic threshold, above aerobic threshold and below aerobic threshold.) As I don't have access to knowing every players threshold values, I use time above 80% max heart rate to determine session intensity.
Above, I have clipped a training report (exported to excel) that summarizes a training session. Using the time each player spent above 80% hrm as the time and % above threshold you can see how "intense" the training session was for each individual, and on the right a % that is the average for the team. I use stop light symbols to quickly assess whether the session was high intensity (red; >30% of total training time), moderate intensity (yellow; >15% training time), or low intensity (green; <15% training time).
I have used a similar system to quickly assess the training load. High training load (red; >200), moderate training load (yellow; >100), and low training load (green; <100).
I use these "snapshots" to communicate with the team coaches on the difficulty of the practice sessions.
Going back to the concept that we want to manipulate not only the training load over the course of the week, but also the intensity, this provides a simple solution to assess how well we are doing at varying the stress on the athletes.
Having used the system for several years and comparing data with other colleagues using the system, I have found that our weekly cumulative training loads during the in-season range from 1000-1200. So doing some quick math, we can find that if we play 2 games per week we already have a training load of around 700. This leaves a training load of 300-500 to be distributed over 4 days (1 day off each week). Take a look at a typical week during the inseason:
Sunday: OFF
Monday: Training
Tuesday: Game
Wednesday: Training
Thursday: Training
Friday: Training
Saturday: Game
In this scenario 2 of the training days fall the day before a game, so let's make those days low training load days (less than 100). This leaves a training load of 100-300 for 2 training days. Wednesday is the day after a game so, for recovery purposes, let's make that day a low training load day. This leaves a training load of up to 200 available for the Thursday training session.
So really we have 2 high training load days (2 games), 3 low training load days (before and after games) and 1 moderate training load day each week. Three types of sessions each week . . . this is good as we like to see a nice undulation in the training load over the week. Monotonous training loads through the week and season are the quickest way to player staleness, fitness plateaus and even declines in fitness. So having an undulating structure to your micro-cycles (week of training) will help prevent this. But . . . if the only difference between training days is training load, meaning every session is the same the only difference being the duration of the session, you really are just stressing the same systems every day! There is a great deal of monotony with this type of training as well. So what's the other variable that effects training load besides time/duration? Intensity!
The intensity of the sessions should vary or undulate through the training week. From a pure heart rate standpoint, you can use the sport zones featured in the T2 software that define 5 intensity zones. >90%, >80%, >70%, >60%, <60%. (*you can also define thresholds for each player which would provide a more accurate assessment of intensity for each individual. Using these thresholds would require you to know each players anaerobic threshold and aerobic threshold. This would give you 3 zones; above anaerobic threshold, above aerobic threshold and below aerobic threshold.) As I don't have access to knowing every players threshold values, I use time above 80% max heart rate to determine session intensity.
Above, I have clipped a training report (exported to excel) that summarizes a training session. Using the time each player spent above 80% hrm as the time and % above threshold you can see how "intense" the training session was for each individual, and on the right a % that is the average for the team. I use stop light symbols to quickly assess whether the session was high intensity (red; >30% of total training time), moderate intensity (yellow; >15% training time), or low intensity (green; <15% training time).
I have used a similar system to quickly assess the training load. High training load (red; >200), moderate training load (yellow; >100), and low training load (green; <100).
I use these "snapshots" to communicate with the team coaches on the difficulty of the practice sessions.
Going back to the concept that we want to manipulate not only the training load over the course of the week, but also the intensity, this provides a simple solution to assess how well we are doing at varying the stress on the athletes.
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