Structuring your Pre-Season Training Plan

At this point in time it’s common knowledge that undertaking a resistance training program is good for increasing sporting performance and minimising injury risk, but what’s less common is knowing how much of what you should be doing and when. In this blog I want to focus on what you can be doing in between seasons of your sport to optimally prepare yourself for the season to come, because unfortunately performing 3 sets of 10 reps gradually increasing your load week to week probably isn’t going to be the best way to do this. This is why an understanding of periodisation principles comes in handy. And if you’ve never heard of, or are unsure what ‘periodisation’ is, that’s ok. Put very simply, it’s a plan of how you structure your training schedule throughout the year, and there are many ways to do this, and the best method will vary for different sports and individuals. But rather than going into all the different methods the purpose of this blog is to give a general overview of what the overarching focus of each phase, specifically of a pre-season resistance training program would look like, and how to appropriately manipulate training variables and exercise selection to accommodate this. I’ll be using the example of a winter season field sport athlete (you’d never guess I used to play football) but the same principles can be applied to most team sports. Also keep in mind the example I’m going to run through below is very general in nature and needs will vary between individuals. It is also by no means the only way to structure your training.

So let’s say your season finishes in September and you want to physically prepare yourself as best you can for the next season. Where do you start? It’s generally well accepted you should first figure out how long you have until the start of the next season which is when you want to be in the best physical condition and work your way backwards from there. So, if you finish in September and your next season starts in April, you have 6 months available. But let’s be generous and give you a month off to recover from the season that’s just finished, you deserve it! So, you have 5 months, or ~20 weeks, until round 1. Let’s subtract 2 weeks which we’ll use as a taper - which is a reduction in training volume leading up to a major competition/ event - and we’re left with 18 weeks. From here we need to figure out what we want to focus on and when. The key areas I’m going to use in this example are hypertrophy/ endurance (H/E), strength (S), and strength/ power (S/P), so we have 3 specific phases to complete in 18 weeks, but I’m also going to include 3 de-load weeks after each phase to prevent overtraining, so we’re down to 15 weeks. This leaves us with 6 weeks (5 + 1 de-load) per training phase. So, since we had a month off in September let’s start our training plan from November.

November – early December
Focus = Hypertrophy/ endurance (5 weeks + 1 week de-load)

This phase of training is going to be very general in nature, think basic bilateral exercises such as squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull downs and rows. The aim is to develop more lean body mass and increase muscle size and endurance capacity. This is also a good time to incorporate eccentric focussed exercises since you don’t need to worry about being sore. Training volume is going to be high, intensity (weight lifted) relatively low and rest periods short.

Mid December – mid January
Focus = Strength (5 weeks + 1 week de-load)

This phase of training will build on the previous phase and gradually start to incorporate more sport specific movements such as unilateral exercises. The aim of this phase is to increase an athlete’s ability to produce large amounts of force. Training volume will decrease, intensity will increase, and rest periods become longer.

Late January – Early March – Focus = Strength/ Power (5 weeks + 1 week de-load)

This phase of training will once again build on the previous phase and will focus on continuing to increase the maximal force producing capabilities of an athlete while also aiming to improve rate of force development with a heavier focus on advanced training methods such as plyometric and ballistic exercises. Training volume will be relatively low, intensity high and rest periods long.

Mid March – late March – Taper (2 weeks)

As mentioned earlier a taper is a reduction in training volume to ensure an athlete doesn’t feel depleted leading up to a major competition/ event (round 1 in our example). Training volume is very low, intensity is very high and rest periods are very long.

The table below gives an outline of different training variables and how they change with each phase.

Table 1. Training variables for each phase of training

*Intensity will vary for strength and power exercises. Strength exercises will be similar to strength phase, but can range from 30-80% for power based exercises depending on the goals of training and method used.

So there you have it! A general guide on how to structure your pre-season resistance training program!

You’re welcome to finish reading there if you feel like you have all the information you need, but before concluding there are a few things I’d like to touch on and clarify. Firstly, as I mentioned in the beginning, the qualities (H/E, S, S/P) that we’re focussing on in each phase are the primary qualities of each phase, but that doesn’t mean EVERYTHING you do in the H/E phase has to follow hypertrophy/ endurance variables i.e higher reps, lower intensities etc. It is completely within reason to include plyometrics, jumps, landings and hops within each phase so you have that constant exposure, but when implementing them you would follow the same training variables trend; lower intensity and dedicate less time earlier on (remember the main focus is still hypertrophy/ endurance) and gradually build (dedicate more time and higher intensity) throughout each phase. Similarly, just because you’re in a strength/ power phase doesn’t mean EVERYTHING has to be 1-6 reps and long rest periods. You can still include exercises with higher rep ranges and less rest time, but you would spend less time dedicated to these and the primary focus would be strength and power.

It would also be remiss of me not to at least touch on conditioning or in season training. Concurrently incorporating conditioning 1-2 days per week before your club pre-season training starts is a good idea to keep the legs adapted to the specific stresses associated and so there’s no dramatic increase in training load when this happens. If you were to include conditioning, you would again follow the same trend for training variables as the resistance training program outlined above; initially higher volume, lower intensity (speed in this case) and smaller rest periods as volume progressively decreases and intensity and rest increase. As for in season training, the primary focus will be on maintaining, and improving if able, the strength and power qualities you developed during pre-season following similar variables, but generally there will be a decrease in both volume and intensity to accommodate for game day stresses. You will also have to be more mindful of when you perform certain exercises. For example, you would generally perform heavier lower body work earlier in the week so there’s no carry over fatigue into game day. Remember when it comes to in season training what you do in the gym should COMPLIMENT your sport and maximise your performance leading up to and on game day, NOT interfere with it.

By Chris Woman, Performance Coach.