Adding a Sports' Specific Block

Hopefully you’ve built a new workout using my help here.

There’s something I wanted to make clear, I don’t really talk about much sports’ specific stuff.

I think it’s largely useless for me to cover. I can tell you the methodology behind sports’ training, but I can’t specialise it for you. There’s too much at play.

This will serve as probably my only ever sports’ methodology post.

If you’re an athlete, you’re in luck.

• When you’re an athlete two main things matter:

• Muscle mass

• Technique/neural adaptation

I can give you the tools on building muscle mass all day long, but the technique/neural adaptations require you to do the bigger thinking 🙄 sorry

Also for anyone wondering, the same goes for powerlifting. Although the transition/pre/in season will not be blocks around a hypertrophy program (likely).

Skip to the Good Bit (it's all good 🙄)

1. Athlete’s Phases

   1. How to prioritise duration of seasons.

2. Find Your Physiological Weaknesses

   1. Spider Web Athlete Skill Tree

3. Physiological Adaptations and Training

   1. Matching Outcomes and Adaptations

   2. 1. Muscle Tendon Stiffness

   3. 2. Muscle Size

   4. 3/4 Muscle and Cardio Endurance

   5. 5. Coordination

      1. Technical execution drills

      2. Agility drills

      3. Speed drills

      4. Concentration/adaptability drills

      5. Plyometric drills

   6. 6. Elastic energy utilisation

   7. 7. Rate-coding

   8. 8. Motor unit recruitment

   9. 9. Sarcomerogensis

4. How to Modify your Workout Skeleton

   1. Visual on the Phases of Athletes

   2. Upper 1

   3. Lower 1

   4. Upper 2

   5. Lower 2

   6. Out of Gym (rest days)

5. How to Run Scrims (Practice)

6. Builds for Sports

Athlete’s Phases

Athletes are a little different to regular gym goers, they have phases. annoyingly ever sport is different so bear with me on this bit

As important as this section is it looks kinda bad on phone, please either try your hardest to get through it, or open the desktop version.

If you haven’t been changing your training like this, jump into where you think you are.

If you’ve been doing a sport as a novice/less than a year there’s no point doing proper phases, stick to pre-season training for a year, and then come back to this. please don’t forget me go set a calendar appointment with this link.

How to prioritise duration of seasons.

Season times are different, this is how I’d prioritise each phase:

1. The Season Everything is built around the season itself. If the season lasts 9 months you’re going to have trouble with the rest of your phases, this doesn’t make it impossible though.

   1. Treat your season as the most important phase. If you reach a part where you can no longer win/get a place that matters, just go straight into your post-season.

   2. If the beginning of the season isn’t that important, has a ton of easy games that you could win with your eyes closed, extend your off season, but stick to a 1 month transition to go into a proper in-season training program.

   3. For the most part stick to the in-season work. If you can get away with mini phases (1 month minimum) of hypertrophy focused, try it.

2. Not the Season Outside of the in-season it’s obvious the biggest priority is improving certain physiological things. It might look like the transition/pre-season training is the same as the in-season but there’s one big difference. The quality of training is BETTER. This phase isn’t just about getting more muscle, it’s about having better training for the other adaptions (keep reading to learn what those are)

   1. Post-Season Truthfully, a post-season is a luxury. It’s very similar to an off-season and is similar to how the transition works, it’s a period where you can chill and get used to things again, if you have to cut this out, cut it out. Ideally 2-4 weeks.

   2. Off-Season Ideally I’d want you to have as much time as possible here, but there’s going to be a perfect path for every person. If you get a super long 6 month off-season, awesome. If you get a short one you have a choice to make. Figure out if your bigger weak link is a lack of muscle/force output through that, or a lack of the other adaptations at play which will be trained more in the pre-season (more on those adaptations later). This isn’t black or white, it’s context dependent. Ideally at least 3 months.

   3. Transition (Off-Season) The transition is complicated. Although it’s wrote as part of the off-season, it’s really part of the pre-season. If your time outside the in-season is short and you feel like your weak link is explosiveness, do this transition. If you’re short on time and picked the off-season over the pre-season, skip the transition. Hopefully you have time to do both though! Has to be a month.

   4. Pre-Season If you don’t have much time the pre-season becomes an acclimation phase for the training of your in-season. If you have a good amount of time the pre-season becomes some of the best non muscle size training you’ll get. Ideally 3 months.

I hope that makes sense. If you’re one of the unlucky chaps who has to pick and choose more time either in the off-season or pre-season I feel very bad for you, thankfully though the next section will explain a little bit further into which of the two is ideal for you.

Find Your Physiological Weaknesses

A big part of why I’ve been recommending you take notes of your scrims, and proper matches, is because of this here.

Something bad in a match either happens because of one of two reasons.

1. You made a mistake due to poor strategy

2. You did everything right but your physiology let you down

Most of the time it’s a little bit of both. if we want to get meta-thinking letting your physiology let you down is poor strategy 🙄 

I can’t help too much on the strategy side, but your physiology letting you down has a few possible reasons, you have to figure out which:

• You weren’t strong

• You weren’t explosive

• You weren’t coordinatized

• You weren’t powerful

• You weren’t flexible

• You weren’t staminous

• You weren’t enough yes i’m serious.

Spider Web Athlete Skill Tree

Alright fine let’s be super nerdy.

I’m making you make a spider web skill tree. brownie points to whoever can make a model for a game sense side and send that to me so all the athletes can use that too

Duplicate this folder (if you don’t duplicate it it’ll be pretty useless)

If there’s any dummy data inside the spreadsheet, get rid of it completely.

Here’s how you’ll use this tool I made for you

1. After your match has finished reflect on what happened and take notes on key moments you felt bad about, write a little about the reasoning, strategy, physiology, etc. DO NOT DO THIS DURING HALF TIME IT WILL HURT MENTAL

   1. You can double this up by asking your coach or any spectators who know their stuff for plays and takes they had on it. backseat judging 🙄 

2. After you’ve finished your notes take the “Post Game Form” survey. It’ll ask you to rate your performance on a scale of 1-10 based on that game. It’s important to do this based on things that went wrong, some positions/plays don’t require flexibility, or high xyz.

3. Feel free to change some of the sections in the form. If you’re a competitive shot-putter, stamina might not be something that matters at all to you.

4. When you’ve logged at least 10 games take a look at the spreadsheet and create averages for each category. to do this just select all of the numbers in a column and hit average in the bottom right drop down

5. Log that into a simple spider diagram and you’ll instantly see your weak links. Link here

Eventually you might find that you want to expand a section.

You might feel like strength is always one specific muscle, or explosivity is typically a problem with one specific thing (deceleration but not acceleration).

If this happens, add a separate column, break it into bigger pieces. It’ll only help you.

It’s entirely up to you how you log this in. You could get super nerdy and assign points to each moment that your physiology let you down.

Not running far enough to catch a baseball could be broken down into many parts

• Strength -1 point, this definitely had a part to play

• Explosivity -3 points, I couldn’t accelerate fast enough

• Mental -2 points, if I believed in myself more I might have got there in time

It’s entirely up to you how you end up doing it, just be consistent.

If you change the way you log your weaknesses, start a new spreadsheet for the data. Feel free to also start a new spreadsheet when you’ve entered a different phase of training, log the changes in performance of each sections over time, I don’t care.

Just use it in a way that helps most.

Also there’s one thing I’d greatly appreciate. I’ve made this generic enough where I can teach foundational part you need to understand in order to help as many people as possible.

Sports always follows the same foundation, but the context is sometimes different. That being the case when you’ve adapted this to fit your sport a bit more, or if you add a side for game sense/strategy (please do this) email me at [email protected] and I’ll add it to the folder.

If we start making a few different variations for each sport it’ll be easier for other guys to get to a good starting place.

Bonus respect for anyone who asks their coach/fans who know their stuff to score them 1 through 10 on each of the criteria to get a good starting point. send this to me too i find it so interesting

Different Physiological Adaptations and How to Train Them

Physiological adaptions are very similar to video games, these are your mechanical skills.

Something I want to make clear in this section is we’re talking about actual changes we can have to tendons, muscles, joints, the cardiovascular system, and the central nervous system.

I won’t cover in this section changes that can be made to leverages via increased/decreased body fat, or by preferentially growing/shrinking certain muscles.

This will be covered later, but it’s no where near as important as this bit and most people understand what’s going on there.

There are only 8 directly beneficial adaptations you’re trying to get in sports.

Number 9 is more of a bonus adaptation, for some it’s only indirectly beneficial as it helps injury prevention, for others it’s crucial due to flexibility.

1. Muscle tendon stiffness

2. Muscle size

3. Muscle endurance

4. Cardiovascular endurance

5. Coordination/Technique

6. Elastic energy utilisation

7. Rate-coding

8. Motor unit recruitment

9. Sarcomerogenesis

Here’s how they link to the checklist you’re filling out. i’ve made multiple tables or you’d hate me bc of the cramping. trust 😭 

Let this be something you take a look at when determining how to improve a specific outcome, what adaptation will you target?

I’ve bolded the cell(s) that (most of the time) is the biggest contributor to an outcome.

There’s also a secret invisible column for people reading on web, this secret column looks at game sense/strategy and how these things will change the playing field.

Alright, let’s crack in.

I’m well aware the word count is getting up there but I’m certain everything you’ve read so far is like taking a peak into the Library of Alexandria.

To save time we can knock off a few of these very quickly, some can also be grouped together (endurance related).

1. Muscle Tendon Stiffness

This is ridiculously easy to achieve. All it requires is lifting heavy for a decent amount of time.

When you do your hypertrophy exercises they’re programmed to be ~4-8 reps. This will easily tick that box.

When this is done you’ll be stronger, more explosive, less prone to tendon injury, and it’ll help with the elastic energy utilisation we’ll talk about later.

2. Muscle Size

I’ve made this as easy as pie.

The foundation of the strength training program targets muscle size, it’s what I wrote about all over when I made you the skeleton here.

When you’re in the off season you’re following the skeleton perfectly, when you’re not there’s going to be an adaptation made. I’ll tell you more about this in a later section, for now just know having the foundational skeleton is required.

You know what this will do for you. another easy topic

It’s pretty self explanatory how you’re going to order the exercises, start with the muscles that are weak links, or that matter most.

3. Muscle Endurance & 4. Cardiovascular Endurance

I’ve combined the two of these because it just makes sense to.

The way you train for muscle endurance is the exact same as the way you train cardiovascular endurance (kinda 🙄)

In your off season you’re focusing entirely on your cardio side.

• At least 135 minutes a week (preferably on rest days).

• 20% will be Zone 4 intense cardio

• 80% will be Zone 2 low intense cardio

• Low fatiguing cardio (rowing, swimming, cycling, uphill running)

  • Avoid running, DEFINITELY DONT RUN DOWNHILL, stair climber, heavy eccentric cardio.

This is going to build up that capacity and give you the best bang for your buck in the long term. It also makes sure when we hit the gym we have minimal fatigue and can build muscle best.

When you’re not in the off-season, muscle endurance comes in to play.

Now the cardio has a slight switch when you start to transition into the pre-season.

You take the focus away from the heart, lungs, etc, and we move it onto muscle endurance first and foremost.

A lot of people mess this up…

The start doing stupid high rep weight exercises (100+), or even worse not stupid high reps but high reps (15+).

This isn’t how you get muscle endurance best.

All you really do to get good muscle endurance is make one key change.

Instead of focusing on the low fatiguing cardio you enjoy, you do cardio that targets the muscles you use.

• An arm wrestler is now going to do a ton of rowing, and battle rope.

• A boxer is going to do something very similar

• But, a basketballer is now going to do something that focuses on the legs heavily, and arms heavily.

  • This could be something like a intense HIIT circuit combined with running

You have to identify what muscles require endurance, and then pick a cardio that fits.

The method is very similar

• At least 135 minutes a week (preferably on rest days). increase this if you start to notice muscle/cardio endurance is a weak link

• 20% will be Zone 4 intense cardio

• 80% will be Zone 2 low intense cardio

• Cardio that fits the sport.

With this cardio you’re aiming to progressive overload, this just shows that you’re seeing endurance adaptations.

• Faster movement

• Harder movement

• Longer movement

• More consistent movement

Just pick one and work on it.

5. Coordination

Now we can get into the fun stuff.

Coordination is very very easy to understand and explain.

Before I tell you all about the different types of coordination training, and how to figure out which you should be doing, let’s talk about the stages of coordination.

I’ve already told you all about what coordination does for efficiency, force output, fatigue, speed, that’s one side of what matters but I find the other side even more fascinating.

Coordination Stages

1. You understand a movement pattern but can’t do it

2. You are able to replicate the movement whilst thinking

3. You can easily do the movement without thinking

4. The coordination is in your long term memory and is a reflexive response which comes instinctively

The reflex response is a sign you’ve mastered a movement. That mastery is what all athletes strive to find.

Don’t be fooled though, the reflex is where mastery begins, it’s not the end of the progress that can be done.

Coordination is easy, you just do the movement a lot.

This is one of those less = more things though. Some movements you don’t want to be doing a lot due to the fatigue it carries (heavily loaded maximal effort) okay fine i’ll actually teach you coordination now.

I call movements/exercises that target coordination drills.

Annoyingly there are many different types:

• Technical execution

• Agility

• Speed

• Concentration

• Plyometric

Let’s break them down

Technical execution drills

These involve annoying movements...

There’s also two types again 😭 

You can have either strength movements or complex movements.

Complex movements are going to focus on all manoeuvring you struggle with.

Is there a specific pass/function/way you’re supposed to move your body that you can’t do? Well do it.

Practice this as much as you need to.

If you want grab a drill for the movement but half of the time this is just a getting used to it sort of thing, when you’ve got the movement down progress it into either agility, speed, or concentration/adaptability drills.

Strength movements are a different beast.

These break down movements which require strength into individual pieces.

This might be finding an exercise which mimics as close as possible the scrum because you play rugby. likely the closest thing is tire flips or breaking down the movement further.

This is going to be the biggest challenge when it comes to coordination (but is the most important for most).

Some of these are going to come in as isometric holds, other times it’ll be dynamic. It’s all about what you actually do in your sport.

The reason we do these with heavy load is because of how the coordination gets written. If you did no load but kept doing the movement, you’d be super efficient at the movement without load.

Yet use load when you’re doing it… this means the coordination doesn’t actually exist

Good luck with this one as it’ll be the most difficult thing you do here.

1. Pick the two movement paths that require the most strength (or ones that are your weak link/causing you to lose)

   1. Break down the movement angle for angle, joint for joint. (This is why basketballers half squat).

   2. Figure out if this is going to be an adaption to an exercise on your skeleton, or part of the sports block.

2. Program it with no more than 2 sets (make sure to do 1-2 warmups with rest after)

If you’ve ever wondered what was going on with this:

Then there’s your explanation.

Some sports are going to have more MAJOR strength movements, and some won’t have any.

If you’re lucky you won’t need this at all, although are you really doing a sport if you don’t need this?

Agility drills

These are pretty easy, to explain.

They focus on quick, direct, sharp changes.

This is the stereotypical ladder drill you’ve done countless times.

When you’re trying to improve your coordination in this way try and focus on specific functions/movements you struggle with, go on Google and search “x[function/movement] agility drill” and start using it.

You’ll know pretty quickly if it’s benefitting you.

With these drills pick the function and do roughly a minute of the movement 5 times, twice a week.

In between each attempt give yourself at least a minute (or longer if you’re out of breath) to recover, then go again.

Use timers and count something arbitrary (laps/reps/movements) and focus on getting better and better each time.

When you’ve reached a place with the specific function that you feel you no longer need to keep perfecting it move it down to 1 sets of 1 minute twice a week, instead of 5, just make sure you do at least 2 practice runs first (with proper rest breaks).

Make sure to log these drills somewhere so you can see your progress over time, or if you need to bring back a drill/change a focus somewhere.

Speed drills

These are easy, it’s just practicing acceleration/deceleration.

If you want to improve this area run some speed drills.

• Pick a speed drill “[acceleration/deceleration/pause] speed drills”

• Do 5 sets of 10 with at least 1 minute rest breaks in between (twice a week)

• Set specific goals on what you want to achieve

• Log progress

• Dial back sets to 1 with at least 2 warmup sets with good rest (twice a week)

Concentration/adaptability drills

These focus on distractions.

Navigating around obstacles with something, practicing blocking, having to follow a specific path whilst your friends throw stuff at you.

If you feel like you’re struggling to navigate around other people and that if the field is empty you’d have the best movement ever, you need to run concentration training.

Find a way to make it a friend activity where once/twice a week you and your friends alternate between completing an objective (sport related/fake game) whilst they distract you in many different ways.

Some ideas

• They throw stuff at you

• They insult you

• They play super loud music or funny music

• They be boring and setup obstacles on a field

• They take away one of your eyes just a blindfold…

• They turn the lights off

You don’t always need concentration drills but they can be helpful, they’re all about adaptability.

The more you’re forced to behave in a way you don’t want to, the more you’re forced to build coordination patterns in weird ways.

Plyometric drills

These have two purposes, I’ll tell you about the second purpose later.

For now let’s focus on the coordination side.

Plyometrics are super explosive exercises that target movements you’d be using in your sport, doing these improve your coordination within the movement which is hopefully something you’d be using in your workout.

These aren’t something you just slag off and give it low effort, you’re trying to be as explosive as possible, recruit every single piece of muscle for the movement.

The advice for here is similar to agility drills

• Pick a specific movement to focus on “[x] plyometric exercises”

• Do 5 sets of 10 with at least 1 minute rest breaks in between (twice a week)

• Set specific goals on what you want to achieve

• Log progress

• Dial back sets to 1 with at least 2 warmup sets with good rest (twice a week)

Plyometrics aren’t very technical, it’s just BOOM you jump BOOM you push.

6. Elastic energy utilisation

This sounds really complicated but it can be explained complicated, and then simply, with the same phrase.

The stretch shortening cycle.

See what I mean?

That literally means your joints/muscle stretch, and then shorten really quickly, in a cycle.

Yeah…

So this is the other part of why we do Plyometric training.

It trains both the coordination of that quick movement, and it improves our ability to use elastic energy which we store in our tendons.

Do it the same way you’d do plyometrics (I’ll send again because I’m kind)

• Pick a specific movement to focus on “[x] plyometric exercises”

• Do 5 sets of 10 with at least 1 minute rest breaks in between (twice a week)

• Set specific goals on what you want to achieve

• Log progress

• Dial back sets to 1 with at least 2 warmup sets with good rest (twice a week)

This doesn’t have to mimic the movement we’re doing 1 for 1. Most of the time we’re targeting a specific function (jump, push, pull).

Focus more on the function than the movement (unless you have a specific movement weakness).

7. Rate-coding

This sounds complicated again, and is easy again.

Rate coding is the speed your CNS (brain and stuff) sends electrical signals to muscles saying “do this movement, contract here, do that”.

For pure strength, this doesn’t matter.

For power (strength x speed) and speed, it definitely does matter.

Rate-coding isn’t that hard to train.

We just have to do complex movements explosively with maximal effort.

This is the reason a lot of athletes end up doing Olympic lifts, they’re pretty perfect at it.

I literally wouldn’t recommend anything other than Olympic lifts for this.

The best bang for your buck is going to be the Clean (don’t worry about pressing).

1 set 4-6 reps maximal effort (3+ reps from failure) 2x a week and you’ll be improving your rate-coding very very well.

8. Motor unit recruitment

This is one of the most important things as it’s just our mental ability to take advantage of all of these physiological adaptations we’ve been building.

I’ve wrote all about motor unit recruitment separately and if you want a bigger deep dive you can look at that here.

To summarise:

• Minimise fatigue largely why we remove workouts (and fatigue) near to hard matches

• Maximise motivation

9. Sarcomerogensis

I won’t blab on too much about this although if you want to learn more you can read up on it here.

This is an adaptation that makes your muscle longer, it means you’re more flexible, can produce more force at long lengths, and have injury prevention.

As an athlete you should be taking note of what the biggest injuries in your sport are, and taking advantage of this adaptation by having at least 1 set a week challenging it at long lengths with a controlled eccentric.

Alright, now you know all about the types of adaptations you’ll be getting, finally I can take a short break to hit the gym then return and write some more.

How to Modify your Workout Skeleton

This is what the lesson is all about and somehow it’s below 5k words.

Before we get into adding the sports specific block I need you to read each individual post about each skeleton day to make sure you’ve got the right foundation.

If you’ve made it this far you might as well 🙄 

I’ve copied over the tables of the blocks, don’t worry if the order isn’t the same as what you’ve done.

To be concise I’m just going to use a step 1, 2, 3 method. You should be able to follow along with everything I’ve given you so far.

1. Make the perfect version of the workout skeleton that focuses on muscle weak links (just that).

2. Plan what Olympic lifts you’re going to add in your Oly block. probably snatch 2 times a week, 4-6 reps, 3 RIR, appropriate warmups. Figure out if this is better on Lower or Upper days for you.

3. Pick a cardio that focuses on cardio, and one for muscle (start doing this on non workout days)

4. Ask your coach/super fans/brain what movements are your weak links

   1. Work out if there’s any plyo/technical strength complex movements that would be beneficial (don’t have any more than 2 per day)

   2. Work out if there’s any drills that would be beneficial for your rest days (fill them up with what you can manage, only technical execution (non strength) agility, speed, concentration/adaptability)

5. Have a variant of your program you transition to in the transition phase

   1. Do you have proper injury prevention by having at least one set of longer length exercises with joints that commonly have issues in your sport?

   2. Are there any exercise swaps that would make the program better for my sport? (Fat grips for grip demands, beltless, less work here and more there, etc).

6. Adjust based on the feedback you get from the Post Game Form and alter the workout program based on the phase you’re in.

Upper 1

Lower 1

Upper 2

Lower 2

Out of Gym (rest days)

And promise finished.

I’ve taught you all you need to know.

You might as well keep reading though, I’ve got some gold on scrims, and body composition.

How to Run Scrims (Practice)

I promise from now on there’s no rambling.

There are 3 main types of scrims

1. Real match

2. Try strategies

3. Fun

Scrims are built to test yourself, weaknesses, and game sense.

Follow the 80:20 rule on these.

80% of your scrims are testing strategies and plays.

20% of your scrims are actual matches.

Don’t count the “fun” scrims, but still do them.

Try and organise these, test things, learn from your mistakes, write notes about how it went.

These will feed you weak links to fix.

The more scrims you do the better.

Only do scrims when you start the pre season, keep them up during the season, and don’t do any (other than fun) in the off/post season.

Builds for Sports

I’ve almost hit the homerun here (topical joke).

Some sports/positions put more value in some attributes over others.

Strong vs fast. (Fat vs lean)

Big legs vs small legs

You get the jist of it bla bla bla.

• Look at your sport, think about your dream position (doesn’t have to be current one).

• Work out if you have the genetic structure for it (can be a deterrent)

• Work out if you’d take a position that’s not your dream in order to become the best at that in the world

  • You don’t have to do this

• Build the physique that’s best for that position

That’s that.

I’m finally done.

You can stop reading 😭 

Go to bed or hit the gym.

Remember, as important as having the right physiology is for your sport, the most important thing is to learn from your mistakes.

Strategy has a bigger part to play than you’d ever realise.

You can brute force a win against ants. You can’t brute force a win against machines. If you’re serious about your sport, improve your game sense.

This was a long one, but it’s probably all I’ll ever right about sports.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. i never took that break in the middle and my fingers are so sore. I wrote this entirely in one go. now i must shower and hit the gym.