Thoughts.

Lifting is only one component of my training these days – I’ve been ramping up the explosive work to gear up for more speed training/on-field play as well.

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Continuing to increase strength and adding muscle remain goals for me over the next couple months, along with getting ready to play this season. What am I doing to these ends?

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With some broad background explanation given in the past three posts, these next posts will really drill in on specifics I’ll be using for my training. First up: mobility work.

Gray Cook, noted rehab expert (check out Athletic Body in Balance, or his newest book on the functional movement screen), inspires a lot of my thinking here, with a strong tip of the hat to Eric Cressey‘s methods for incorporating mobility work into the warm-up and workout.

My Imbalances – What I Need to Work On

Here’s a list of various imbalances or mobility issues I’ve noticed over the past several months – I’ve already begun working on some of them, but I’d like to formally prioritize them going forward.
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Before I can start arranging all the pieces of the plan, it helps to have an idea of what I want my training week to look like. (I find organizing with a weekly cycle to be the most convenient for me, but you may find a shorter 2 to 4-day cycle makes more sense, especially for beginners when less variety is needed).
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In part 1 of this series, I touched upon my general goals; choosing a site to build, or framing the canvas, if you will. Step 2 from that is to assemble the appropriate tools to construct something befitting the site; after that, I’ll begin putting the pieces together into something coherent and useful.

From each general goal I’ll lay out some specifics in how I’ll go about applying that to my training:
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Step 1 in my planning process is always to think about my goals for training.

Some of these goals are more implicit, such as “Become a better ultimate player.” As I’ve alluded to before, these sorts of non-specific goals don’t really do a lot to inform my planning, so it needs to be broken down further.

These are my current general goals:
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• Emphasize the big-money lifts; put them first in your training day.  You’re asking for trouble if you fatigue yourself before you lift heavy. (Yes, you can end with squats and the like – but if you’re going heavy, best to lead with it)
• Work the bigger muscles first, end with smaller (squats before calf raises – though I’m not keen on calf raises at the moment).
• Try to limit workouts to a max of 6 exercises or so – much more and you’re working too long, or not devoting enough time (sets/rep wise) to each one.
• Time-wise, aim for less than one hour working out (longer with warm-up and cool-down is fine).  Extended stress pushes up cortisol release, which has deleterious effects on muscle growth/recovery and immune function, among other things – get in, do work, and get out.  If it’s not enough to do it within an hour, you might want to split the workout into two or pare down to the essentials.
• Leave adequate time for recovery!  At least one full “off” day a week, ideally 48 hours between working muscle groups, work in low-intensity/change of pace recovery days, take deload weeks every 4th week or so (less often for novices).
• Sleep, incidentally, is a form of recovery too – don’t underestimate the value of a good night’s sleep for both your energy level and muscle growth.  Sleep is when growth hormone levels spike; do yourself a favor and get more rest – your brain and body will both be grateful.
• Nutrition goes right along with this – try to eat your best on your pre-training days and before workout on the day of.  If you’re going to indulge the sugars or leave your body short-handed on refueling calories, best to do so immediately post workout for the former and before an off day for the latter (not that I really recommend either for serious athletes).
• 3-4 days lifting a week is both necessary and sufficient for an off-season program; this may be worth scaling back (either in days or workout length/intensity) when in-season/playing a lot depending on how well you recover between days.  For ultimate anything more than 3-4 days lifting is excessive, will hinder your recovery, and generally be an inefficient use of time (spend it throwing or reading blogs instead ).
• Generally speaking, our sport is lower-body explosive dominant – emphasize lower body strength first (squats, deadlifts, and when you’re ready, consider learning how to do cleans properly).
• Upper body strength of course has its use too – look at Olympic sprinters.  Throwing the disc has more to do with lower body and core strength than big biceps, but arm stability (especially at the shoulder) and grip strength are both key players too – don’t leave it out.
• Other relatively ultimate-specific training considerations:
  • Rotational power and stability.  Cables and bands are good ways to progressively load rotation (and stabilizing against it – try Pallof Presses); medicine ball throws are an excellent option for developing power. You don’t have to do exact frisbee throws here – in fact, it’s better to leave that specific work for just the disc lest you train to throw slow.  Develop power independent of the specific motion and then learn to incorporate it into your game.
  • Lunging – doubly a consideration in that it’s useful for throwing and that we heavily favor one leg for this;  the off-season is a key chance to assess your range of motion and strength disparities between legs. Gray Cook advocates working the “deficient” side an extra 2 sets or 2-3x as much for improving mobility (ie, during your warm-up – you ARE doing mobility work to warm up, aren’t you?); strength-wise, make sure that the weak side determines maximum loading on exercises like lunges (don’t reinforce the difference by doing extra reps or weight on your strong side) – you may want to add an extra set to the weak side if you’re really deficient.
• Generally speaking, athletes see more functional carryover to sport from unilateral loading – ie, single arm, single leg…use the bilateral big loads (squats, deads etc) to stimulate growth, but, especially as you get closer to pre-season and in-season, recognize that the unilateral work is what’s going to keep you healthy.  More on this in the next post.