5 Ways to Individualising Strength Training Programme
Introduction:
Individualising strength training programmes is key to achieving the performance your athletes need to hit the next level. But what exactly does that mean, and how do you go about individualising their strength training programme? In this article, we’ll breakdown 5 considerations of how to Individualise your athletes Strength Training Programme.
Disclaimer - This article is based on athletes who are in a private facility setting. Not all would apply in a team setting. If you would like to know the differences. Leave a comment and I will go over them.
Understanding Individual Training Programmes
Why use Individualise Training Programmes?
Athletes are individual humans who require different “buckets” to be filled, not two athletes will have the same requirements. It is therefor, important that you take time to identify what your athlete needs and how to programme for their specific needs. The buckets refer to several types of athletic needs (Strength, Power, Speed, etc.,). These can be identified through testing, speaking to athlete, speaking to coach, or simply watching tape.
Practical Tip: Make bucket specific workouts. Although you are not going to change their muscle fibre type, you can help in INCREASE performance areas they lack. More on this in section 3.
Note: If you would like a further breakdown on testing athletes, leave a comment on the post.
5 Methods to Consider when Implement Individualise Training Programme.
#1 Needs Analysis:
One of the most important things when working with athletes is doing a thorough needs analysis of the sport and your athlete’s role within their performance as a team or as an individual. It is easy to just watch the sport as a whole and produce a needs analysis. Let's breakdown what you should be looking at during a needs analysis. I have personally seen that coaches just throw S**T at the wall hoping it sticks. This is the wrong way to programme for your athlete and their needs.
It is also important to note their roles during gameplay, it may be that their other role involves them going from ruck-to-ruck (rugby), code calling, communications link (coach-to-players, player-to-players...) or simply the work horse, the guy who does his/her role hard and goes home. What is their playing style? This is important as it may require you to programme more of one area dependent on what their demands are.
Here are things to consider:
Common movement patterns
Movement patterns that may lead to injury
Opposing movement patterns
How many accelerations and decelerations
Positional needs or needs relating to their style of performance
Energy sources required to play at high level
Note: It is important to state that “sports specific” does not exist, nor does it have space in the gym. You cannot mimic real game situations in the gym. Keep the “sport specific” to the sports coach.
#2 Body Composition:
Throughout sports an ideal body type is more suitable for different sports. For example, in rugby you get a wide range of body types, from backs having leaner body types compared to their forwards who have more muscle mass. Another example of this is in boxing, where there are weight requirements so fighters must stick to a strict diet to ensure they can compete. Identifying your athletes ideal body composition is key to determine what their programme and indeed their sessions look like.
Physical Attributes
Strength
Power
Speed / Agility
Muscular Endurance
Cardiovascular Endurance
The demands of the sport must match what you have programmed for the athlete. When you identify their needs, it is important to then consider caloric intake and expenditure. This will massively impact the way their body composition will go, there are other considerations you must be aware of. Different training methods impact the body massively.
For example:
Strength will impact the body in a way that muscle fibers will tighten and become stronger.
Power will target the type 2 muscle fibers and make them twitch faster; this means that muscles will contract quicker.
Hypertrophy will increase muscle size by creating micro tears in the muscle to grow.
Muscle Endurance will allow your athlete to contract the specific muscle longer.
Practical Tip: Effective programming will tap into each of these dependent on what is needed. A lot of these also complement each other so reading into each process and how each can feed of each other. There are also hybrids that you can consider. To know more, let me know in the comments.
Note: To find out more on how sessions differ dependent on athlete's body composition needs, leave a comment and I will dive into programme building for different body composition.
#3 Season Goals:
There are a couple of ways to tackle season goals with a team or athletes. You need to consider the goals of the coach, team, and individual athletes to make the most of their programme.
Athlete Performance Goals:
Do they want to increase their conditioning to make sure they can last the whole game and some?
Do they want to increase power to be more explosive of the blocks?
It is important to have yearly meetings with your athletes to check what their goals are, if they have new goals or if the goals are switching to suit another style of play.
Coach Performance Goals:
Does the coach want a specific goal to be developed?
Does the coaching staff have a specific performance style that requires their athletes to express movement a specific way.
It is important to create a good relationship with the coaching staff. Although you are also a coach but understanding the demands that the coach is putting on the athlete will HIGHLY dictate how your sessions are playing out.
#4 Build on Weakness’ from Previous Season:
It is no secret that during a normal season there will be games where your athletes get tested and taken into uncomfortable waters. Although your goal is to prepare them to push their bodies to all limits. There will be aspects of their performance that will lack leaving them with “holes” in their games.
During the normal season, these “holes” are hard to patch. It is therefore always good to reflect on the previous season and identify where they needed an extra push, whether that was strength, power, speed, or any other variation of performance parameters. Your goal is to always fill buckets to make them as well rounded and as balanced as possible.
You might be wondering how you can identify these weaknesses. Going through competition analysis sheets that your athlete identified in their performance and examine if there are common themes. If you do not competition reviews START, this is an amazing way to know how your athlete see’s their performance and what areas they find to be strong and not as strong within their performance. If you would like to know more on how to set up these sheets, let me know in the comments. P.s this is something that the head coach would do with the athletes, therefor it is important to always communicate with the head coach about your athlete’s performance. You can also ask your athlete what they find their strengths and weaknesses to be.
#5 Training Phase’s:
Another effective method is to increase the number of repetitions per set. This increases the volume and intensity of your workouts, each phase of training will require you to plan and programme different performance parameters.
Diagram depicting preseason:
Visual: This is a representation of what happens during a normal season. Each game, match, fight or competition chips away at the armour you built around your athlete throughout the preseason. Our goal is then maintaining through the normal season to ensure that during a competition the armour is dinged but through the next week we build it back up through maintenance. It is by building this armour that you can ensure that you build on the weaknesses from the previous year.
During each phase of their season, strong considerations should be implemented dependent of their needs and the chosen adaptations you are wanting to chase. Below is a small example on what to consider throughout each phase.
Preseason – Solely to prepare the athlete for the season a head. You must implement all that has been discussed thus far and really consider the type of armour you are building for your athletes.
In-season – This is a maintaining phase of training. All that was built on the preseason must now be maintained. If we think about the armour depicted above, now imagine that each competition cuts through a barrier. Our roles as strength and conditioning coaches are to ensure that as the armour gets cut into, we use the week after to rebuild the barrier that was destroyed. Maintaining all elements is key.
Post-season – This is a solely recovery area. Allow your athletes to spend time with family and loved ones, if they MUST train, give them something light, active recovery style workouts or activities. We need them to come into preseason hungry and ready to attack.
Practical Tip: Consider the amount of damage the athlete goes through a game; the amour can only do so much. It is important to consider the amount of stimuli you are chasing. Would your athlete be better with supplementing more with mitigation exercises rather than a full power block through their in-season? PROBABLY.
Advanced Techniques for Individualising Training Programmes
Bucket filling specific workouts:
If you have your athletes in for preseason and they are in 5 times a week break their week down:
Example of week split to fill buckets:
Monday:
Main Session
Tuesday:
Reactive Strength and Conditioning Work
Wednesday:
Main Session
Thursday:
Change of Direction (COD) and Postural Control
Friday:
Main Session
Note – This is a basic example of a 5 day split. If you are interested in an indepth split, let me know.
Programming for their playing style:
Are they:
Aggressive?
Strategic?
Softer?
Mind Games / S**t Talker?
You might be curious as to why this may be important. Each of these will have different mental loading on your athlete. Think about it in terms of energy expenditure. Will they be able to perform all the skills required? If yes, cool you achieved your goal. But if they cannot perform the way they like to, have you achieved the goal to the best of its ability? Your athlete needs to be able to s**t talk the whole game if that is their playing style. Will they have the energy to do all the skills they need to and still talk mad trash? If so, NOW you achieved your goals. Same goes for the aggressive athlete, will they have the energy to man on man mark their opposing number the whole game and keep up their skills?
Note: If you want to know more about mental loading dependent on athlete's gameplay tactics, let me know in the comments.
Conclusion:
This blog post emphasises the importance of customising strength training programs to meet individual athlete needs, which is crucial for optimal performance. It outlines several key considerations for individualising these programs:
Understanding Individualisation: Recognises that each athlete has unique needs in areas like strength, power, and speed. It suggests creating workouts specific to these needs, acknowledging that while muscle fiber types can't be changed, weaknesses can be addressed (Bucket Filling).
Methods to Implement Individualisation: Highlights the importance of a thorough needs analysis, considering factors such as sport role, body composition, physical attributes, and performance goals. Tracking progress and adjusting programs based on seasonal goals and past performance weaknesses is essential.
Advanced Techniques: Recommends varying intensity and volume using strategies like pyramid sets or drop sets to prevent plateaus and keep workouts effective.
Practical tips and visuals like charts and diagrams are provided to aid implementation and tracking of progress.
Next Step:
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Email mannysilveira@primitiveathletix.com for any enquries or any further questions you may have.