Programme Justification

Strength and Conditioning is essential for developing athletes on the pitch and preventing injury. Strength forms the basis for power and speed. Footballers also need strength to hold off challenges from opponents. In-season can last up to 9 months in elite footballers with little time off so training needs to meet the needs so the athlete isn’t tired.

Increasing the force of muscular contraction in appropriate muscles or muscle groups can increase acceleration and speed in skills critical to football such as turning, sprinting, and changing pace (Bangsbo, 1994).The muscles largely responsible for these rapid accelerations and decelerations are the quadriceps, hamstrings group, gluteals and calves. The front squat, hang clean, calf raises, deadlift and Nordic curls all strengthen these muscles.

Increased flexibility not only decreases the risk of injury (Kisner and Colby, 2005) and reduces muscle soreness (Shrier and Gossal ,2000) it also increases ROM which can increase strength and power (Witvrouw,  Mahieu, Danneels, and McNair, 2004).

 

Core stability is needed to allow the full transfer of forces generated with the lower extremities, through the torso, and to the upper extremities (Behm, Leonard, Young, Bonsey and Mackinnon, 2005). Prehab exercises such as SL hop and holds, Nordic curls and ¼ squat have been chosen for injury prevention and muscular balance (Comfort et al., 2009).

 

The athlete is professional and therefore used to a frequent training stimulus. However the focus is on high intensity and low volume due to it being in-season. As the majority of training is sport specific and matches are frequently being played, weight training is done 2 times a week with 2 metabolic sessions (Owen and Wong, 2009). Bansbo (1998) showed the weekly high-intensity volume should be reduced 27% and 67% respectively for weeks with one or two matches, compared with those weeks without a match. This strategy reserves energy for the increased number of games. Beacle and Earle (2008) stated for advanced athletes 4-7 sessions should be done a week in order to reach the desired training stimulus, however as its in-season 4 sessions will be done as the focus is technical sessions and recovery.

Power and core exercises are done first as they use multi-joint and large muscle groups so are most fatiguing (Beacle et al., 2008). Assistant exercises are done after core as they are single joint movements. These can supersetted with prehab exercises which are less fatigueing. Assistant and core exercises can be alternated for recovery or supersetted or compounded to work similar muscle groups. Core stability is done at the end as it requires the least energy. Flexibility is done at the end to cool down and reduce muscle soreness (Shrier and Gossal, 2000). 

High intensity training at 90–95% of maximal heart rate has been proven to develop endurance (Hoff and Helgeraud, 2004). Strength training using high loads, few repetitions and maximal mobilisation of force in the concentric mode is effective in the development of strength and power. The chosen sets x reps for power were 3 x 5, with a load of around 75% 1RM. With strength the sets were similar at 3 x 6 but with a greater load of 85%. Core stability and assistant exercises were higher as they are less fatiguing and use smaller muscles and less muscle joints. Football requires quick, explosive actions and the nervous system has to be trained. That means many power exercises and maximum loads need to around 80 % of 1 RM to result in neural adaptation (Schmidtbleicher, 1992). During the in-season period the emphasis is mainly on making tactical and technical improvements while maintaining physical fitness. Matches require high energy expenditure, therefore the training load is not increased in order to avoid excessive fatigue (Cherif et al, 2012). Midfield players cover the largest overall distances during matches of up to 13km (Bloomfield et al, 2007). Therefore volume needs to be reduced and intensity increased to get sufficient rest. The 2 metabolic and 2 weight sessions a week at a high intensity allow sufficient training stimulus to maintain fitness and adequately recover. The sessions will vary if more than 1 match is played per week.

At least 1 rest day is required a week. If 2 matches are played 2 rest days will be needed and volume and intensity will be largely reduced. Willardson et al. (2005) demonstrated that a 5 minute rest interval between sets gives optimal recovery and a significantly increased total training volume. The shorter the rest period, the less reps completed (Rahimi et al., 2007). However the sessions are designed to be intense to enable more recovery. Therefore for strength 3 minutes was chosen between sets and exercises and 2 minutes were chosen for power. Rest days are taken the day before the match to ensure the athlete is fit and fully recovered. Active recovery is done the day after the match with stretching and foam rolling to help recovery. Monday and Tuesday are the days with the highest intensity, with Wednesday and Thursday tapering down towards match day.  

A yearly training programme is important for achieving long term goals, a microcycle are used to achieve short term goals (Bompa and Carrera, 2005). The early part of the yearly programme, including the preparatory months of training include high volume of training with minimal sport specific exercise; this phase is used to make adaptations for the athlete’s performance before the season of competition. At the competition phase the intensity of training is increased whilst the volume is decreased and sport specific exercises (tactical and technical) are a major part of the training programme (Bompa and Carrera, 2005). The focus for this case study was to peak for international fixtures (world cup qualifiers). For team sports due to the demands of football matches being once or twice per week intensity and volume vary from low to medium (Bompa, 1994), the start of in-season in table 12 shows a heavy fixture list therefore the intensity and volume are low as the football player is expected to peak here due to the importance of the competition. 

The purpose of the programme was to improve muscular balance and increasing knee stability, as the athlete’s already injured their ACL. In addition improving squat patterns, core strength and flexibility should increase strength and power.