frostaldinho

when i go back to uni in September, i will be playing two football matches a week, wednesday and saturday. what are peoples thoughts or incorportating a 4 day split around it? obviously not only am i in danger of overtrainin but i dont want to be so tired i struggle during the actual matches, any ideas?

many thanks

m11

As long as you are eating enough, you'll probably be fine.

Alternatively, if you feel that you are not getting enough rest, you may consider changing your routine to a 3 day split to give yourself an extra day to relax.

rahaas

I don't think it really matters how many days a week you train as long as the volume/intensity of training leaves enough for the two football matches and like M11 suggest eating & resting enough.

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Yanick

6 days of high intensity training will kick your ass. A better idea would be to cut back on the gym training with 1-2 full body sessions per week concentrating on maintaining strength/power with the core movements (squat, deads, pull ups, bench, OHP, rows) and if you really feel the need you can try and throw a third gym day as an active rest type of session with lower intensity/volume and a high density of work to get some extra conditioning in and get in all the BB'er stuff if that is what you like.

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." -Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate

Gazhole

Seconding what Yanick said. 2 sessions on the weights will be plenty, just hit all the bases while you are there. 4 day splits are often too much without the extra 2 days playing matches.

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gtbmed

This is good advice.

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rahaas

So why is two days of hi intensity high volume better then 3, 4, or even 5 days of lower volume?

From my own experience doing heavy construction work, after reading lyle's thoughts on training I've switched up from 3 days hitting it hard to 5 days of lower volume hi intensity and have much more energy to do the work that needs to be done on both off days and training days with no more joint pains or DOMS at all.

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Merkaba

Who was it that posted a pro football, american football, strength program. Or maybe I read it somewhere else. But in the preface there was strict advice on realizing that the season is not the time to try to build muscle. It's about maintaining the gains made during the off season. To do other wise can lead to injury or added fatigue.

i totally agree. This was a workout from maybe 2008. It was refreshing to see how it has evolved since the times when I was playing ball and reading workouts of big schools and nfl teams. Running around for hours then training intensely is asking for it. You just don't recover in a day. Eat well and workout to maintain.

And it seems that these pro guys and big schools have shifted their paradigm away from big and macho to smarter not harder.

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Triple Threat

The original poster is from England. He might be referring to what is known here (US) as soccer, especially with the twice a week part. American football is typically played once a week.

That said, 2 games plus 2 full-body workouts should be fine as Yan and others have said.

Yanick

More like adequate intensity (I would define adequate intensity as keeping within 5-10% of your typical working weights, but that is not backed with research or anything just something to give a little context to the discussion) and low'ish volume.

And some say its better because if you are doing some kind of high intensity work everyday then when does your body get to recover? Say you squat heavy on monday, tuesday your body is shitting a brick trying to repair all the damage from monday's workout but then you hit it with sprint training. Now you just added more stress to the Neuromusculoskeletal system. Then comes wednesday and its time to play a soccer game...even more stress. Now its thursday, time for another heavy training session and so on and so forth. A natural, non elite level athlete, even with the best nutrition cannot hope to recover from such frequent, intense bouts of exercise. You gotta remember the pros and such, that is all they do, they sleep enough, go train, eat, get a massage, rest, eat some more, go train again, sit in the hot tub etc. Their job in essence is to train and recover, normal people don't have that luxury nor the genetics, or drugs in many instances, for that type of stress.

The changes will really depend on what the level of conditioning is/was prior to beginning the competitive season. So if someone was doing some sort of 5x5, 3x/week, I'd scale it down to 2-3x5, 2x/week but being sure try and maintain the weight on the bar during the season. After the competitive season ends and you can concentrate on GPP stuff, strength, power, etc then you can bump everything up and try to really increase those parameters.

And lastly, heavy construction work is not really intense activity from an objective point of view. If it were truly intense (defined as % of 1RM or Vo2Max or whatever), you wouldn't be able to do it 5 days/week, 8 hours a day. But it works for you because you probably lowered volume down to a level where, even if the w/o's are intense, you are allowing recovery. Or maybe not and you are screwing yourself up lol. There is grey area in all of this stuff no matter what certain gurus would have people believe.

End of the day though, the take home point is that you need to let something go and make room because having too many things on your plate at once will lead to some, or all, of them suffering.

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." -Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate

gtbmed

I wouldn't do high volume in those fullbody workouts. I would do a program with lower volume and more intensity, maybe some unilateral movements, and definitely compound movements.

gtbmed's strength journal

Merkaba

I know that's why I said American football.

The point is that there shouldnt be a lot of super heavy or high intense training like most guys like to do all the time, less the body suffers when its time to compete.

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