There are many theories on training athletes. I have adapted what I have research to our sport which is quite unique in that we are neither aerobic or anaerobic but both so we have to train double. Let me preface anything ele with this. You should workout al least three times a week for max benefits. Your conditioning can be broken down into macrocycles, mesocycles and microcycles.
Our macrocycle is a year long (the length of our season).
Our mesocycles include:
- May-August – Building up
- September-December – Preseason to early competition
- January-April – Maintenance
Each of these is approximately four months with very distinctive characteristics.
In The building up process we want to build strength, agility, coordination, endurance, and flexibility. In this mesocycle we can divide it into four microclces varying the exercises so as not to enhance adaptation of the body. In these first four microcycles we want high intensity moderate and light intensity. I would vary by the workout day maybe three days a week high, light, medium to enhance recovery. This build up time should be a workout for all over fitness resistance training, medicine ball, stability ball work and core and basic body movement training including cardio/plyo, balance/stability, upper, lower and core.
The second mesocycle would be preseason to early competition. In this cycle we want to do more functional conditioning specific to the sport. An example would be to do actual skills that would be in a routine and in between do strength training or do a circuit of all different kinds of body movements. You want more strength and cardio endurance both aerobic and anaerobic workouts. Aerobic is using oxygen to fuel your activity such as long distance running or swimming. Anaerobic is short bursts of energy without oxygen for fueling such as weight lifting or sprints.
In the last mesocycle you want maintenance of your current skills a lighter workout because you are actually doing routines a lot. But make sure you are training from the inside out with core work first working out to the extremities. A lot of skill specific exercises would be valuable and continuation of routine endurance workouts- doing parts two or three times in a row tumbling down one level to insure no injuries. Most of our problems in routines are related to endurance- strength or cardio or both and the other problems are related to doing skills that are not owned yet. They need to be able to do these skills in their sleep. It should not be a question whether they can hit or not.