OFF SEASON RESISTANCE TRAINING PART II
By Sebastian Rebollo
Master in physical Activity
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
In the second part of this off-season resistance training article, I’m going to explain how we can distribute the workloads in each micro cycle for a 12 week off season resistance training program. This article will be more practical and will be helpful for all athletes or trainers with little to no experience on the different phases of the training process.
First we need to create our exercise list that we are going to use in this training phase.
By doing this we are going to distribute our exercises in 2 differents schedules. First our Structural and Power exercises and second Core and Assistance exercises.
Structural and Power exercises: A core exercise that emphasizes weight on the spine directly or indirectly can be described as a structural strength exercise. A structured exercise involves holding a posture during the lifting movement. A structural exercise that is performed very quickly or explosively is considered a power exercise.
Core and Assistance exercises: Exercises can be classified as either core or assistance based on the size of the muscle areas involved and their level of contribution to a particular movement. Core exercises recruit one or more large muscle areas (chest, shoulder, back, hip or thigh), involve two or more primary joints and receive priority when one is selecting exercises because of the direct application to the sport. Assistance exercises usually recruit smaller muscle ares, involve only one primary joint and are considered less important to improving sport performance.
EXERCISE LIST * | |
STRUCTURAL AND POWER | CORE AND ASSISTANCE |
SQUAT | CHEST PRESS |
DEADLIFT | SEATED ROW |
CLEAN | STANDING CALF RAISE |
PUSH PRESS | LEG EXTENSION |
STEP UP WITH EXTERNAL LOAD | LEG CURL |
LUNGE | ABDOMINAL CRUNCH |
LATERAL SHOULDER RAISE | |
MACHINE BACK EXTENSION | |
* This exercise list is only an example that you can use and can be modified based on your own necessities.
Now that we have our exercise list, it's time to distribute it in our weekly plan. Because we are in our off season phase, let’s begin with 4 training days per week.
WEEK EXERCISE LIST DISTRIBUTION | |||
MONDAY | TUESDAY | THURSDAY | FRIDAY |
STRUCTURAL / POWER | STRUCTURAL / POWER | STRUCTURAL / POWER | STRUCTURAL / POWER |
SQUAT | DEADLIFT | SQUAT | DEADLIFT |
CLEAN | LOUNGE | CLEAN | LOUNGE |
STEP UP | PUSH PRESS | STEP UP | PUSH PRESS |
CORE / ASSISTANCE | CORE / ASSISTANCE | CORE / ASSISTANCE | CORE / ASSISTANCE |
CHEST PRESS | SEATED ROW | CHEST PRESS | SEATED ROW |
LEG EXTENSION | LEG CURL | LEG EXTENSION | LEG CURL |
STANDING CALF RAISE | L. SHOULDER RAISE | STANDING CALF RAISE | L. SHOULDER RAISE |
ABS CRUNCH | MACHIN BS | ABS CRUNCH | MACHIN BS |
Finally it's time to design our 12 week model for this training phase.
12 WEEKS TRAINING MODEL | ||||||||||||
OFF SEASON | ||||||||||||
PHASE | HYPERTROPHY / STRENGTH ENDURANCE | BASIC STRENGTH | ||||||||||
WEEKS | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
LOAD RM | 50% | 55% | 60% | 65% | 70% | 75% | 80% | 85% | 90% | 85% | 90% | 95% |
SETS | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
REPS | 20 | 18 | 15 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
REST | 1’ | 1’ | 1’ | 1’ | 1’ | 1’ | 3’ | 3’ | 3’ | 3’ | 3’ | 3’ |
Following this basic structure, we can gain strength and muscle mass in this 12 weeks off season resistance training. I hope this is helpful. Keep training hard!
Disclaimer: No training program can or will protect you from injury. All athletic sports carry with them an element of danger. In the case of a fall, collision or other accident, you may be injured or killed, regardless of the type of athletic training you may have participated in. A training program itself could even result in an injury in certain situations. The only way to certainly avoid being injured while training or participating in a sporting activity, is to not participate in any sports or training activity.