How to get fitter, faster and stronger for your 2017 sporting season at Train Dirty London

Your approach to pre-season training needs to be holistic to best prepare the athlete for the upcoming season, from working on strength, power, speed, agility conditioning, mobility and nutrition to also rehabilitate any injuries from the previous year of competing. It is the time the athletes gets a break from playing, the body and the mind both get to freshen up. It is important at higher levels that the athlete really enjoys this time as training and games can be very full on, anywhere from 3-6 nights/days a week training and competing whilst at a high level.

A lot of field based athletes (Rugby, Football Netball, Hockey etc.) put their body through a variety of actions from running, suddenly stopping, tackling, sprinting, kicking, jumping, falling and catching during training and competing. In order for the athlete to perform these skills at their best, we want to work on improving their weaknesses, increasing their strengths and performing the actions mentioned above as fluently as possible. We also want to work on performing them while under fatigue so that the athlete can build and hone their skills to prepare them for a game. The only way to improve is by doing the training. That is why we have a pre-season and keep working on these skills with weekly sessions.

Pre-season is also a time for athletes to increase their strength and power through specific, individualised gym programs that we provide at Train Dirty London. It is also a time when injured athletes can begin their journey back to training after surgery or little niggling issues they may have carried in the back half of the season. It is very difficult to do this during the season as the main focus is working on the game plays, recovery and maintaining what strength gains were made during the pre-season. There may be certain periods in a season where the workload and intensity will increase briefly, to help get that extra gain and to provide the best opportunity to compete well in finals. It would put the athlete at risk of injury if you tried to increase both strength and power during the season as it puts the body under greater stress. It also takes the body longer to recover due to the bigger effort expended to produce the movements. To then to make the athlete go out and play games where they will produce even bigger efforts and make recovery twice as long may lead to soft tissue injuries or burned out athlete.

In the gym, it is important that field based athletes perform compound movements (movements which use multiple joints and muscles groups) as these exercises recruit maximal muscle fibers, produce high activation in the nervous system and produce muscle growth. Examples of compound movements are dead-lift, squat, bench press, chin up/pull up, shoulder press. Keep the weight heavy and focus on fast lifts, low reps

Glute activation is also something that is very important. Our glutes are one of our bigger muscle groups but a lot of athletes tend to be weak in this area. This can lead to strained hamstrings, knees and back issues due to these muscles over-compensating. It can also lead to weaknesses through the core and hips. We get a lot of our power through the glutes, so the stronger they are and the quicker they are to switching on, the better the athlete will be (for example, jumping higher, running faster and changing direction q