With the Open having come to a close, I’m sure that many of you are wondering what’s next. As I’ve always stated the free programming on this blog is and always will be designed such that the Open is the end of our season. Those of you that succeed in the Open and make it to Regionals, you need to email me so that we can get you set up with Regional programming. The rest of you, the off season starts today. What that means is we’re going to take this week lightly and allow y’all to relax. Please don’t feel committed to the programming and feel free to change it or not do it at all. Take the week and recharge mentally and physically. Starting next week, the off-season training will begin. That means specific development of three things:
1-Strength Gain: an obvious time to get really really strong is during off-season. So that means the volume of lifting will increase dramatically and the program will look very similar to the weightlifting program. Obviously the volume will not match the weightlifting program but the amount of time you’ll spend lifting will definitely be increased. Expect higher volume in the squats and in the other powerlifting movements as well. We are going to take the off-season and get really really really strong. As we do with every off-season.
2- Perfection of Movement: from this point forward, for the next six months at least, you will not see complex Olympic lifts or high-level gymnastic movement inside of a conditioning piece. (Sometimes I will throw you a bone but for the most part this will be true) Why? Because inside of time domains where you were trying to beat a clock, it is extremely hard to focus on and maintain proper technical precision. One of my big goals in every off-season is to hammer out and take away bad habits. Specifically, the bad habits that show up during conditioning pieces when you are tired. The best way to do that is to create good movement patterns and good habits when you’re not fatigued. Thus all of your gymnastic movement and lifting will be done outside of a taxing time domain. The goal of this is to get rid of those things that make you inefficient underneath the pressure of time. That will be true 99% of the time. Every now and then I will let you do something fun like Amanda. But those times will be few and far between.
3- Aerobic Base: the last component and one I did not give enough time focusing on last year that will be the development of an aerobic base. Development of an aerobic base is essential to your growth in conditioning pieces. It is especially important later in the season when we will be spending time working on pain threshold training and lactate buffering. Building a sufficient aerobic base takes time. That’s why we are going to get started on that ASAP. Especially since summer is around the corner, it’s going to be much easier for y’all to pound the pavement and not worry about ice or the “treacherous” weather conditions that kept yall indoors for so many months. Expect a lot of time on the track and a lot of time on the road. Also, if you don’t have a prowler or a sled, get one.
Great job in the Open this year y’all! I would love for y’all to comment on the blog post and tell me how much improvement in placing you have seen over the past year. Where did you place the open last year? Where did you place this year?