HSN Guide: Sportspeople at the Gym. Part 4

The moment has finally arrived, welcome to the fourth part of our sportspeople at the gym series, in which we’ll apply all the key points we’ve highlighted over the previous articles to design a routine aimed at improving your sporting performance.

Quality over Quantity

As we’ve already said, a sportsperson should prioritise quality and intensity in sets in the gym instead of a high number of exercises, repetitions and unnecessary fatigue.

Routine Design

That’s why when the time comes to design your routine you should use a base of basic exercises across all the movement planes, To do this efficiently, we’ll leave aside exercises that only attack one muscle group in isolation, we don’t need them, our body won’t work using each muscle group independently on the field.

Weekly Strategy

This is the framework for our routine for an athlete that’s off-season and looking to improve their strength and sports performance.

Intensity and Accumulation Running

Progression in the Weights Room

We now have the basis of our routine to build the strength we want to improve in our sport. To progress, I’m going to set out a basic linear progression plan that you can use with these basic exercises.

First Week

The first Monday you should be looking for a weight that allows you to carry out 3 sets of 5 repetitions in squats, but that allows you to perform them with ease, with good technique and speed. This will be your starting point.

Do the same with the bench press, dead lift (1×5) and power clean (5×3) during the first week.

Progression

This will be the starting point, and each week you should add 2 kilos to the Monday squat, 2 kilos to the dead lift on Tuesday, 2 kilos to the bench press on Thursday, and 2 kilos to the power clean on Friday.

It’s vitally important that you start conservatively, if on the first day your ego makes you try a super heavy 3×5, it won’t take long before you give up.

What to Do When We Fail to Progress

Obviously, this linear progression doesn’t last forever, there will come a day when you try your 15 repetitions (3×5) of squatting and reach muscle failure, thus ending the progression. When this happens, you should go 4 weeks back from the last successful lift you had.

Here’s a practical example:

• Week 5: 3×5 with 97 kilos
• Week 6: 3×5 with 100 kilos
• Week 7: 3×5 with 102 kilos
• Week 8: 3×5 with 105 kilos
• Week 9: 3×5 with 107 kilos
• Week 10: 3×5 with 110 kilos – FAILURE
• Week 11: 3×5 with 97 kilos – RESTART

If the rest of the basics continue progressing, you don’t need to restart them, you only need to readjust the progression on the exercise you’ve failed on

Specifying for your Sport

Seen on a weekly basis, the proposed routine may seem “short”, especially if you’re used to a classic bodybuilding routine, but bear in mind that the demands of these basic exercises combined with speed and sessions specific to your own sport make the weekly training volume considerable.

Support work

There’s a margin for adding extra work aimed specifically at your sport, but first I recommend trying the basic routine for 2 weeks, and if you recover well and your strength improves, then you can include some extra work from the following suggested supports:

Final Note

With this guide we’ve covered all you need to know how to begin improving your sports performance and identify the most common errors you were committing.

I’ve given you the tools, but your work, consistency and sacrifice will be the keys to success…

And this is just the beginning, I’ve given you the tools and a routine to help you create a total strength and speed base that will make a difference on the field, but this is a process of consistency and time, so you’ll have to keep learning and adapting your routine, nobody knows exactly the demands of your sport, position on the field, experience, etc.

I hope the time dedicated to this has been worth the effort, see you on YouTube and in the next articles. Big hugs!

Related Entries

• First Part
• Second Part
• Third Part