The great training BENEFIT from the current restrictions

The lockdown in facilities, and therefore the lack of equipment options available to most players now, is actually more than something that can just be negotiated with careful planning over the next few months, it can actually be viewed as a blessing in disguise for training purposes.

A lack of squat racks and cable columns and landmines and variations of barbells and GHD’s will certainly mean that you can’t keep doing the same things. But isn’t that something that gets discussed regularly – the need for variation.

Not only is variation in stimulus going to be something that can be achieved through the period – and therefore break many players out of a potential training rut that many of us fall into without realising – it will also hopefully lead to an improvement in movement qualities.

Often movement quality goes out the window in preference to chasing more and more numbers. Without the option of adding more and more load to various movements, it is a chance to play around with what you do have, and progressing in different ways other than merely making it heavier.

This is a particularly relevant discussion for the young and developing player who is just getting started in strength training. This is the group (especially males) that are most prone to adding a 60kg barbell to their back, when they can’t even bodyweight squat correctly. Ditto these (15 and 16 year olds) are always the ones who most vocally want to get bench pressing, and adding more and more weight, but struggle with proper push up form – in fact, even holding a plank position on the hands for 20-30 seconds with correct hip and shoulder alignment can be a significant challenge.

“Squat, push, pull, bend, lunge, rotate and brace.

In every plane

At every amplitude

At all speeds

In every direction

From every stance

Along the full continuum of forces.

Multiply all these training components for every foundation movement and the phrase ‘movement vocabulary’ will finally be understood.”
Kelvin Giles

So as a young player (or any player, but developing players in particular), get perfect technique and range of motion and proper control in the basic patterns;

-A push up

-A bodyweight row – or a pull up (most parks will have a playground which will allow these options )

-A bodyweight squat

-A split squat – then an alternating lunge

-A bodyweight hip hinge

-A 60 second plank hold – with PERFECT form (no slouching or moving around)

You can do all of these with your eyes closed, and need an overload? Great. Lets progress them.

Begin with the concentric rather than the eccentric

With your push ups, practice beginning with the concentric – straight off the floor. Remove the eccentric at the bottom, which works to now make this exercise harder. You must maintain the technique avoiding slouching around the hips. Better yet, make it an explosive push up out of the bottom.

Similarly split squats can also begin at the bottom, knee in contact with the ground, and accelerate up from a dead stop. If you have even a light dumbbell or 2, progress this further to a split squat into an overhead press (from the concentric start.)

Move to a unilateral version, or decrease the base of support

Make the hip hinge a single leg hip hinge (as in a single leg deadlift) and improve on your range of motion and balance, or for your split squat elevate your back foot on a bench or chair, loading up your front leg more, and also challenging the hip stabilisers further.

In you plank/brace position, you can do 60 seconds perfect? (longer is pointless), great, now elevate a foot or arm off the ground – even if its is only for 5 seconds intermittently – and back on the ground.

Perform the movement in different planes

With strength training, we love the sagittal plane so much, we often get stuck there and never leave, even tough footy of course operates in all 3 planes of movement.

With your lunges, move them into a multi-direction lunge (quite difficult to do properly in full range, in all directions – even for those who can lift quite heavy in the forwards/backwards movement).

With your squats, rather than up and down, move them laterally from leg to leg – certainly will require much less weight for you to get an overload.

Perform at different speeds

Look to move through the concentric phase of a movement as fast as you can, maintaining the controlled eccentric – push ups, squats, etc.

Perform super slow on an eccentric (for lower repetitions).

Perform repetitions with pauses, at different portions of a range – for example at the bottom of a squat, before accelerating back up. Or halfway down into a push up before performing the rest of the downward and upward phases.

This is only scratching the surface of this discussion, and these are all assuming no equipment. Anything can be used as an external weight to provide a little overload where it is needed.

And we only threw some common well-known primal-pattern exercises out there as baseline examples. This didn’t even include things like glute/hip thrust variations, step up variations and basic plyometrics.

The methods will look slightly different, but the needs, as well as the basic foundational movement patterns that you want to get an overload in do not change.

This discussion started out about the genuine benefits for juniors from this shutdown – as far too much of a focus in their training programs merely adds load to dysfunction. However, this discussion quickly morphed into one that simply applies to everyone.

The moral of the story is that when limited with equipment, we will need to focus more on the mastering and controlling of our own bodies, and then varying the ways we challenge them beyond just adding more load, or more repetitions, or longer holds. And this normally gets neglected in amongst the more flashy forms of training. But in this back-to-basics way of training, you can build your movement vocabulary. And if you are a junior athlete, or the parent or coach of one – encourage this, give them a plan, and genuinely achieve something from this forced opportunity, rather than merely getting by.

If you are unsure on where to exactly you should start, and/or where and how to progress in your specific situation (as everyone has a number of variables which makes each and every program approach different) head over to the personalised program page, with all personalised programs $25 off for the month of April. (Note the original prices are still listed, however when you go to checkout, the $25 is automatically taken off.)


Additionally enter the code DEVELOP2020 in checkout for any of the books, and receive 50% off, also for the month of April.