With basketball pre-season just around the corner and the GAA leagues and championships soon to start or re-commence, now is a great time to talk about conditioning parameters for getting match fit and in peak fitness shape.
Before we get into how to actually design your own conditioning program, lets talk a little bit about what we’re actually training, i.e the energy systems we use when we play and a little bit about how they work.
The Bodies Energy-Systems:
Our bodies have three main energy systems that break down glucose to give us energy to move.
- Phospho-Creatine System/ Alactic System (ATP-PC System).
This system is anaerobic (meaning it doesn’t need oxygen to help break down glucose). It works by breaking down glucose which releases a substance called ATP (adenosine triphosate), which is further broken down into ADP+P (adenosine diphosphate) releasing a small amount of energy.
The ATP-PC system only creates enough energy to supply short bursts of exercise about 10-15 seconds long. This system is the system that provides energy for quick, powerful outbursts like a sprint or a jump.
2. Anaerobic System (Glyocolytic System):
Next is the Anaerobic System (sometimes called the Glycolytic System). This system is also anaerobic, meaning it doesn’t require oxygen to break down glucose. This system works very similarly to the ATP-PC System except a substance called lactate is also produced as a by product of the energy produced. Lactate is the substance which forms lactic acid which when high levels of it are built up in a muscle, it causes cramps.
The Anaerobic System provides enough energy to last 20-80 seconds. So it provides energy for things like repeated or long sprints, where your carrying out an intense period of work without incomplete rest, like two or three possessions back to back.
3. The Aerobic System:
Finally we have the Aerobic System. This system uses oxygen to help fully breakdown glucose in the mitochondria (an organelle in your body cells which create energy) which releases large amounts of energy , unlike in the two anaerobic systems where its only partially broken down releasing small amounts of energy. Glucose, in the form of a molecule called acetyl coenzyme A, can only move into mitochondria in the presence of oxygen. The oxygen is also used to remove low energy electrons later on which allows them to be recycled.
The aerobic system supplies energy for longer lasting, lower intense periods of exercise. Energy needed anything over two or three minutes of exercise is supplied by the aerobic system. for example it supplies the energy needed over the whole period of a game. The aerobic system also enhances the work capacity of the anaerobic system and your ability to recover between intense bursts of work.
Training The Energy Systems:
Because each of the energy systems have different functions they each need to be trained differently. First we’ll go through the different types of training techniques needed to train each and then we’ll go through how to apply this knowledge practically so you can program your own conditioning sessions.
- ATP-PC System:
The ATP-PC System only supplies enough energy for quick, intense, maximal effort burst. It also requires long rest times to fully recover in order to provide another max effort sprint or run.
A good way to think of this system is the ‘gain’ system. Whenever your lifting to get stronger, or plyo’s to jump higher or sprint faster, your predominantly using this energy system. Your giving maximun intent in order to try make gains in strength, speed or vertical. Since your giving maximun intent to make gains, you need to make a full recovery in order to give the same high intensity, maximum effort again. Another way to think of it is the split second where you ‘gain’ an advantage in a game, for example out-jumping someone for a rebound, sprinting hard to chase down an oppponent or gaining an advantage over a defender with a quick first step. That maximun effort play requires a lot of time to recover and catch your breath.
So with that in mind and considering in a game we don’t get a couple of minutes to recover that often, how do we train so we can perform these maximun effort plays over and over throughout the whole duration of a game without a huge drop off in performance?
An easy way to do this is to perform 60-100 metre maximum effort sprint, walk or a slow jog back giving a short incomplete rest time (30-45 seconds) and repeat 3-5 times. Then take anywhere from 2-3 minutes (long enough to the point where you feel fully recovered) recovery before going for another 3-5 times.
Your rest time should be 12-15 times the length of your work time and remember this one has to be done at maximum effort every time!
2. Anaerobic System:
The anaerobic system can be thought of as the ‘pain’ system. By ‘pain I mean those long repeated high intense sprints like a couple of fastbreak of transitions of play in a row or multiple off-the-shoulder runs where you getting little to no time to recover between these intense bursts. These cause that pain of trying to grind it out and leave you gasping for breath when you eventually get a chance to catch your breath.
This repeated high intensity type of work is normally barely sustainable after two minutes without a massive drop off in performance. As a result it requires very long rest time (8-12 minutes) to fully recover in order to repeat the same time of work effort. Although in a game we don’t get this long a rest time (apart from half time maybe) we do in our own conditioning sessions so we have to used this to our advantage to train our bodies to perform at their optimum.
So, a great way to train this is using interval or repeated sprinting drills, like suicides, intervals set up at 20/40/60 metres, or repeated baseline to baseline sprints of a court for example. Basically anything where your moving at maxium intent for 1-2 minutes.
I’m going to take the suicides example to explain this one. So, maybe you run 2-3 suicides at maximum intent (even when your speeds starts to drop off, keeping pushing with maximum intent) and then take 8-12 minutes of active recovery like shooting free throws for example, and then go do 2-3 more suicides and take 8-12 minutes active recovery again. You should be aiming for 6-10 maximum effort repeated suicides (2-4 sets of 1-2 minutes of maximum effort work).
3. Aerobic System:
The aerobic system is the ‘sustain system’, meaning you can sustain a high level of work over a long period of time with little to no drop off in effort and intensity.
Most teams sports are predominantly anaerobic because of the repeated high intensity sprints, movements and jumps made throughout a game, but have a good aerobic capacity gives you the ability to play a whole game without gassing out allowing you give full intensity and effort over and over again. Being aerobically fit enhances your ability to recover between intense bouts while also improves anaerobic capacity, so you can do more intense work more often.
In total contrast to anaerobic work, aerobic exercise is much less intense and less taxing on the body. Aerobic training is as simple as a 20 minute or 5 kilometre jog or something like a 30 minute swim. It can be used as a form of active recovery between high intensity days.
Organizing Your Conditioning Training Splits:
There are a couple of things to take into consideration before just jumping head first into doing more conditioning because you think you need it. You need to take into consideration other types of training your doing like gym work, skill work or team training sessions, which all bring their own workload and varying intensities. If your already doing a lot, chance are you don’t need more conditioning, but if the work your already doing isn’t that intense and you feel like you might need more to get match fit, then it might be a good idea to add in more conditioning.
Also, even if you aren’t training everyday but your playing a lot of your sport, say your playing a pick up game once or twice a week or a match at the end of training, you mighn’t need to add in more conditioning. At the end of the day the best way to get match fit is to play your sport. Nothing can replicate the work done during a match like playing the sport, because by playing you get the mental fatigue along with the physical fatigue due to having to move, react and think all at the one time.
With all that being said maybe you still feel like your gassing out early into pick up games of training matches and you want to work on your conditioning lets outline how to add it into your training to get you to peak fitness:
- Split your conditioning into a high intensity day and a low intensity day:
Two days of conditioning is enough for most people when you take gym work, skill work and team training into account aswell. Anything more will just put a massive workload on the body causing it to break down instead of making it fitter.
So, split your day into high intensity days and low intensity days. Say maybe Monday, Wednesday Friday you have gym work or intense skill workout or team training or a day you’ve made free for conditioning work, while on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you have a light shooting workout or maybe even nothing at all.
Pick one of those high intensity days and either after training or a workout or maybe in the morning before you do a gym workout in the evening, get your conditioning work in. Keep it to a high intensity day so you have the lower intensity days to recover.
Then on a lower intensity day you can get a run or a swim in. As much as possible try keep it seperate from any other work your doing that day, say if you have a lower intensity upper body session in the gym that evening try not to do it after that workout but instead do it that morning.
Some weeks you mightn’t even need to do that extra conditioning. Maybe you got a bit more intense work in during skills sessions or team training. Or sometimes you might be better off to completely skip the aerobic work and save your joints if your moderately fit and trying to make small gains, so you can more effort into your high intensity days.
2. Programming your anaerobic conditioning:
Its easy to completely go over board here when it comes to anaerobic conditioning. The ‘less is more’ approach works a lot better here than the ‘balls to the wall’ approach. Effective anaeoribic conditioning sessions can be achieveed in as little as 15 minutes up to 45 minutes max. Keep in mind, the anaerobic systems carry our short, high intensity bouts of exercise. After 20 minutes of sprints you should be feeling the burn and barely able to do more, you shouldn’t have enough in your legs to last anymore than 30 minutes, never mind an hour.
So, keep it short and sweet.
A good anaerobic conditioning session should look something like this:
- Warm Up (if neccesssary, you won’t need to if your doing it after another training session/workout
- Get into your short (60-100 metres) maximum effort sprints first. These sprints are also a great time to focus on technique because of the maximum effort your giving and the long rest time to recover before performing another (2-3 minutes). Aim for 6-10 of these.
- Now you can move into your longer sprints. So here you would do something like 2-3 suicides before taking 8-12 minutes active recovery and repeating 2-3 times. Your aim for 3-5 two minute bouts of intense work
And that it’s. The long recovery times might seem like a waste of time, but if your giving maximum effort you’ll need every second of it because you shouldn’t be fully recovered before it if you have gave max effort. And if you are recovered, then you need to push a little harder.
Even though the long rest time don’t replicate recovery time in games, remember training isn’t a game. During training we can the chance to train our bodies to operate at their most efficient. The long rest times here will in turn result in less rest time need during an actual game.
Train smarter, not harder.
And as usual if you have any questions or need some help, drop me a DM or an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Stay workin’
Aaron.
Silent Grind Performance 
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