Training Like An Athlete (A Guide to Deciding Your Training Split)

Deciding how best to split up your gym training can be hard at the best of times, but even more so when you have to account for qualities like skill work, speed and conditioning training on top of the gym when you're trying to work on everything required for a sport. It can be overwhelming figuring out how you can fit it all into a week, while still recovering from session to session. This is why it is important to identify which attributes you need to prioritise for your training to minimise any unnecessary workload.

To begin with, let's identify the following:

1) The physical attributes required for your sport

Less is often more and there's no point wasting time and energy on things that aren't going to positively impact your sports performance. A shot putter doesn't need to be doing hours of continuous aerobic activity. Look at what attributes are being applied in your sport and base your training around these areas

As it's the sport I'm most closely linked with, I'll use BMX Racing as an example throughout the course of this blog. It is predominantly a power based sport. Laps are rarely longer than 30 seconds, and a great deal of focus goes into the gate start, as this is often a key contributor to the end result. Therefore, the main physical attributes we can apply to BMX are the ability to apply force as rapidly as possible (some training areas: strength, acceleration, top end speed), as well as a degree of Anaerobic Endurance.

2) Your main strengths and weaknesses out of those qualities

Once you've identified which physical attributes you need for your sport, it's then a case 0f figuring out how much focus needs to be applied to each. Think about applying more energy to your weaknesses, while still including some stimulus for your strengths to keep them as such. Generally I'd keep to no more than 2-3 exposures to any given attribute in a week in order maximise recovery.

For example, a BMX racer that tends to lag behind out of the start and then works their way through the pack throughout a lap, probably needs to apply more focus on developing their acceleration through increased strength training as well as improving the overall mechanics of the start via dead stop sprints/gate practice. Vice versa, someone that routinely hole shots but fatigues down the final straight and makes mistakes around the lap, probably needs to spend more time on the bike, working on the specific skills required to remain smooth, as well as specifically targeting their anaerobic endurance.

3) How often you are available to train

This is not to say that you should be training on every day that you are available. My general suggestion is to perform no more than 4 high stress training days per week (I'll go over what constitutes 'high stress' further on), with low stress sessions planned outside of that. Once you know which days you can train on, you have the basis to start building your program.

Building the Program

Once you've identified the 3 factors above, you can get to work on figuring out how to break down your week. There are numerous ways you can split up your training but one of the best methods I have applied is the high/low approach. Here, you alternating between days that are high stress and low stress, with at least one full day of rest, to maximise your training while still recovering well. As previously stated, the goal is to not overdo the amount of high stress training days we have in a week as these are particularly taxing on your nervous system, and therefore take more time to recover from. For exercises that fit into this category, think of anything that is performed to maximal intent. You can see examples of high and low stress exercises in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Examples of High/Low Stress Exercises

If your sport inherently works high stress qualities, your overall training frequency may need to be slightly reduced, given that there will be fewer lower intensity days to fit alongside your high stress days. In some cases, double session days may be necessary where possible to make room for rest days while still training all the required physical attributes. With correct planning, 5 days of training per week is still an achievable and recoverable goal.

Let's return to the BMX example and create a scenario for a rider. For the purpose of this, we'll just call them 'Athlete':

The scenario: Athlete has an excellent base level of strength (squat in excess of 2xBodyweight). They're often the first person to the first jump but start to lose a couple of spots down the first straight. From here, they continue to lose ground, as mistakes like bonked manuals and cased jumps accumulate throughout the lap. From a fitness standpoint, they are not excessively fatigued at the end of a lap and can maintain their energy levels throughout the course of a race day

Planning for Athlete: Looking at this case, it's clear Athlete's main assets are strength and acceleration, with a sufficient level of anaerobic endurance. The key weaknesses lie in top end leg speed to maintain their pace down the first straight as well as overall skill development to be able to ride efficiently and smooth at race pace. Therefore, an example training week for Athlete may look like Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: Example training week for Athlete

As a little breakdown for Figure 2, you can see that Athlete will be at the track 3 times per week, since developing the specific bike skills is considered a priority. The longest sprint session looks to target their second key weakness in top end leg speed. Gym is kept to just 2 days per week to maintain their high standard in this area, while qualities like acceleration and anaerobic endurance are still trained to small degrees and maintained. This way, every key attribute is still worked consistently, but to a lesser extent is strong areas.

Final Words

I hope that this blog has helped broaden your perspective on how you should be structuring your training and you can apply some changes to your own planning. With that said, regardless of sport you take part in, if you want to take the guessing out of your training structure and want a plan laid out for you to work on the attributes that YOU need for your sport, don't hesitate to get in touch so that I can help optimise your training to become the best athlete around any commitments and obstacles you have in life.

Email: connorhudsonsport@gmail.com

Instagram: @hudsonstrengthperformance