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Tuesday 4 October 2016

Pre Season Training Thoughts

The upcoming season is the third for which I will have prepared myself with a pre-season schedule of fitness, conditioning and skills training.  Unsurprisingly, and even though it is still early days this year despite my later than ideal start, I feel better equipped than in the past and that my efforts will be more effective as a result.  Hopefully it's not just hubris.

Since my last inline game in early August it was another four and a half weeks before I did any specifically 'sporty' activity (namely, a social skate at the Ice Arena one Wednesday evening).  Not that this was a huge change, as I hadn't done anything EXCEPT play inline once a week since May.  Be that as it was, I thoroughly enjoyed my ice skating and drove the heart and lungs reasonably strongly.  I felt great afterwards, realised that I'd better stop procrastinating about beginning some pre-season training (I'd been finding 'reasons' not to start for the previous couple of weeks), that higher level physical exertion isn't only good for you, it FEELS good as well!  So, a couple days later I strapped on my heart rate monitor and went my first run in five months.  And thus began my pre-season training program for this season.

In the first couple days I ran 3km each, the following week totaled 22km, the following one over 25km, this week will be close to 30km.  I can feel the heart/blood/lungs starting to respond to this increase in aerobic activity, to the point where I now feel safe starting some anaerobic work (began this phase of training yesterday evening).  Next up will be core and leg strength work (this week), agility (next week) and general overall skills training (subject to weather for some inline skating, otherwise stickhandling with a golf ball every second evening every second day or so).

If I treat the first game of the season as actually falling within pre-season period I buy myself a couple extra weeks before I need to transition into regular season activity, so I have about a month to go.  That's enough time to make a significant difference to my performance.  Especially if I maintain some basic fitness and skill work into my schedule through at least the first half of the season.

The plan is evolving!

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