500 Words a Week - Hypertrophy for Team Sport Athletes
In an attempt to improve my writing, I’ve decided to start a blog in which I will write 500 words (give or take) a week. This first blog post centres around hypertrophy for team sport athletes and some common mistakes I have made in the past/ seen made.
A major mistake is neglecting to get strong in the lower rep ranges (5-6) when the goal is hypertrophy. Through using heavier loads/ weights, we can still get a sufficient hypertrophic stimulus but we also get greater increases in task and non-task specific strength over lighter loads. Task specific is referring to the movement that is actually being trained, non-task specific is a different movement. A reason for this is due to an increase in the ability to recruit high-threshold motor units after training with heavier loads, these increases in voluntary activation are non-task specific.
This was inspired by a recent post from Chris Beardsley:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CI5IN1dAnss/
One of our major goals when working with athletes, is making them a better athlete. Therefore, whenever programming for secondary goals (hypertrophy) we must keep the main goal in mind (be a better athlete). With this in mind, we want our athletes to put on size but in a way that will also benefit them in being a better athlete. This is where the importance of understanding second order effects comes into play. Sure our athletes would get bigger by doing either a set of 6 or a set of 8-10, but now we understand that using heavier loads will provide better neurological adaptations than using a lighter load for more reps. Therefore, the second order effect of say performing a set of 6 would be more beneficial than a set of 10 to an athletic population. I’m not saying we neglect 10’s, rather for our major compound lifts we focus on getting strong, and use our accessory exercises to get some volume into our athletes.
A second mistake is neglecting to do something athletic (sprint, jump, throw) every training session. Even if the goal is hypertrophy, we must be constantly doing athletic tasks in our training. Remember the major goal! By always ensuring we are performing something athletic in every training session we will help a smooth transfer to occur between increases in strength/ size to on-field performance. The simple answer to this, is to begin the session with some jumps/ throws depending on the content of the main session. As your athletes progress, you can incorporate them into the main session by super-setting a jump/ throw with one of your major compound lifts. Thus providing our athletes with a more athletic stimulus.
Ultimately, as with everything we provide our athletes, the programme doesn’t need to be fancy, it needs to be followed. Emphasizing the importance of adherence, consistency and progressive overload to your athletes trying to put on size will bring about the best benefits.
For some very brief and generic example sessions, have a look at a recent Instagram post I put up:
