Using Micro-dosing to address the issues with strength training during congested periods in the season

 

Strength training has been proven to have essential role in football for both enhancing performance but also as a tool for reducing likelihood of injuries. Traditional application of strength training in football typically involves 1(or sometimes 2) long workouts mid-week consisting of several exercises aimed to improve different parameters associated with football performance and injury risk reduction. However, this approach has been proven to be problematic since it is time consuming and has been shown to accumulate lots of fatigue and soreness which are undesirable for the upcoming training sessions as match day approaches, resulting in strength training to be frequently omitted during the season especially during periods with less than 6 days between games.

To overcome these problems more and more teams have adopted a new approach where strength training is frequently micro-dosed across the training week. But what do we really mean when we say micro-dosing of strength training. Micro-dosing refers to the division of total training volume within a micro-cycle, across frequent, short duration bouts with the aim to maintain the benefits associated with traditional strength training and at the same time minimise the undesirable side effects. But before we go deeper into the why and how to apply the micro-dosing approach lets look at the typical application of traditional strength training in season and the associated limitations.

1 Game per week: 

In this scenario a typical approach is to perform strength training once, at the middle of the week, so that athletes have enough time to recover from previous game and to ensure that the fatiguing effects associated with strength training will be fully diminished by the day of competition. 

However, by condensing all strength related volume in 1 session, can result in excessive fatigue / soreness that can have a negative impact on subsequent training sessions, therefore minimising the room for athletic development and at the same time increasing injury risk. 

Of course, some practitioners can argue that you can do a strength session with decreased volume and intensity to avoid the fatiguing effects however we need to ask ourselves if this is enough to develop or even maintain strength related adaptations during the season?

2 Games per week: 

In this scenario there is no room for any traditional strength training since there is not enough time to recover from game do a strength training session and recover from it until the next game. Therefore, strength training is omitted during this period and is reintroduced when competition schedule returns to 1 game per week. 

Although this makes a lot of sense, we need to consider that many teams have this competition schedule for several weeks in a row.  If strength training is constantly omitted for an extended period, it can lead to losing some strength related adaptations which can have a negative impact on both performance and injury.

Now that we have established the limitations associated with the application of traditional strength training in congested periods of the season lets see the potential benefits of using a micro dosing approach and how it can address some of these limitations.

1. Time efficiency. The micro dosing approach does not require a long-dedicated strength session to be performed as you can get away with 15-20 minutes every day which can act as part of activation/warm up. This is particularly important for teams that have limited time availability due to travelling.
2. Daily exposure to strength stimulus allows athletes to ‘push’ when they feel fresh and ‘pull’ when they feel tired whereas with the traditional approach this is not possible. 
3. Planning and scheduling of strength training is more flexible and efficient. Stimulus can be adjusted to prepare athletes for the demands of field training.
4. By splitting up the workload in small doses the fatiguing effect of strength training is minimised.
5. Appropriate application of micro-dosing can have a potentiation effect and can improve athletes’ readiness to competition/training. 
6. Higher frequency is more beneficial for motor learning.

Below is an example of how to structure strength training using the micro-dosing approach for scenario with 1 & 2 games per week. 

As you can see micro-dosing is adjusted to field training needs and can fit anywhere around the schedule of the team giving lots of opportunities for strength exposure. It is important however that the dose is adjusted so it does not have a negative interference with athletes’ readiness to competition / training.