Do you have an advice on adjusting programming for someone who is playing rec sports 3-4x a week?
I am not looking for sport specific training, but rather a way to integrate meat-and-potatoes barbell training that doesn’t beat me up. Good advice on this is hard to find since most barbell programming is geared to strength athletes.
More specifics if needed:
I picked up playing ice hockey again after about 10 years off. Previously I had run “high intensity” type programming to 375 squat 5RM and 395 dead 5RM. (Press maxes are not even worth mentioning.) I got burnt out and took almost 3 months off when I started playing hockey. Strength sports never hooked me, but I’m actually much better now at ice hockey than I was 10 years ago, which surprised me and I’m guessing has a lot to do with the strength, so I’d like to keep it up.
I’m 36, male, 215-220 lbs., 39.5" waist, and I’d also like to lose weight to reduce stress on the knees.
I’d aim for a minimum of 2 training days per week, involving some form of squat, upper body lift of choice, and deadlift (not necessarily in that order).
Volumes and intensities are going to vary substantially throughout your competitive season and off-season, but if you found yourself getting burned out by constant exposure to high intensity work in the past, you’ll find some form of autoregulation (like RPE, for example) to be useful in this context. You could do something like a “heavier” squat, “heavier” bench/press, and “light” DL on day 1, followed by a “heavier” deadlift, “medium” bench/press, and “light”/“medium” squat on day 2, and I’m sure playing ice hockey will provide a lot of conditioning work for you. Combine that with some nutritional interventions (based on guidelines we’ve discussed elsewhere) and you should be able to get in pretty good shape!
I play rec baseball 2x week and some basketball all summer and it can be tough to PR lifts during this period. A conservative HLM has worked well for me during baseball to maintain/gain some strength. I’ve played hockey a few times which is the most taxing team sport I’ve played so much respect to you, but I would probably keep your expectations in " check" while strength training.
I too play high level rec league hockey 2-3 times per week. I have played since I was 4 so I don’t view it as a novel stress however if I have a big days of squats in the morning or the day before, sometimes I noticed my strides are not as powerful and skating seems more difficult and fatiguing. For me, lifting is prioritized over game performance as my hockey glory days are over so I don’t think too much about it however if I have playoffs coming up and squats fall on game day, I generally lower the weight and make all my lifts tempoed. This seems to tremendously help the fatigue I feel once I get on the ice.
I also have noted that when my body feels sore or taxed before a game, I feel much better after getting a ton of movement in
I play goalie so the amount of work I get during a game depends on how good the teams are… some days I come home beat up, others not so much.
I think that some sort of autoregulation is the best approach for me. It’s just a matter of setting appropriate goals and deprogramming myself from the mentality that I need to set regular PRs in training.
while strength training.