This is my first post. Thought I’d type a little introduction about myself.
I’m 21yr old male, volleyball player from the UK. I’ve been lifting weights for a while, but at this point I’m trying to take my strength and conditioning much more seriously. Volleyball isn’t one of the bigger sports here, but I enjoy it nonetheless. I’m hoping that I can learn from you guys.
I know that this site is mainly for sprinters, but I was thinking about maybe doing some sprinting for conditioning anyway – I’m led to believe it’s more suitable than jogging etc. And many of you guys have big verts, which would be handy for volleyball
I’ll admit that I’m quite confused. I try to read what I can, and there’s so much conflicting stuff about.
Sports specific movements are good, other say don’t bother. RFD work is best if the bar moves fast. Or slow. Agility work – helps, or makes you good at tests. Stability work like using uneven surfaces – good and bad reports. High rep abs, low rep abs, don’t do abs. The list goes on. If anyone can make things a little clearer for me, I’d be grateful.
And if you’ve read this far, how does GPP fit into things? Is it only suitable for the off-season? Surely it interferes with strength work. But I think it’s were I’m most lacking - my recovery is not good.
This got a lot longer than I’d planned. Thanks for your time.
Hi Dave! Welcome to the forum. I won’t try to answer all of your questions since my fingers would get tired from all of the typing, but I’ll take a shot at your GPP question.
First off, GPP by definition is kind of what you do in the off season. Usually the more advanced you are athletically, the shorter amount of time you spend on this General work and the more time you spend on specific work. In essence, it is the training activites that you do in order to get you Prepared for the specific training you will do in the next phase. If you find yourself breaking down during SPP or unable to complete the workouts, you either need to look at your program design or do a better job of preparing yourself for the workouts in GPP (or perhaps both!)
Now, you don’t do much (any?) GPP work during the competitive season because during the season, you want to be spending your energy (especially your CNS reserves which are usually the limiting factor in training volume/intensity for speed-strength athletes) on perfecting the specific skills you will need in your sport. If you spend a lot of time addressing general physical capacities, then you won’t have anything left to improve your sporting skill. Does this make sense?
As far as your recovery, what do you mean when you say your recovery is not good? Do you mean between plays, between games, between training sessions? However, in general if you don’t feel you are recovering, take a close look at your training program, especially with respect to high-intensity work and carefully manage the overall volume in this area.
And for your reply xlr8 - looking at my first post, there is a lot of stuff there; I’m hoping that I can work out the answers from the boards - first thing to do is spend a lot of time reading through previous threads. Thanks for the GPP; you make perfect sense.
When I say recovery - my jump is reasonable at the beginning of a game, but as the sets progress I notice quite a drop off. It’s my ‘minimum-vert’ which isn’t so good. I’m kinda stuck - I don’t really get an off season this year, so I’m trying to cover a lot of things at once, which is not ideal.
