Hi,
I am a Field Hockey player (yeah, ermmm the girls game). I train purely for hockey. The physical demands on my body include a great deal of sprinting (both in an upright position and in a half squat whilst ball-carrying), twisting and turning from the torso, and hitting through the ball with a technique somewhere in between a golf shot and an ice hockey shot. The way I see it,I need muscular endurance from the abs and back down but my upper body performance muscles don’t really need to create much force, and don’t need to create it often.
So with that in mind I’ve been doing a healthy mixture of various training systems work for my lower body but low rep high weight work and power work for my upper body, and very little high rep work. Would I get any benefit if I trained muscular endurance for the whole body or would I just become heavier and therefore slower? I don’t do much movement based ab work (at the direction of a few articles on here) yet my sport includes a lot of movement from the toso as well as a lot of anti-movement. Should i fit some of this style in and if so, which ab exercises should i go for?
Some useful PBs: Deadlift 1RepMax: 363lbs, Squat 300lbs, Bench 220Lbs, Military Press: 143lbs, Clean 165Lbs (caught in a 1/4 squat, not deep), 10km run 38:53, 5km run 17:35, 12min run 3.47kms, 1.5mile 8:15, BW pull ups 13
My stats: 24y/o, 85.7kg, 11.7%BF (or there abouts), 6ft tall
My current routine includes Coach Thibs 8 week bench press routine, a mixture of the neural charge work (as a circuit on a recovery day and on it’s own as a separate work out), Heavy squats and cleans on another day (with 5-3-1 then bottoms up squat clusters and OH Squat, and front squats for volume,with cleans, snatches, high pulls, and single arm versions), and a posterior day (with both high rep and low rep DL, a mixture of pulling and RDL, Good-morning → squat progression, and leg curl for hams), sprint work and longer runs, and 2 ab sessions a week with anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion, and anti-extension work. I usually fit in a few tabata sets or a tabata day along the week and will do more of this as we approach the season to ensure i’m lean.