How to Work Out Like the AFL Elite, According to a Top Trainer

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Fitness is about choices. You can choose to hit the pavement five times a week or load up and move a barbell every day. You can be a Pilates guy. Or a yoga guy. You can do whatever you want. But all of Falloon’s experiences tell him that your best course is a balanced program.

“The weekend warrior wants to be generally fit and injury-free,” he says. “And if you tend to train one way, there’s a higher risk of injury because you’re stressing the same joints and structures through the same movement patterns. For example, we’re talking about swimmer’s shoulder: you do the same movement all the time and that puts stress on the shoulder joint.

“If you want total fitness — which can be the ability to go for a fun run, play soccer with friends at the weekend, or do something strenuous at home — you need to train for it.”

You’ll be amazed, Falloon says, how committing to a more comprehensive fitness program will improve your performance in a favorite occupation that you’d previously trained for with absolute specificity. Runners have told him that because of BFT, they record faster times in 10k runs, even though they run less now. The explanation is simple, Falloon says: Their bodies function better now. “Your glutes, quads and hammies are all coordinated, stable and strong and as a result you run more efficiently and it feels less like hard work.”

On the hunt for more muscle? A progressive approach is central to muscle building, but don’t think that the only way to progress is to keep adding plates to the bar. “There are so many alternatives to that,” says Falloon. “Try increasing the range of motion so that you are now controlling the same weight over a larger area. That is a great development.”

Too few guys understand the difference between strength training and weight training, he adds. To get more power, switch back under load and run the concentric (or up) phase faster—explosively, actually. It’s strength gains that translate better to most sports, he says.

You wonder if there’s a ceiling when it comes to building strength and power. Now in his late 40s, Falloon would have peaked a while ago, right?

think again One tends to see these attributes through too narrow a lens, he says. “Strength is not just the weight you lift. About a decade ago I got serious about kettlebell training. And one of the first things someone said to me was, “Just understand, you’re never going to make the perfect KB swing.” It was hard for me to understand then, but now I understand. Because every time you swing there are 12 different things to focus on and it’s very difficult to get all of those things perfect.”

Once his midsection is healed, Falloon plans to take on the Everesting cycling challenge, where you pick a hill and repeat it non-stop until you’ve scaled the equivalent of Mt Everest – 8,848m. It will test the entrepreneur, because at 86 kilograms he’s a solid unit who looks more like an NRL center than anyone you would imagine in a yellow jersey.

“It’s going to go beyond the physical,” he says, “and that intrigues me. I want to find out how far I can push myself. You want to learn to trust your body. You’ll find it’s a lot more powerful than you think.”

source https://www.bisayanews.com/2022/01/25/how-to-work-out-like-the-afl-elite-according-to-a-top-trainer/