An AFL pre-season program built around you

What goes in the week

For most community footballers the week is two or three gym sessions and two or three runs, placed around club training rather than on top of it. The common mistake is treating them as interchangeable — three "gym days" and three "runs". Each one has a job.

• Strength. Heavy, progressive lifting with the weight written on every set: lower-body strength and power, upper-body work, and the hamstring and groin work that keeps you available. Nordics and the rest of the prehab are in the session, not left as optional extras.
• Running, three ways. One session at threshold or as intervals, to lift your engine. One for speed and change of direction. One of tempo or repeat efforts — the running a game is actually made of. They are not three versions of the same run.
• Skills. Kicking can sit inside the running session, or be left for club training if that is where you do it.

Four rules sit above all of it, and they matter more than any single session:

1. Leave at least one full day between running sessions.
2. Stay off concrete wherever you can find grass.
3. Get into boots for the speed and change-of-direction work.
4. Treat the paces as ceilings, not targets. Running everything flat out is how a pre-season produces a soft-tissue injury in week three.

How the months run

1. October — off-season. Games are over. A running block rebuilds the base at paces worked out from your own 2km time, the gym goes back to general strength, and it is the time to deal with the niggle you played through.
2. November to February — pre-season. The building months. Gym volume goes up — roughly a fifth more sets than baseline — and the load climbs in four-week blocks, three weeks up and one week back. The easier week is not optional; it is when the other three turn into fitness.
3. March onwards — in-season. Volume comes down to make room for the game, and the weight on the bar holds rather than climbs. The day before a game is a short primer. The day after is a flush. Why you keep lifting in-season.

The general case for that order — base before intensity, intensity before sharpness — is in how to build a pre-season that works. If your club’s S&C coach runs the squad through Train Smart, the block they set decides the phase instead of the calendar.

Built around your club nights and what you have

Tell the app which nights your club trains and your own sessions are placed around them, not stacked on the same day. Tell it what you can train with — a full gym, dumbbells, bands or bodyweight — and the program is written for that. A session you cannot do with the equipment in front of you is not a program.

Pick your position and the Progress screen measures you against what that role asks for. A wing and a ruck are not held to the same numbers, and should not be.

What to test, and when

Test at the start, and again every four to eight weeks, on the same tests in the same conditions. For a footballer that is usually three numbers: a 2km time trial for the engine, a 20m sprint for acceleration and a vertical jump for power.

The 2km is the one most clubs run, and the one a running plan is easiest to build from. How to train for it is its own guide.

Where the app comes in

Everything above is what Train Smart builds: the week around your club nights, every set with a weight on it, the running paced off your own 2km, the phase changing with the season, and the full AFL program it all sits inside. If you are carrying something, the program works around it rather than stopping.