Skills are king in footy, there is nothing surer. You can be fat, slow and unfit but if you have skills then you can still getaway with everything else you lack.
Why?
Because you don't have to do as much work. It's a known fact that the top 4 teams actually do less work then the other 14 teams.
Why?
Because they're skills and team work are the best. You know what they say, "lots of hands make light work"...or something like that.
Skills are required to be at their peak from the first bounce of the game til the final siren so it's a great idea to train them in a non fatigued and fatigued state.
I believe this should be actually programmed into your pre-season training.
For the first 3rd of your pre-season practice all skills (or the majority of them) in a non fatigued state and get as many reps per player in as you can.
For the middle 3rd introduce some skill work under fatigue and gradually ramp it up so by the last 3rd you're doing almost exclusively fatigued (to varying degrees) skill work.
Make sure to set a standard though which brings me to my next point.
Random Tip #7 - Test What's Important
When you test something regularly, there's a fair chance you'll get improvement out of most if not every player to some degree. Being held accountable is a very underrated part of local and amateur football.
You don't want to test everything unless you have enough coaching staff to do it all but the big one's for me would be:
- Kicking
- Repeat Speed
- Aerobic Capacity
Re-visit these test 3 or 4 times during the pre-season and another 3 or 4 times during the season. Keep your players honest!!
Random Tip #8 - Sprint Drills with Time or Distance Limits
Everybody has varying degrees of fitness and capacities for various qualities. Somehow you've got to cater for the blokes who aren't up to the level of your reigning best and fairest winning mid-fielder who can run all day. You can't just run them into the ground as they attempt to "catch up".
They'll get injured and not be able to play or they'll get demotivated and not want to play. Either you're a man down before you even start.
I've written about auto regulation training in the past and it's a perfect choice to use in this case. What it means is that you make set point that players to get to in each drill and if they can't reach it, then they sit out the next set to allow them extra recovery. You wouldn't want them out on the ground when they can't run so why do it at training?
Alternatively you might have a 'fit" set point and an "unfit" set point to cater for more players.
Random Tip #9 - Hat Drill
This is a drill my old country team used to run in the 2000's. You'd set up hats that form a circle just inside the boundary line by about 5m that starts from about 20m out from goal and finishes on the other side in the same spot. Break your team into 2 groups (doesn't matter the mix of fitness levels) and 1 group rests while the other goes and vice-versa.
The last 25 - 50m of the drill has different color hats laid out every 5m or so. The first different color hat is 1 point, the 2nd color hat is 2 points and so on til the last hat.
The aim is for everyone to reach the 1st different colored hat in 90secs or however fast you think most players should be able to cover the distance. That is the set point. If you don't reach that hat then you sit out the next set, rest up and jump in for the 2 sets later.
The beauty of this drill is that it caters for both fit and unfit players. The unfit players are striving to just make sure they get to do every set. The fit players are striving to get the maximum score for the entire drill. So if you have 6 different colored drills at the end of the course and you do 5 sets, the maximum score is 6 x 5 = 30 points.
Random Tip #10 - Keeping Track of Who's Training
This can be a fair bit of extra work but if possible keep track of who attends training and how frequently. This can give you an idea of where players should be with their fitness throughout the entire pre-season.
There's plenty of blokes who just glide along and don't want to push too much out of their comfort zone. By knowing that they've done the last 8 sessions in a row then you know that they've got some pretty good training volume under their belt and that where there is a split of the team for running drills, they can move up a grade.
This will hopefully push those middle of the pack players up into the top group providing you with more depth during the season when you need it.
On the flip side you get the blokes who have done no training but want to run their own guts out which will more then likely end up in injury so it also let's you know who "hold back" and work up gradually which takes us back to random rule +1 - avoid injuries.
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