HOW TO APPROACH THE PRE-XMAS TRAINING BLOCK PART 1

Team training is due to start back up in the coming weeks so it's the perfect time for this post.

The money involved in local/amateur footy is as high as it's ever been making the stakes for success even higher, as you want those player payments going to good use.

The player point system also means that the more players you bring in, the more you need to develop your "home grown" talent as there's only so many 3 - 5 point players you can slide in 1 team of 22 players.

This all means that your team training sessions need to be as close to perfect as they can.

Essentially you'll have about 8 sessions pre-Xmas and then another 20 sessions post-Xmas before your 1st practice match.

Let's say most players complete 75% of those sessions and we're looking at 21 total sessions before the main stuff.

21 exposures to training be ready for competitive football.

That's not a hellva lot really to be honest so you need to nail every single training session you have and not waste any sessions at all, especially if you have require a lot improvement from 2018 and/or need to incorporate a lot of new faces into the team.

Here's some pointers of how to structure your pre-Xmas training to "get the most from the least", which should always be your aim considering all your players have to work etc.

#1 - Determine What You Want Your Players and/or Team To Achieve In This Block

Are you training them to be able to train post-Xmas? Do you want them to gain fitness? Improved skill level? Bonding with new players? All of these options? How much exposure to each option would you like players to have?

#2 - Work Back From Your Last Pre-Xmas Session

Like any goal setting exercise, you start at the end goal and work back, especially as we have time constraints to fit things into. Through this exercise you start with priority 1, ad work it back through the 8 sessions, then priority 2 and so on. This will be the first exposure to you getting rid of excess training that really doesn't need to be in there which is essential at local/amateur level where resources (physical/psychological) are limited and is probably the number q factor in setting up your in-season training later on when weather, player availability and all those things rear their ugly heads.

#3 - Introduce Decision Making/Chaos Drills

There are no cones on the footy field so the sooner you can introduce drills without cones and make players think for themselves, the sooner they can start learning decision making. Start your training block with high cone/low decision making/chaos drills then swing to low cone/high decision making/chaos drills by the end of the block.

#4 - Have High Success With Cone Drills and Moderate Success With Decision Making/Chaos Drills

Having a high success rate at cone drills looks amazing but is far away from what happens on game day. Cone drills can be used to reinforce efficient skill levels and build confidence but it will not transfer over to game day because as Mike Tyson once said - everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Once your players become proficient at decision making fora particular goal, then you need to change the goal posts a little to build on that learning again and again and again. In this block it might be as simple as small sided games with less players and then progressing to more players which condenses the playing field more and increases pressure. Failing at decision making/chaos drills is fine as long as you can see the decision making process players are trying to go with.

#5 - Start Speed Training Immediately

Speed is the most important commodity in team sports and takes the longest to develop especially if  you don't have it abundance naturally. Speed is also a skill so it needs to be practiced so coordination of the limbs can occur at high speeds - this doesn't just happen automatically for a lot of us who don't sprint all year round. Obviously you can't full tilt into 100m sprints so work your way up from a starting point of 10m to 20, maybe 30m in this block and hit max velocity type training (contact times to be precise) with extensive plyometrics which are low level plyometric exercises performed for 20 - 30m per set x 6 - 10 exercises. You'll be able to build back some of your top end speed, without sprinting, without the soreness that follows and without the injury risk while also decreasing injury risk all at the same time - the most from the least.