I've done a post or 2 on this in the past referring strictly to the physical side of training but this will also take the technical and tactical elements into consideration.
My #1 rule is to not waste even 1 second of training if you can avoid, making every second count because at local/amateur level you've only got about 3 hours a week to adequately prepare your players for multiple qualities so this structure is developed with that in mind
PRE - TRAINING
- Now is the time to have a joke with your mates, make plans for the pub afterwards and hang shit on them in general
- I've also instructed our players to do any static and specific stretching they want, or feel they need to do, before we officially start training.
- Once you're handling the footy my preference is for this to be the "official" start top footy training where every player is to handle the ball as much as they can in the time they have (kicks and handballs) with a focus on skill execution and psychological focus and intent to get you in the frame of mind for training
FOOTY ONLY TIME - WARM UP
- Gather the group and let them know what they'll be working on so they can start to mentally prepare - even better let them know beforehand
- Instead of wasting time and just jogging a lap that will encourage non-footy behaviour, incorporate your dynamic stretching drills into it
- This week on our initial lap we incorporated drills such as side steps, walking lunges, backpedalling, ground touches, long lunge hold + thoracic rotations, walking high knee pulls, forward ankle pops, backwards ankle pops and walking hamstring mobilisations all mixed in with jogging
EXTENDED WARM UP
- Preparing hats ahead of time we then headed straight into speed work over 10 - 20m from various positions (ground based to standing)
- On 1 training night you would focus on acceleration over 10 - 20m and the other max velocity over 30 - 40m
- To keep the players minds on football I also introduced some ball pick up sprints where they sprint 5m, scoop up the ball and sprint away to the finish lines and over time I'll introduce more reactive stimulus to these to make it game simulated (sprints on demand, change of direction on demand etc - a future post in itself)
- We'll use groups of 4 - 5 for these depending on numbers with WALK BACK REST, not jog back rest because if you're gonna do speed work than you might as well do it correctly
- All up this should take about 20mins from start to finish with players minds and body primed for high intensity work
DRILL 1 - DECISION MAKING
- The most sport specific demanding drills should be first in line after the warm up
- There's always talk of skills and decision making under fatigue but you HAVE to be able to perform without fatigue years before you should be worrying about performing with it
- Keep the focus solely on decision making keeping fatigue to a minimum
- To keep player focus and to avoid time wastage, use multiple drills at the same time either of the same drill or run 2 - 4 different one's at the same time
- Probably the best thing you can do is to develop a decision making drill and then make up 3 - 4 ways to increase the chaos but without changing too much from it;s original form which will make it easier for you to progress the drills over time (or in-session) and also for players to remember the basics of the drill to decrease the learning curve -we want them to focus on decision making not how the drill works.
DRILL 2 - TACTICAL DRILL
- Tactical drills are next after decision making has ramped up, which should enhance the these
- Start with very specific game moments here (clearance from deep in the backline to the wing for example)
- Trying to include 40 blokes in a tactical drill can be a nightmare so you could split in half, using 1 half for the tactical drill and the other half could continue with decision making drills and switch
- It wouldn't be a deal breaker if you had to start the session post warm up by splitting the groups here either as both drills require high cognitive demand and will probably complement each other in the end
- Over time you can expand to multiple game moments (clearance from deep in the backline to the wing into tempo footy to stretch their defence and bring them out and then you can add the inside 50 component after that
DRILL 3 - TECHNICAL/SKILL CONDITIONING
- This part usually goes at the start of training sessions via lanework or something similar which can work but it could always be done better
- This is your initial conditioning phase of the session as the previous drills focused on decision making an tactics, elements that need to be trained in non-fatigued states
- I've put together a bunch of skill conditioning drills that I hope to use with our players and it involves combining skills and conditioning in the same drill because it's not about your running conditioning that matters if you're skills fall apart long before your lungs do. They are 2 very separate qualities.
- An example of a drill here is to set set up with 3 players, with 1 at each end about 20m apart. The 3rd player is the "worker" who has 2 markers about 10 - 15m apart. They will work within that zone for 10 - 30secs as hard as they can. They'll run towards the first player, receive the ball and quickly handball back, turn 180 degrees, run towards the other player, receive the ball and handball back and so on as hard as they can for the allotted time
- Players simply exchange roles and perform 3 - 5 sets each
- What you'll see is players who are great runners but super skill wise, potentially fail these drills as handballs become loopy and they start fumbling as fatigue sets in. They are conditioned physically but not technically.
DRILL 4 - PHYSICAL CONDITIONING
- The very last thing you should do is your physical conditioning which is your running element
- Even though conditioning should be taken care of a great deal by the previous drills above I still think there needs to be a dedicated running block at local/amateur level of which I have a 5 - 10 session program developed for
If you have any questions let me know over on the Facebook page.
No comments:
Post a Comment