Is the Fitness Work You Do Actually Specific for Football?

My regular readers and anyone who knows me, is well aware of my disdain for long distance running. To me it makes no sense to run slowly for a long time when you never do it for football.

Never.

Ever.

Not if you actually want to touch the football that is.

Last year I caused a minor stir when I posted this:

http://aussierulestraining.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/you-must-train-like-this-in-2012.html

This post will take this a small step further.

The running component for Aussie Rules Football has different requirements then long distance running but they go unnoticed in 99% of the programs I see players do.

The running requirement of football  involve 2 main components:

• Time
• Distance

In Aussie Rules terms, time refers how quick you need to get to the ball, contest or player. Sometimes you have 10secs to get there and sometimes you have 2secs to get there.

Regardless of the time you have to do it in, you have to get there FIRST. Whoever gets there first, gets the ball.

Whoever gets there 2nd is chasing tail.

In Aussie Rules terms, distance is how far you have to run to get where you need to the ball, contest or player. Sometimes you only need to run 100m to get into an attacking position and sometimes you need to only run 5m to get to an attacking position.

Getting back to long distance running, the time is not a big concern so long as you get to the end of the 10km run or whatever you distance you're running.  

Looking at distance, the actual time it takes to cover the distance is usually ignored so long as you again, cover the distance.

Neither of these are anywhere near relevant to football.

So what should you do?

Footy is made up of a lot of sprints over various distances and when I mean sprints, I mean having to get somewhere first which means most of these sprints are performed at at least 90% of your top speed.

So a better idea is to do repeated sprints covering various distances for your off season training, replacing those outdated and joint killing long distance road runs. The AFL doesn't do them anymore so why do you?

Add an element of speed to your running because you need to get quicker. AFL clubs draft players purely because of their speed and it is the reason why interchange bench rotations have gone through the roof, to maintain the speed at which players can run at.

So here's what to do:

1 - Determine what running patterns you use in your games. Do you just run the wings? Do you need to do multiple leads? Do you need to lead and run back towards goal?

2 - The next step is to determine what sort of distances you cover during these running patterns. Yes they will vary but if you break them down into 2 or 3 general distances then that will be more then enough for programming reasons.

Once you have the distances and running patterns determined then you simply need to test your speed for them which will then enable you to set a time range to complete each set in. So if you need to lead up to center half forward then run back towards goals it might be a 150m run with a turn in the middle of it. This would be your set run.

When testing it if you can complete it 30secs then set yourself a range of 32 - 33secs to complete it in and once you can't complete it in that time frame, then the session is over.

Why should I finish the session I hear you ask?

Because you've slowed down to the point where you are no longer going to be first for the ball and any additional training will just be inducing fatigue resulting in greater recovery before you can train again. All it will do is make you better at getting to the ball slowly which you can do in the reserves with no training at all.

So choose 2 or 3 running patterns and train them once each week. Don't set yourself a goal of how many you'll do, just run them as fast as you can and when you can't do them in your time frame, start your warm down.

It's time that amateur footy players started training smarter, not just try and train more or for longer.