While watching the Hawks spank the Crows (45 - 14 already in quarter number 1!) I'm brain storming idea's to put into my new manual but when putting something together for the masses like this, it can be hard deciding how technical to go and if it is "technical" then how can I make that simple?
Don't worry, that's my problem not yours so here's some things I'm mulling over, some of that have been mentioned in this blog before.
Training Residuals - this refers to the minimum frequency certain strength and fitness qualities need to be trained for, in order to maintain them. You can't train everything hard all the time so this is vital information to know, especially in-season when resources and time is lower then in the summer, because you don't what to lose in a future phase of training, what you worked so hard to gain in a previous training phase.
Lower Leg Stiffness - this refers to rigidity of the foot and ankle complex and the ability of it to absorb forces put through it during sprinting and to resist deformity. Think of how fast your newly pumped up footy bounces off your boot compared to when it's slightly deflated. Watch a 100m sprint in slow motion and watch their lower leg, upon ground contact the heel barely lowers towards the ground at all!
Big Toe - the big toe is THE connection from the foot to the glutes which is where all your power comes from in regards to speed and running economy. There's been plenty of ho-ha about minimalist footwear to increase the use of your toes and foot musculature but from what I've read, and by looks of the image of Usain Bolt below, I'm not sure that using all of your toes is as critical to performance as is mastering the usage of your big toe. It's not a great image as I took it off the TV, but you can clearly see the dominance of his big and second big toe while the others look all squashed together. I did a heap of big toe work in my training a few years back and the glute soreness during the season after games from this indicated that it definitely increased my glute usage.
Consolidation of Stressors - I first read about a coupe of years ago over at www.juggernaught.com and is connected to the training residuals point from earlier. As stated you can't train everything at 100% all the time because you only have so much recovery to go around, and once you exceed that then a decrease in performance is right around the corner. This means that once your recovery 'cup' is filled, then introducing any other stress will overflow it so you need to decrease a current stress to allow room for a new one. Too many footy players and coaches are at fault of this and in the end when you're after speed and skill development all you develop is fatigue, but none of the training adaptations you're actually after. No good!
Overspeed Eccentric - for max velocity sprinting speed and running jumps you want your tendons to do most of the work. Alternatively for acceleration sprinting speed and standing jumps, you want your muscles to do most of the work. In both cases the more you can put into the eccentric action of all of these endeavors, the greater the output you'll have. Now when most people think of eccentric contractions they think of loading up a barbell and doing a slow negative reps but it's the slow bit that won't do jack for your footy performance. A moderate to fast eccentric is what you want because if it takes you a relatively long time to build up the eccentric energy and turn it around into concentric energy, then the ball has been and gone while you're still loading up! I will be doing a few phases for this in my own training in the coming months.
So that's part 1 of this series and I'll be back soon with the rest. Let me know any questions you have via the Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/aussierulestraining.
UPDATE - although I didn't really care for the extreme glute soreness last time, I went back to the big toe stuff this off-season doing 57 sessions for them (3mins each). I also did a bunch of stiffness work as well for 22 sessions (5mins each). I've also done dome spasmodic overspeed eccentric work which I started to ramp up a couple of weeks ago before having my yearly lower back blow out last week which will put an end to that!
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