We roll on with part 3 of our in-season training series this time with my old mate Matt Glossop from the Murray Bushrangers who I've interviewed previously and chat with quite often about all things footy training.
Here's what went down:
What differences are made to training compared to the off and pre-season training periods?
The technical and tactical aspects
to training take priority over the physical side for the most part.
During a
pre-season, you can really forecast each session/microcycle/macrocycle because
you have full control over what the team is exposed to but as game play is
introduced that control diminishes and you are reacting and changing your
training plans constantly according to what happens on the weekend.
For
example, this week we played a tight, in-close contested game of football and
have a 6-day break, so we won’t do much small-sided game work because the game
style (and GPS) tells us that the accel/decel/COD load was very high on the
weekend, so training might slant towards some more longer run and carry drills
to expose them to some top-speed work since they didn’t see much of it during
the game.
Further Reading; I love this last part and even without GPS trackers and alike, you know as a player or coach what type of game you just watched which is usually dictated by the weather and ground conditions at our level.
What does a full week look like?
On a Saturday to Saturday week:
Sunday- personal recovery, cold water immersion, foam rollers/stretching
Monday- personal recovery, flush run/bike
or hydro plus weights with lower body emphasis
Tuesday- local training, generally
90mins
Wednesday- TAC training focusing on vision,
training, recovery and weights
Thursday- local training, generally
30mins skills, then weights with upper body emphasis with some jumps/med ball throws for
lower body
Friday- Off
Each player will be different as some
prefer to do something light on Friday and some prefer to do their lower body
weights on Tuesday instead of Monday etc, I try to let them customise their
week according to their experiences and what works best for them.
Further Reading: Even at 16 - 18 years old they are left to do their own recuperation and are also left in charge for some of their preparation. What's holding you back then?
Do you have any specific
requirements for players to abide by from Thursday to game day?
We will educate
them about preparation, specifically sleep, hydration, nutrition and posture.
Again, it’s something that I like to leave to the players to take ownership of
their own prep and develop a routine they are confident in.
What does game day look like?
-90 mins: team
meeting, no new material, reinforce key points
-75 mins: own prep, strapping/foam rollers/glute activation/cns activation, players do what they feel is
best
-45 mins: quick
lines meeting (backs/mids/forwards) to reinforce structures/rotations
-30mins: on-ground
warm-up.
-15mins: back in rooms,
jumpers/mouthguard/toilet etc
-5mins: coach last
minute
-4 mins: on-ground
At half time they
come in and choose from fruit, lollies, energy gels, sports drinks/water etc
and break into their lines for the first 10 mins. Then the coach addresses them
for 5 and we are back out with 3 or 4 mins to bounce.
What recovery interventions do you
put in place immediately post game as well as in the days following? Do you do
these as a team or leave blokes to do them themselves?
Once they come off
the ground, they sing the song (hopefully), get hit with a 2min summary from the coach then
immediately weigh in, grab a sports drink and into the ice bath (10 mins @
10 degrees), followed by flavored milk, compression garments on for travel home and get a
solid meal (free hit) about an hour post.
Game Day +1- cold
water immersion and then by around 24hrs post-game they should be starting to
restore some movement through stretching/rollers/mobility drills etc.
Game Day +2- They
have a choice of run/bike/pool sessions according to how banged up they are and
what they feel works best for them.
Sleep and Nutrition
are the key focus points during this time, no amount of extra recovery sessions
will compensate for poor sleeping and eating/hydration patterns at these crucial
times.
Further Reading: yep that beach session on 3hrs sleep after 25 pots is probably a waste of time.
What types of
personal/wellness/readiness testing do you do during the season?
They fill out
Smartabase (online wellness tool) daily, rating themselves in sleep quality/duration, fatigue, stress, soreness and mood each morning.
We do some light
screening also looking at knee to wall for ankle mobility, groin squeeze strength etc. I have recently been
experimenting with some counter-movement jump scores as well, but we only get them for 3 hours a
week so it’s hard to get everything in.
Do players do their own training on
top of team training in their own time and if so, how do you monitor it so that
it doesn’t interfere with team training and games?
That’s the biggest
challenge of the role, we might have 2 players go to local club training on a
Tuesday night, one goes to a team who got a touch up on the weekend and gets
hit with 100 x 100m sprints or something ridiculous, the other might get there
and they have a night off and play laser-tag instead.
To counter this, we send
both the player and the local coach our individualised training parameters for
the week along with a summary of his wellbeing data, GPS data and total
games/minutes played so they can get a holistic view of each athlete.
Great responses and always appreciated Matty!
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