Local Footy Games from AFL/TAC Fitness Coaches Burgo and Matty Part 7/9

Parts #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6.

HOW WOULD YOU GO ABOUT INDIVIDUALISATION AT THE L/A LEVEL IN REGARDS TO MONITORING, READINESS AND TRAINING?

BURGO:

I wouldn't really.

If anything I'd encourage players to get an activity tracker.

This way they can check their heart rate and get them to understand their own body.

MATTY:

Every club will be different, at my local club, some guys will happily do heart rate monitoring, wellness diary etc every day and others wouldn't touch it for the world.

I always think about the "carrot and the stick".

I would educate them on what it is and why it is potentially valuable to them, if they would want to do it and then reward will be their performance.

On the other hand if they don't, they don't and I don't believe that you can force them.

I've tried it before with punishments if "Barry didn't do his diary so we all do 400's" but it rarely works in the long term and certainly doesn't help team chemistry.

MY SUMMARY

Here's what I monitor every single day:

- Resting Heart Rate
- rMSSD
- Daily Heart Rate Variability
- Baseline Heart Rate Variability
- All Training Sessions Logged into Training Spreadsheet

I'm a numbers man so I need actual figures to tell me information so I can make informed decisions going forward.

I intend to do a blog post of it's own on what I track and why but what it's done for me this off-season is to nail my weekly schedule so I'm as fresh can be for the days that really matter - sprint days.

I was able to find a pattern in my output vs my recovery that enabled me to take the program my US strength coach gives me, and reshuffle to fit me.

Looking back I can see why I didn't perform as well in certain sessions and why I over-performed in others.

One one hand collecting data can be extremely useful but on the other hand data is only as useful as you can make it.

I would encourage every football player to at least test their HRV like I do above which provides me all those other readings at the same time - it takes 60secs as soon as you wake up - and can really allow you to see how life + training is affecting your body.

With the season coming around I'll be opening up the player monitoring system again which is based on this daily reading where I get your numbers and then let you know what you're week should look like that you can use as a guide to make sure you're 100% come Saturday.

If you want to get started early and get the jump on the competition let me know via the Facebook page.