You Don't Get Better at Footy Training Part 1

I'm probably gonna get some grief for this blog title but hear me out.

It's also probably a bit late to hear this if you've been doing footy training with your team since November/December last year

I don't think you get that much better at footy whole on going to footy training alone.

I went to footy training every night for 10 years and didn't really improve that much, if at all, in the last half of that decade.

Apart from ball skills (and this can be debated as well), at footy training you simply don't optimally train a bunch of qualities/skills - all aspects of the game that can win you games if you have them, or lose them if you do not.

Here are the holes that are often not filled in by footy training alone.

MAX SPEED - maximum can only be developed when you sprint at literally 100%, coupled with complete rest of 2 - 5mins between sets. You should also know that "true" maximum speed can only be held for 2 - 3secs by elite athletes meaning us regular athletes can really only pump this out for 1 - 2secs before we start to slow down. You simply HAVE to do dedicated speed sessions in your own time to train this as the L/A footy training model, not that it can't be changed but I don't think it will be in the bear future, simply tries to get as much volume of work in the 2 - 3 hours a week as you can with little regard for the quality of that work. You should also know that you will not run faster then your 100% during a game because of change of direction, deceleration to acceleration and game play so you can only run at, and improve your 100% speed by training it specifically.

AGILITY - there is a love/hate relationship with agility in L/A footy. You either do a lot of it or none of it it seems. But did you know that agility and change of direction (cod) are 2 completely different things? COD is the mechanics you use to perform the skill and is really what you test during an agility test. Agility is testing your COD, acceleration and deceleration speed along with reaction time as you react to external stimulus just like a game (bouncing ball, opposition etc). Other qualities that make up agility/cod include the lateral sling the lateral chain, force absorption/reduction, force stabilisation/isometric strength and force output. As you can see there is a lot more to agility then you thought which easily shows that you need to develop agility, not necessarily train it. If you use the same agility techniques over and over, and that generally means some cone drills, then I can assure you that there is minimal, if any, improvement occurring. Time yourself and find out for realz.

AEROBIC CAPACITY - AC refers to performing activity that can rely solely on oxygen to be used as fuel. Aerobic means "with oxygen" and anaerobic means "without oxygen" - these are facts. AC is probably what you are referring to when you talk about "base fitness", 'building a foundation" or 'getting some run into the legs" and it's true - endurance is built from your aerobic energy system. I think we all have a fair idea of this is some form or another but what you're probably not aware of is the importance of the "with oxygen" bit. You need to run at such a speed to allow this to happen which is slow. It's pretty slow. In fact it's a lot slower then you think you should be going for most of us. At all times during aerobic capacity training you should be able to talk and breath freely with a light sweat a-happening. If you go harder, when you start to breath heavily and can't sustain conversation, then you are ramping up oxygen delivery, which takes a relatively long time in the body, hence the need for low intensity activity to let it do so. Once you start working to the point where the demand for oxygen far exceeds the speed that the aerobic energy system can deliver it, then you start to enter glycolysis, or the anaerobic zone which is when you start to get out of breathe and slow down. Once you move out of the aerobic energy system then you are no longer training it exclusively which is no good if that was your aim. So if you start like a bull out of a gate, tire pretty quickly but then you can't recover, it's because you've gone directly into glycolysis and once you're there then you're on borrowed time before you blow up completely. By training your body to stay in an aerobic state for longer, you'll be faster for longer as well - if you've taken note of the MAX SPEED point above and made your self faster with dedicated training.

EFFICIENCY - In the last 6 months or so I've realised that most people have skills or qualities in them, they just need to rehearse them more often. With Sarah, we stated  by teaching her body to run again so we did sub-maximal tempo sprints at 90% x 2 - 3/week which improved her speed all on it's own. We didn't get stronger, we didn't improve actual sprinting mechanics and we didn't even do any top speed running - we just practiced near top-speed and let the neurological improvements do their thing. Now that we've introduced max velocity sprints where she's improving each and every session in regards to speed and acceleration. From also improving her running efficiency, she will expend less energy when we start endurance work as well, improving her aerobic capacity indirectly as well. This is called getting the most from the least!

DECISION MAKING - I'm not certain but it seems the more higher up a level of footy you go, the mote small sided games are used which is probably the best way to train game simulated decision making without an actual game with contact. The Sydney Swans do a heap of this and starts with them very early on in the pre-season to get players into game like mindsets as early as possible. At the lower levels of football I assume there is a lot of cone to cone, player to player skill drills that work son the mechanics of the kicking, marking and handballing drills under no pressure is as far removed from a game as you can possibly get. This is OK for pre-Christmas training but of you;re still doing it right now then you can't expected adequate skills and decision making come practice and in-season game time.

EXCEED GAME INTENSITIES/VELOCITIES - As mentioned in the MAX SPEED point, you will not run as fast in any game of football then you can on your own, in a fully non-fatigued state, as per specific sprint training. I've run a 2.20sec flying 20m sprint this off-season bit I won't be running that during a game because I won't have a 20 - 30m unimpeded straight line run up to build into it with, and I'll also have residual fatigue from other bouts of game activity. That's fine though because my mechanical output (sprint training) is so fast, my operational output (game) will also be faster because of it. My 70% speed is way faster then player B who runs a flying 20m in 2.50secs. So by exceeding game speeds during training I am not only going to be faster during the game in it's entirety, but with games come arousal which can push you to levels higher then normal which may result in hitting MAX SPEED, but my muscles have performed contractions of this speeds many times so my injury risk is non existent during them. Player B though gets all aroused to the point where his body thinks it can run the flying 20 in 2.20secs but his muscles cannot and he's torn his hamstring from his bone!

HOMEOSTASIS - every single one of us, has a specific homeostasis point for everything we do which is the level we can do something that has us at our most comfortableness. For example some people can do repeated sets of 20 push ups over and over but increase that to 25 reps and they only get 1 - 2 sets. They pushed beyond their homeostasis point which is exactly what you want to do. Without widening your homeostasis point, you simply never get better but the fear of staying well within your comfort zone is fear of discomfort and possibly a sense of impending failure. So whether it is speed, endurance or kicking skills you must push slightly further away from your baseline over time and gradually widen your homeostasis point. Moving too slow will not induce the necessary adaptation and moving too fast means you build up too much fatigue and then injury risk and other negative implications rear their ugly head. It may also result in your missing vital steps leaving 'performance gaps" in your arsenal.

I might have to do a separate post on the HOMEOSTASIS thing for various qualities in the future, but if you'd like to know more about this then hit me up via the Facebook page comments section and we'll have it out!

Part 2 coming over the weekend that looks at how training and playing can be progressed over time.