ADD THIS TO YOUR COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Just yesterday I read an article that appeared on the Track Football Consortium website from track coach Tony Holler where he wrote about his liaisons with another track/running coach John O'Malley.

After numerous sit downs with him he put a bunch of specific questions to him on his coaching philosophy and here are what I chose as the best bits.

If you're a serious coach then you should be able to take PLENTY out of this and at the very least it will get you thinking.

- Athletes trust coaches and coaches trust athletes meaning that instead of people trusting the process 76ers style, people really trust people

- How to Cook v What's the Recipe...you can make a cheap piece of meat taste like a thousand dollars but you can also make an expensive piece of meat taste like garbage if you cook it wrong so learn how to "slow cook" your athletes so they'll be in the correct state at the right time to absorb the stimulus you want to give them and actually gain benefit from it. Running players into the ground the day after the game for "punishment" will do a hellava lot more worse then good in the short and long term.

- Never be afraid to do the things that you're afraid to do

- He gets bored if there isn't a threat of failure...learn to embrace potential failure

If you are a fan of the NBA then you'll be aware of Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics coach, who he sent time with in his college days and he made these points about that experience:

- Your team will reflect your emotional discipline or lack of it

- Set standards/pillars before the season starts and when things get messy, go back to them

- Pillars are more important than goals as they lead to goals

- Get the right people on the bus and drop the wrong one's off

- Focus on relationships

- Pressure filled moments/weeks need to met with normalcy, again referring to your pillars, and make sure to have fun and enjoy the moment

 - Control the controllables better than anyone else and don't worry about the uncontrollables

- If you remember the racehorse movie Seabiscuit with Toby Maguire, then he thought that he had the perfect team with an owner who was idealistic/optimistic, picked his team and believed in them greatly + a trainer who had a ridiculous eye for detail and then a horse that had been beaten down but through nurturing he was able to fall in love with running again and loved to compete

- Look at sessions in time, not distance, as the time it takes  to perform a task will determine your athletes perceived effort better then anything

- Never be too far away from competition readiness

- Neurons fire or they don't and if they haven't had the recovery to fire again then you're wasting your time which is why max speed training needs full rest

- College coaches need dialogue with high school coaches of in-coming athletes (hint to coaches starting at new teams next year)

- Don't ever let getting strong or getting fit get in the way of getting fast

-  Max speed sprinting ability improves performance at every distance

- Speed reserve can be translated to any event

- If you stay between the lines then there's a traffic jam in front of you and it's far too crowded so even though it may be safer, you won't really get anywhere

USING AROUSAL FOR PERFORMANCE

We've all got that teammate who is over eager in the warm doing bumps and giving corkies to half the team before the siren's even gone.

We've all got that teammate who seems to have not actually woken up from bed even though he managed to drive 30mins to the ground without incident.

Arousal can be a powerful tool if you know ho to harness and modify it correctly but I'll just list a few dot points about it right now and will possibly do something bigger on it very soon.

Arousal is:

- Your state of readiness

- Refers to your physical, emotional and mental state

- Is a measure of your internal energy level (think butterflies)

- It also includes your psychological (anger, confidence, fear, butterflies) and physiological (pulse, breathing, core temperature) elements.

- Each of us has an optimal arousal level

- We also have personal optimal arousal levels for various tasks

- New and difficult tasks usually go with low arousal as you're probably taking more output, thinking more and taking longer to make decisions

- Well-learned and easy tasks usually go with high arousal

- Most tasks are in the medium range

- You need to develop routines for decreasing, increasing and maintaining arousal to avoid burn out

TECHNICAL RESERVE

Let's take a quick look at Geelong's recruitment of Gary Ablett Jr back to the club this past off-season.

Many pundits thought of this to be a terrible move and that he would holding other younger players out of a spot in the best 22 which is a minor point.

Many of these same pundits thought that he was washed up as he wasn't the GAJ of the late noughties that had a lot of these reporters putting up as the greatest midfielder ever.

Then you had the other side that said sure he might not be the GAJ of 6 - 7yrs ago but even if he's 70% of that, he's still better then 90% of the AFL midfielders right now.

What GAJ has is what I'll call loosely call "talent reserve" where even when he's not very good relatively, he's still better than most going around.

Enter technical reserve.

The higher your ceiling, the higher your midrange and the higher your floor is.

It's that simple.

If you are elite kick then that will allow you to do 2 things better then everyone else:

#1 - Maintain kick quality for longer in games

#2 - When fatigue does kick in, your relative kicking quality will still be higher then everyone else

Pretty much your bad kicks are still good enough in most cases where other players bad kicks are turnovers.

Strength is never the reason why you fail in team sports as it doesn't disappear from week to week that drastically - you could have a week or  off max effort lifting and still go in max out pretty close, if not higher, then your current max.

Technique on the other hand, can disappear in an instant under fatigue and choking/turnovers is the result.

Over the off-season instead of slugging it out in the gym on your 6 day bodypart split (please...just....don't...i don't even....), you should build up your skills technical reserve so when the pressure is on, you will always have your technique to fall back on.

Your strength will always be there for you but you can only really perform when you have the technique to get the most out of it.

You can create technical reserve by dialing in technique so much that you replicate it in any situation under any circumstances.

TRUST IN YOUR TEAMMATES IS EVERYTHING

Like me, I'm sure you were all glues to the TV Saturday night for what ended up being one of the greatest 4th quarters n VFL/AFL history in the Geelong v Melbourne game.

Earlier in the day, in a senior team boosting 11 regular reserves players playing the near top team and getting crushed then upon entering the sheds after the final siren and seeing my Swannies were getting beaten by Gold Coast, I was ready to give footy away!

Thank god for Saturday night as it brought my love f footy back pretty quickly.

A usual I was watching On The Couch on Fox Footy Monday night and they showed the vision of the final play in the Cats/Demons game but I wanted to just focus on the initial part of the play from the Geelong backline.

At this point of the game the Dees were still in front with the ball in the forward 50 and surely a win was the only result that could have occurred from here...

I cut the vision to only show this passage of play where the following things happened:

- Angus Brayshaw releases a handball to nobody where he really should have just taken that ball to the ground for stoppage of some description

- In the secondary contest there are 6 Melbourne v 3 Geelong players, of which 2 are on the ground

- A couple more Geelong players move in closer to the vicinity of the contest but still keep their distance from the "fire", knowing a stoppage is the end of the game

- While all this is going on, 3 Melbourne players creep into the "fire" as described in the vision, leaving Geelong players on their own and in space

- With all those Melbourne players out of the contest from previous efforts, still Neal-Bullen tries to soccer the ball out of the pack to no one in particular, again instead of creating a stoppage

- It's not until all those Melbourne players have tried and failed that Gary Ablett Jr, picks the ball up in 1 clean swoop, and makes a split second decision not to simply kick for territory, but to handball laterally to Tom Stewart who kick it to Daniel Menzel and Melbourne don't touch the ball again.

OK so plenty of things gone a bit sideways there but I want to focus on that scrappy piece of play just  up to when Ablett got possession of the ball.

Why did all those Melbourne players go in at once?

Why didn't all those Geelong players go in considering they were behind on the scoreboard, 20secs let to play and the ball in Melbourne's forward line who seem desperate to score again?

How many times have you seen in your own games, multiple players from your team fight for the 1 ball only to see it spill out into the opposition's hands and off they scoot?

Why does everyone go for 1 ball.

At the local/amateur level it is a fair bit of lack of "game knowledge" but I also think that trust is rarely looked at as one of the most important traits to have as an individual player and as a team.

In Paul Roos' book "Here It Is", when he took over at the Swans they started with 2 simple rules - get the ball or make the tackle.

The trickle down effect here is that if I can trust Jonno to do either of those things, then I can be just like those Geelong players - I can stay out and become a free man if my man decides he doesn't trust is teammate, and heads in to assist.

 If my opposing player doesn't go in then that's fine - it's either a stoppage and I still have an arm on my opposing player.

It looks as though that the Melbourne players just didn't have 100% trust in 1 single player at that point of time to do what needed to be done.

Maybe the "rule" was for Brayshaw, a gun don't doubt me, was meant to keep possession of the ball and once he let it out, then all his teammates had to react to the unexpected and that is why it looked like total chaos.

If you watch the vision without knowing the score though, you'd have thought that Melbourne for trying to come from behind and win.

Getting back to local/amateur level footy, this type of trust has to be instilled in your team from day 1 because with players with all types of abilities, experience and game knowledge, without something bringing all those traits, as well as motivations etc together, you can essentially have 22 players all playing for different reasons and doing different.

Instilling trust in your players also builds responsibility because if I'm in the fire, then I know that the other 17 players on the ground are relying on me to get the ball or make the tackle, and they will react off whatever of those things occurs.

Making this a team rule is also crucial and it HAS to be pushed by your better players who can tend to take as "I'll do it" attitude but that doesn't provide the opportunity for other players do follow this, if they never get in the fire.

A high level of trust is also required when the opposition have the ball with multiple teammates around you.

A quick decision needs to be made about who will pressure the ball carrier and will peel off to other opposition players who may be in play.

There's really nothing worse then 3 players trying to tackle 1 player, only to see the ball pop over their heads to a free opposition player who runs off unopposed.

I suppose your rule here is to corral under pressure or make the tackle with teammates trusting you to fulfill either of those efforts, and again they can stay out to get a loose ball or man up other opposition around the contest. 

On the flip side, what if the player doesn't make the tackle, corral the player or get the ball?

Then they simply run off with it with no is not ideal, but once you put a process in place, you've got to repeat it until perfect and this is simply another case of this, and in the long run, this high level organisation will put you in a far better position over a season then in single parts of a game.

CONTINUED PROGRESS

Something that gets virtually ignored at lower levels of football, and something I'll be trying my hardest to instill at my own club prior to 2019 is the continued progress of as may players as possible.

Most of the time, clubs recruit players with the mindset of whatever level they are at right there and then, is hopefully good enough to help the team win games.

But what if it isn't?

Then you need to be able help these players improve.

Don't be mistaken I know how hard this is at local/amateur level, especially the lower down the grades you go as that also usually coincides with less resources (coaches) and player availability.

Here are some of the things I'll try and accomplish before the season's end to prep for 2019.

- Have each player complete a survey asking them about what they want to be doing at training, either with the team or on their own

- What do they perceive as their strengths and weaknesses

- What does the coach perceive as their strengths and weaknesses and do they match up?

- Possibly set up a quick sub questionnaire to determine what neural types our players are and potentially group them up for training instead of a 1 drill-trains-all-approach

What this will provide us is data, data that we can now look at analyse and see what we can do with it.

Data can be a bot 2 faced as taking a lot of data means you can see if and how certain tings affect team output BUT data collection is only a good as what you can implement from it.

I'm not 100% sure right now of the answer to that last bit but I'll try and get as much as I can see then see what can implemented from that.

Some quick things you could do right now with your team to continue to progress into finals time is:

- Train above the intensity of the game through max effort sprinting on the track without balls

- Train with faster bar speeds OR supramax loading in the gym (super low volume for supramax work)

- Train below the intensity of the game in regards to cardiac output training as well as technical skills

- Mix up the speed of the drills constantly

What those previous 4 points will do is ensure that 90% of your training leading into finals when you want to be at your best, is all about QUALITY and when the nervous system, which drives every single movement you do it and the capacity that you can perform it at, receives a huge amount of quality input, it far outweighs the negative input and you can't not improve.

VFL REQUIREMENTS

This comes from an article from Northern Blues strength and conditioning coach (unsure if current coach) Sean Potter and looks into the requirements of preparation for VFL footy as well as detailing some of the things they do to measure progress.

The good bits were:

- Players will cover 10 - 15kms per game

- 20% of total game time is spent at steady state speeds

- High intensity efforts range from 158 - 208 total meter

- 80 - 85% of high intensity efforts last 3 seconds or less

- 100% of high intensity efforts lasted less than 6 seconds with a 1:2 - 1:6 work: ratio

- Walking is any movement at speeds of 0 - 1.66 meters per second

- Jogging is movement at speeds of 1.94 - 3.88 meters per second

- Running is movement at speeds of 4.16 - 5.55 meters per second

- Sprinting is movement at speeds of 6.11 meters per second or faster

- Strength test used include bench press, chest supported row and box squat 1 rep maximums looking for 1.5 x bodyweight for the upper body exercises and 2 x bodyweight for the lower exercise

- Tests 3 times in the off/pre-season and then another test for upper body during the season depending on fixture

- For power test velocity for squat jumps for lower body and bench press throws, both at specific %'s of 1rm's at the start and end of the pre-season

- It can be quicker to do a vertical jump and medicine ball test though if restricted for time

- For player monitoring he compares them to themselves, the team average, rank among position, height, the competition they compete against and also higher competition

- Break the team up into 4 groups at being beginner, intermediate, advanced and core

- Hit the gym 2/week during the season if you can

- He starts with the ideal amount of work he wants completed and then modifies on a player by player case so essentially ideal world - real world = actual work completed

- Intensity is broken up into very heavy (95 - 100%), heavy (90 - 95%), moderately heavy (85 - 90%), moderate (80 - 85%), moderately light (75 - 80%), light (70 - 75%) and very light (65 - 70%)

HIGH EFFICIENCY = HIGH PERFORMANCE PART 2

Last week I posted the first part of this series so check that out after reading this post, or beforehand, you can choose.

I think what happens with local/amateur football training is that because we have limited time to train compared to our professional counterparts, then we get into a mindset of trying to cram as much into Tuesday and Thursday night training as possible.

Now that's all well and good as volume and intensity is a very important of building and maintaining specific conditioning for football.

What usually results here is far more quantity then quality throughout all aspects of footy (skills, speed, endurance etc).

Unfortunately this overlooks improving efficiency greatly and the same mistakes and fatigue you see out on the track, is what you see on game days as well.

Here's some more on how efficiency plays a major role in sports via US strength coach Joe De Mayo fro the University of Richmond.

- Most teams train conditioning then work on technique/skills etc

- The best way to increase conditioning is through increasing technique as movement efficiency increases and you waste less energy

- Can be the fastest way to improve conditioning without volume, wear and tear etc

- Increase max outputs such as max strength, speed, power etc, relative to the demands of the game which will mean come game day you'll be working at a smaller % of your max during games so it’s a more sustainable effort (80% v 100%)

- Only then should you focus on game specific conditioning

I'll most likely put my club's pre-season together and will definitely be trying this out for season 2019.

HIGH EFFICIENCY = HIGH PERFORMANCE

This blog is a summary of an article by UK sports science student Jamy Clamp and looks at how to develop efficient athletes in track and field which has implications for all athletes of all disciplines and levels.

This has some real gems local/amateur coaches and players should look at far more closely then we currently (if at all) so here's the best bits I picked up from it:

- Fatigue is not the point of muscle exhaustion but rather it's where force production decreases inhibiting (stopping) quality muscle contractions.

- Force production and application are different and if the quality of those fluctuate individually or at the same time, then inefficiency will exist

- Inefficiency is metabolically draining and it predisposes players to injury

- Poor proprioception correlates with high fatigue (decreased coordination or inefficiency)

- Inefficiency places extra stress on joints

- Extra joint stress results in greater joint instability

- Joint instability is another energy leak/inefficiency

- When under fatigue the muscular system requires more impulses than the central nervous system can supply so then neuromuscular efficiency declines and so does force production

- Anti-rotation, or the ability to resist rotational forces through the core, is the maybe the biggest energy leak, especially through the middle of the body

LIVERPOOL F$%kED UP, SO USE THEIR LESSON

I'm no soccer fan but back in 2016, Liverpool had a huge run of injuries that destroyed their season.

The former coach of the Wales national team, Raymond Verheijen, heavily criticised the team fitness staff at the time and here's what went down:

- Liverpool destroyed their players by training too much, too soon using 2 and 3-a-days (2 or 3 sessions in a single day!) during pre-season

- This debacle ended up with 3 different phases that the Liverpool players ended up going through being the fatigue phase, the injury phase and the injury crisis phase

- In phase 1 (fatigue), the accumulation of fatigue was too much too soon and without enough recovery all while players were relatively unfit players after just coming back their off-season period

- As players get tired they train to play slower and with less skill (PUT THAT ONE IN YOUR BACKGROUND MEMORY AS MY 7YR OLD CALLS IT)

- After being over-trained in the first 2 weeks, the tired players then played some friendly's which means an even higher risk of injury from higher arousal, and thus higher levels of output on an already compromised system.

- In phase 2 (injury), over-trained players lost freshness in the first few weeks an are now playing friendly's with less body coordination where accumulated fatigue results in slower central nervous system signals/efficiency resulting in even less body control yet the players were required to make explosive actions so more injures occurred in weeks 3 and 4 of the pre-season.

- After the spate if injuries in weeks 3 and 4, the coaches continue on and this developed into an injury crisis in weeks 5 and 6 where even more injuries occurred for those who managed to avoid them earlier.

- Phase 3 (injury crisis), turned into hell for whatever players were left as now training numbers are down and thus training rate of perceived exertion (rpe) rises dramatically from short rest and higher volume per player resulting in even more fatigue.

- This also resulted in more game minutes and even more fatigue per player

I've heard some rumors on what the Adelaide Crows went rolling with, training hamstrings quite hard and heavy 2 days out from a game and look at their injury list right now.

I'm not sure what some of the AFL team's fitness staff try and o with their players but I would have thought having as many of your best 22 on the field for the most total minutes would result in an automatic finals birth.

Keeping 6 of your best 12 on the park would guarantee top 6 and 9 of your best 12 a top 4 finish at year's end and at that point, you've out yourself in a great position and with a bit of luck in September, take it all on GF day.