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.