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.