THE HAMSTRING PARADOX

An article from track coach great Vern Gambetta popped over at his site HMMR Media this very morning on hamstrings.

It's a short brain dump piece with the premise being that AFL probably has as much research into hamstring injuries as any sport on the earth, yet injury rates are still on the rise.

I replied on Twitter in point form and thought I'd expand a bit further on my points here.

#1 - A BREAK TO BUILD ATTITUDE

Years ago I had a mammoth email chain with a now ex-TAC strength and conditioning coach and the 1 thing that still sticks in my mind from it was this:

"AFL teams want to push you to your threshold and see where you break, then rebuild you up to a greater level then previously"

This weren't the exact words but pretty close.

I'm not going to say that AFL teams are reckless in player management or class players as expendable but there is an attitude to try and get as much work as possible into each and every player, as often as they can and sometimes at the expense of re-injury.

Joe Daniher had pretty much a full year off, a heavily modified pre-season that resulted in re-injury anyway, then came straight back into the AFL only to be out for the rest of the season again because of the original injury within 6 weeks.

The same season ending, non-contact injury 2 years in a row?

Not good enough.

#2 - POOR JUNIOR CONDITIONING

The TAC system is the elite under age football league in Australia but it's only elite in the fact that it's the highest level of under 18 football but that doesn't necessarily make it elite.

Paul Roos while on On The Couch one week a couple of years ago said:

"Let's look at t this way...the Sydney Academy has 30 kids and it's an elite environment at under 18 level. My (Roosy's) son joined the Sandy Dragons this year and at his first training session there was 80 kids which is too many and that's not an elite program."

Don't get me wrong, the coaching and strength and conditioning staff do all they can with what they have but the ex-TAC coach I mentioned above was doing this part time for bugger all money considering the time he had to put in, and relied on his real job to pay the bills.

I think we should return to AFL clubs having under-aged teams like they did in the 80's/90's so that all players can have access to an elite environment and coaches plus teams will be able to employ more support staff as well.

#3 - NO BRIDGE/DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE BETWEEN JUNIOR/UNDER 18 FOOTBALL AND SENIOR FOOTBALL

Each year we have some bolters going into the draft like the kid who came on late, played a ripper back half of the season and now gets drafted into the AFL off the back off it.

The issue is that this kid probably hasn't trained hard/long even at under 18 level to reach a relative high level of fitness, leaving him very vulnerable to when he starts training with his AFL team.

AFL teams do take draftees playing/training age into account and a lot of them do about 60% of the senior pre-season training load but there;s a lot more that goes into player load then simply running.

If a player hasn't done a lot of weights in his life until then then that type of stress will be a new stress to their body, and a new stress is almost the highest stressor you can encounter (we all remember how sore we were after our first gym session).

On top of that they have a shitload more tactics to learn on top of the pressure of being an AFL player and not wanting to let you, your family, your friends and your club down.

Which leads to me point 4...

#4 - PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS

Its always been in the AFL system (Ken Hunter in the 80's) but mental health is a huge sporting and social issue world wide.

Australia is relatively small compared to other nations but the coverage of AFL is probably bigger than any other sport in the sport and there is nowhere to hide.

With no development league from under age football to senior ranks means that kids that aren't at senior level in regards to physical and psychological ability, get left behind.

Even then a player might get drafted because physically they are far more developed then the other kids and just dominate games at the under 18 level, but psychologically need work but not necessarily with the pressure of being the number draft pick to a struggling club who need them to be superstars right away (Jack Watts, Tom Boyd)

A development league would be exactly that - a place to stay in the system but provide room for physical and/or psychological development at each player's level.