THE 3 EXERCISES THAT GOT ME CHERRY RIPE FOR FINALS

My long term/regular readers will know I did a pretty serious knee injury 4 years ago in the last game of the season of which we were raging favourites to win it all (...we didn't!)

I've never had it checked out and rehabbed it all myself because I wasn't having surgery regardless even though there's a good chance I did an ACL and some other stuff at the time.

It was the exact same mechanism of Jarman Impey here except I was kicking on the run and was pushed from behind as I was in the air just after I kicked it.

Fast forward to now and I've now got a pretty dominant right leg as far as sprinting and jumping is concerned and during each season since my right hamstring has presented with a neural sensation down my right hamstring for the last month or so.

I knew it wasn't a tear or anything and it didn't hinder me a hellava lot but I could always feel it while getting up in the morning, during games and everything in between.

During that time I tried staying off it more than usual, foam rolling and other bits and pieces but nothing really helped

It wasn't until Wednesday this week that I remembered something that I discovered but never really went further into called PRI which is short for the Postural Restoration Institute.

It's pretty complicated stuff but to put it simply, its premise is that body is not symmetrical as there are different "things" on each side of the body which in turn affects resting posture and function.

For example the left diaphragm is smaller and is not held accountable for respiration as much as the right side is, and therefore the body can become "twisted" where your right hip can be rotated/sit a little further in front of your left hip.

In the chest cavity you have a heart on 1 side and nothing on the other which is another example.

You can read about the basic principles of PRI here.

So I came across this about 5 years never got enough info/was convinced enough/or set the time aside to really see how it worked to give it a chance.

Come Wednesday and having trouble completing 20m sprints at full speed on Tuesday, things were getting desperate.

Finally my brain ticked over and put up PRI as an option so I did quick search regarding right hamstring issues and PRI and found some exercises to try.

Here are the 3 exercises I found and used on Wednesday:

As you can see they're not your everyday exercises but by god in the 5mins it took me to run through them once, my neural sensation was gone.

I did another 2 circuits of it and felt like new.

Thursday I felt a tiny bit of the sensation come back during the day so before training last night/Thursday, I did another 3 circuits and again felt good as new.

Just before I joined the main group I was chatting to a teammate who's got a niggle about the rehab stuff I set for him through Posterior Pelvic Tilts and my right glute cramped up from the the extreme activation it was able to get from the exercises.

With new found activation comes new found use of those muscles (right glute max) and thus a bit of soreness today as a result.

I did another 3 rounds of it today in the videos above and will again do 3 rounds of it pre-game tomorrow.

Last night at training I was pumped though being able to run ailment free for the first time in weeks at any speed I wanted.

Elimination final tomorrow so hopefully my next post is not a season reflection piece!

PLAYER PROBLEM SOLVING PART 2

Earlier this week I posted part 1 of this that asked the questions:

- What questions are you asking?

and;

- How are you asking them?

In that post there was a table of potential questions you ask a player about something that happen in training or a game, a problem that they needed to solve and how they went about it.

Sport is a series of hundreds of micro problems that need solving through technical, tactical, physiological and/or psychological means.

A teammate of mine some skill errors on the weekend so I thought I'd try this out on him.

For a bit of background, Melbourne's winter has been the worst in years as far as rain is concerned and our ground is muddy and slippery.

It's also tiny - about 125m long and couldn't be more than 80 - 90m wide.

Small space and slippery conditions will increase stress as it takes more time to collect the ball and once you do, there's a fair chance there's someone near you to apply pressure.

We're also div 4 reserves footballers so hardly the cream of crop either.

In the 3rd quarter he'd missed his 3rd target for the day and I "let him know about it"I suppose but not in an entirely bad way - just to let him know we must demand better as a team with hopes of going deep in the finals.

After the initial "dust up" we had a better chat 2mins later and all was well in the world. 

Before the questions I asked him to be as detailed as possible and that there are no right or wrong answers, just YOUR answers - it's about what YOU saw and how YOU tried to solve the problem/complete the task.

Following the image from the previous post,here are the questions I asked him Mon/Tue and his responses.

Q1 - WHAT DID YOU SEE?

I saw two teammates free within our forward line maybe 35ish metres out a couple metres apart, and so I decided to quickly kick it to the closest/most central option. I didn't think to look for a longer and possibly better option at that moment. I rushed the kick and it shanked off the side of my boot to an opposition player.

Main Problem - Rushed Kick

Analysis - Take more time with the harder/central kick. The longer/easier kick is still there even if it’s not done straight away.

Q2 – WHAT OPPOSITION POSITIONING/MOVEMENT DID YOU SEE?

Both targets were basically stationary. There was a pack of players 5 - 10m back from both teammates and another opposition player maybe 5m off to their right where the ball ended up being kicked. There was not much movement causing the decision to get the ball in quick before opposition made a moveBottom of Form

Main Problem - Psychological Stress

Analysis - There were open teammates in the middle of the ground with enough space/time to get the ball to them – definitely worth trying to get it to them if you can so a sound tactical move.

Q3 - ACCORDING TO YOU, WAS IT THE CORRECT/INCORRECT TACTICAL MOVE TO MAKE?

At the time I thought getting it in quick and getting a shot on goal was the correct decision, but thinking about it now I think the option that I chose may have been a bit beyond his kicking range and if I had got it in long and deep, it might have given us a better chance at a closer set shot or shot on goal from a rove, which fits more with our game plan

Main Problem - N/A

Analysis - If you have the ball than take the responsibility to be proactive with it. Your job is to get the ball to a teammate who can take advantage of it. Once you get the ball to them adequately, then you’re job is essentially done. Worry about what you can do with the ball when you have it and trust everyone around you to do what they need to do when they need to do it.

Q4 - DESCRIBE HOW THE TARGET WAS MISSED?

The kick was rushed the ball came off the side of my boot and went straight to the opposition player 5metres to the right of the target

Main Problem - Rushed Kick

Analysis - A technical error from you, a slight tactical error from your teammate/s who could have timed their positioning better as them standing there "too long" means they are closer to getting manned up on, increasing tactical/psychological stress

Q5 - LET'S SAY IT WAS THE CORRECT TACTICAL CHOICE, DID YOU DISPLAY GOOD/BAD TECHNICAL SKILL?

Bad tech skill, I rushed to get the kick in that I was not steady which affected the ball drop resulting in the ball coming off the side of my boot

Main Problem - Rushed Kick

Analysis - Practice kicking like this at training – kicking with the same amount of steps/time/intent that you'd have in a game

Q6 - WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE BETTER?

Pushed back properly off my mark and given myself enough space and time to steady my kick and making sure the kick hit its target

Main Problem - Not enough time and space

Analysis - Space = time = more time to find the right option = more time to execute the tech skill required

OK - a fair bit to analyse there but not really.

The common theme was there all along -  a rushed kick/technical skill at that precise time.

The next step is to determine why the kick was rushed which he ends up telling us in the last question - he didn't push back off the mark properly enough - so a technical fault on his behalf.

As I mentioned above though, his teammate standing in free, but relatively confined space too early, increased his psychological stress which in turn affected his technical skill.

Although they are both at fault in someway, he had the ball and is therefore in total control of what happens so if he was to attempt a short, risky type kick then it's on him to make sure that he can carry that out which will require space (pushing back hard off the mark) and time (more space creates more time to perform that harder kick/technical skill).

On a dry day on a bigger ground this specific kick might have been pulled off because many of the constraints of last Saturday probably would not be there so I'd still encourage him to attempt that kick but in order for that happen, he needs to push back hard and fast as that was his original problem that all the other problems branched off.

Breaking game problems down like this means you can actually come to a pretty valid and easy conclusion meaning you can easily fix it, over yelling at players/teammates to "hit targets"which means nothing as it's a result, when the focus should be on the process.

PLAYER PROBLEM SOLVING PART 1

I have been researching training information for almost 15 years and I can say that right now, Twitter is THE place to be for exactly that.

I'd say that 70 - 80% of what I reads now comes directly oir indirectly from Twitter.

I am lucky enough to follow world class coaches like Stuart McMillam, Fergus Connolly, Tony Holler and Steve Magness, who are extremely inclined to share work from others that they find intriuging and that others might have an interest in as well.

Late last year or early this year I came across a gem from Andy Ryland - a US Rugby Coach - that I set out in table form:

When a player makes a "mistake" at training or in a game then these are the types of questions you should be asking, rather then simply judging off the result of the action.

Simply saying "you shouldn't make skill errors like that" is poor coaching and lazy at best, providing the athlete with nothing to use to not make the same mistake the next time.

What you also need to do as a coach or teammate is to put yourself in their shoes.

What you saw at that exact moment is probably not what they saw.

You probably weren't even in similar positions to start with so of course you couldn't have seen the same thing.

At different parts of the ground the lead up to that spoecific play was different in every way for the both of you - technically, tactically, psychologically and physiologically.

Craig Pickering of HMMR Media (another cracking account) says that 1 mode of communication has many different channels being:

- What you said

- What you actually said

- What your players/teammates hear

- What your players/teammates understand

- What your players/teammates remember

There was an exact situation like this in our game on the weekend just gone that I'll "case study" later this week or early next week but in the meantime - what questions are you asking and how are you asking them?

THE RUN HOME

If you've read my posts about my team's season thus far then you'll know we suffered some bad losses in the first 2 games of the year from a culmination of injuries (4 before half time and another in the 2nd half in the very first game!), the integration of 7 - 8 new players into the senior side off the back off just 1 practice game and the fact we played against the top 2 teams in the comp at that time away from home both times (no home games until round 5 for us this year).

Since then the senior team has gone 13-1, losing to the now 3rd placed team by just 3pts at the mid point of those 14 weeks.

After this week they've just gone through the entire league (7 teams + us) undefeated and now asit 2nd on the ladder eying off the double chance come finals time.

A messgae came through our team chat about making saure you're doing everything you can to be cherry ripe come fonals time and 1 player suggested he wanted to get extra runs in to build his fitness.

I sense he's not the only player around the country feeling like that so here's why that isn't a good idea right now, especially for our players.

PHYSICAL LOAD

We're 16 ganes into our 18 game season and unlike past winters of recent years, we've actually played 2 or 3 games in heavy, muddy and hailing conditions which takes player loading to another level with the extra collisions involved.

We haven't had a training night off where we cross trained or went the team bonding route either, eyeing to get back in the hunt for the top 4 and top 2 positioning by seasons end so we've been keeping our eye on the prize.

I was running the board on the bench this week and chatting to on our forwards, he said a few blokes in our attacking 50 were a bit sore during Saturday's game, as we lost our foward roptation in the first quarter (didn't stop them kicking 7 goals to 1 to blow the game open in the first stanza though!).

This raises alarms bells in me straight away.

If a small group of players are feeling a bit sore then there's probably more that are as well but they're just not saying anything.

When we think of getting better we gravitate heavily towards the phyical side of things and that's probably because it's very easy to quantify and measure repeatedly - the progress, or lack thereof can be seen clearly.

That's all well and good but it's a means to an end and that end is a dramatic increase in injury risk.

When you add stress/training load to a system/body that is already at or very close to capacity then this is what it usually looks like:

** Increased Loading = Increased Fatigue = Increased Soreness = Increased Rate of Perceived Exertion = Increased Injury Risk **

The player mentioned above suggested he needed to get some extra runs in because he felt a bit sluggish this past weekend so therefore his fitness needed a jolt.

There is  saying in the coaching game to "not do today that will wreck tomorrow", meaning extra work is fine but you must still be able to train at 100% and be 100% for games on a Saturday and any extra loading that alters this even slightly, will negatively affect performance in the short and long term.

Not ideal with finals just around the corner.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LOADING

Psychological anything doesn't get a mention in local/amateur footy but that needs to change.

As mentioned above we've needed to play every single game much like an elimination final to make up the 2 games we lost in the first 2 rounds.

Up until 2 weeks ago the top team had lost just once (to us) and second top team had lost only twice (to the top team) so we could not afford to drop a game toa team below us but still build to play these teams for the thrid time with the need to win both of those as well.

Fortunatley we did beat both of them, beating the second placed team this weekend past.

Yes physically we've been consistent on the track and during games but what separates local/amatuer teams, is a lot more psychological than you proably think.

The pscholoigcal strain that goes into playing consisntent, high level football cannot be underestimated.

To play high level football for 15 weeks straight is also a testiment to training frequecny and quality, and that doesn't happen unless you can psychologically regroup week in, week out.

Psychologically I'm not gonna say we've peaked these last 2 weeks, but I'm expcecting a slight drop off of sorts at some point in the next 2 weeks and I'm fine with that because I'd rather it happen now then during finals time.