HOME TRAINING PROGRAM FOR WOMEN'S PLAYERS

Here's some pre Xmas training I put together for my club's women's team just last week.

It's training that can players can do in their own time away from the club so team training focus on what really matters most - tactics and skills.

For now I’ll post a few different training options for you to follow to in your own time between now and next year, even with training starting pre-Xmas.

It has a robustness/injury prevention bit, a strength training bit and a running bit.

I’m well aware most teams are starting pre-season before Xmas but so your coach can focus purely on the aspects of football (skills, tactics etc), if all “other” training can be done in your own time the better for everyone, including you.

ROBUSTNESS / INJURY PREVENTION PHASE 1 (3 WEEKS)...

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CORNER, OFFENSE, DEFENSE DRILL

This is a banger of a drill we did last night with our older DFS group and can easily be done with senior playing groups as well.

WHY

• Trains both offense and defense at the same time, nailing perception-action coupling for all 3 teams - a must for game transfer from training.
• Involves all players per group at all times = no standing around!
• Teaches green to push back off the mark hard and fast and move the all quickly
• "Champion players practice in congestion" - someone on Twitter last week

HOW...

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HOW I WOULD COACH A WOMEN'S FOOTBALL TEAM

What you're about to read is a sort-of-backwards approach to women's footy I've been thinking about for a while now that might be worth a shot at trying for a lone wolf, left field, unpredictable and innovative women's coach out there.

I've been mulling over how to do this post for a while but it's taking too long to put it together in my head so I'm jotting it all down and hopefully it makes some sense in the end.

If I was to coach a local women's football team these are some of the idea's I would run with as much as I could.

TEACH THE GAME...

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5 DAY YEARLY MEMBERSHIP FLASH SALE

To coincide with the US pre-Xmas sales, I thought I'd run one as well!

From today, Thursday November 28th to Tuesday Dec 3rd Aussie time, you can get a yearly subscription to Aussie Rules Training for 25% off the regular price.

You'll have full access to all 3 levels of the Aussie Rules Training membership site being:

Level 1 - Training/Coaching Articles

Level 2 - Team/Player Training Programs

Level 3 - Training Drills

There are 5 pieces of content posted weekly so you'll get new idea's around team and player preparation every single week to add into your arsenal all for just $115.

To take up this ridiculous offer then click HERE on the 5 Day Flash Sale option.

If you have any questions then please let me know at aussierulestraining@gmail.com.

UPPER BODY HYPERTROPHY

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of this baby I must offer this - if half of the days of the week you train involve upper body strength training, then have a good hard look at yourself.

Yes upper body strength and size is important but most blokes head off to complete bodybuilding or powerlifting competitions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday of every week.

1. It's not needed at local/amateur levels of footy so much
2. There's more important things that need to be trained such as foot/ankle complex, hip stability etc
3. You're using up precious resources to recover from your main sessions with, severely limiting adaptation to your training stimulus

You may have posts of mine previously talking about high and low days, referring alternating days of high nervous system stimulus and days of low nervous system stimulus.

What this type of set up allows for is greater training volume and frequency, especially if you do your low days correctly, and this can be the difference between training 5 - 7 days per week and still progressing vs 2 - 4 days per week and just spinning your wheels.

I purposefully set up my upper body days to be pretty much recovery type/low days in my program, focusing all my efforts and resources into the days that matter like my max velocity sprinting days.

This should be how you approach your upper body training in my opinion...

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PROGRESSIVE PRESSURE RONDO DRILL

This is a progression from the basic Rondo Drill posted a few weeks back and one we use at DFS a fair bit with our younger groups but it holds up for any age group/ability.

This Rondo variation trains:

• Clean Hands
• Creating/Utilising Space
• Game Simulated Change of Direction 
• Perception-Action Coupling (most important)

All you need is...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - TRAINING DRILLS + SPACE + RATING PLAYERS

TRAINING DRILLS

Yes, we've already got a separate training drills section on the site but here are some idea's pointers to keep in mind when developing your own training drills...

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TEAM WARM UP WITH BALLS DRILL

If there's 1 mission in my life worth fulfilling it's to eradicate the endless laps footy teams do at training before, during and after training.

It's boring, it's useless and it's taking precious training time, of which local/amateur teams already struggle with, away from far more productive things they could be doing like skill and/or tactical work.

I've actually suggested to my new senior coach (but previous club player) to get rid of laps but we'll see how he goes with that! 

The main focus of a warm up is to:

• Increase muscle temperature
• Increase joint range of motion
• Prepare the mind and body for intense training

Laps are not conducive to any of these and if I have to be truly honest, it's pure laziness from the coach who's often buying time to think up, or set up, the next training activity.

Get organised and get rid of them!

Here's a warm up drill where your entire team is pretty much on the move constantly, uses balls and also a variety of "touch" drills - often these drills are performed separately but it's makes far more sense to mix them together to fit the unpredictability and randomness of a game of footy.

You've got 5 drill stations...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - STRESS/FATIGUE

Much like life, football is multiple high dosages of stress.

Physical stress.

Psychological stress.

Systemic stress.

Localised stress.

Good stress.

Bad stress.

Certain amounts of stress/overload is required to progress or get better at anything in life, but because even the tiniest amount of excess stress can have dramatically negative affects on performance, knowing how much stress to induce, and when, can make or break your players/team...

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HAMSTRING STRENGTH PROGRAM

The old pulled hammie never goes away in football does it?

Unfortunately the greatest risk factor for doing a hammie is if you've done it before putting you in a bit of a pickle but with a long term outlook and slow but progressively based rehab work, you can overcome them.

If you've never done one like myself then this preventative program should be at the top of your gym training list, because the best kind of player is an available one.

This year I had a ressies teammate who did one earlier in the year, missed 4 - 5 games, came back and lasted a half. We put a plan in place to get him back for a particular game which I think was  7 weeks later, working back from that game to the injury and in the end he played the last 2 games in the seniors, kicked the 2 most important goals of the grand final and won a senior premiership!

Hamstrings don't get much of a look in during most training programs and if they do they are usually trained through leg curl variations which do close to nothing for protecting against hamstring tears and strains, that most often occur when the leg is at, or close to, a straightened position.

Think the follow through phase of a kick, the position your leg is in just before ground contact in a high speed running action or the initial torso bend trying to pick up the footy - that's the most dangerous joint angle for ham injuries and putting under great load at great speed makes things a helleva lot worse.

This program is 3 phases long with each phase running for 3 weeks each and progressively increases the loading on the hamstring in a stretched/straight/lock out position.

You should be able to simply slide this into your current gym routine quite easily doing 1- 2 times per week...

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CLARKO'S CLUSTER SMALL SIDED GAME PROGRESSION

My senior team from 2019 built it's entire game plan off of our defense and it paid dividends, playing off in and winning the Grand Final.

At low to mid levels of football a rock solid team defence will be near impossible for opposing teams to play against because of the lower grade of skill and tactical awareness of the players at those levels (that's why we play there!)

Building a rock solid defense, or a version of Clarko's Cluster doesn't require players of great skill or ability, although we had 2 super intercept markers, which then means you can kick start your offence off of the opposition's turnover right away.

As a coach you're job is to describe, lay out and teach the intricacies of whatever team/zone/cluster defense you decide to roll with, assuming that no player knows anything at all about setting up and playing cluster defense to start with.

This doesn't mean that you'll then need to raise every minor aspect of cluster defense but rather it then forces you to be clear, concise and to pretty much teach principles over specific player movements.

Below I will map out a nice training drill that I have modified off a soccer drill to help your players/team understand the concepts of team defence, being  isolation, termination, dispossession, and positioning yourself respectively to force turnovers.

To set the drill up...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - PSYCHOLOGICAL CO-ACTIVE

The psychological co-active is the most underutilised co-active which doesne to change if you want fully developed players but is hard to quantify which is probably why it doesn't get the attention it should.

To build the psychological co-active for each individual player, coaches need to set aside time to get to know players on other levels apart from the coach-player level.

The information you can gether from their culture, beliefs and lifestyle can have huge implications on why the perform like they do on game day, which then can drive how you train and prepare them during the week...

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KICKING DECISION MAKING TRAINING DRILL

This is a simple kicking skill and decision making under pressure scenario that can use anything from 6 - 10 players per group.

It requires you to go on demand, not having view of the the marking options, not viewing how the defense has set up, to find and make the right decision and to perform a successful kicking rep.

The number of markers and/or defenders can be decided upon by the skill level of your players (seniors v reserves, inexperienced v experienced etc).

The following images are shown in order of easiest to hardest variation of this drill and always start at the start which you would think would be obvious, and progress as you become successful at the level below.

Feel free to go beyond your or your player's kicking bandwidth here but not for to long - find their threshold for consistent success, go a level or 2 higher for a few looks then drop back to their threshold level.

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - PHYSICAL CO-ACTIVE

This post will look at some lesser known aspects of the physical co-active which goes a lot further into the hole then a 2km time trial as well as the ridiculously underutilised psychological co-active - an area at local/amateur level that can have perhaps the greatest affect on your team and players performance then anything else.

PHYSICAL CO-ACTIVE...

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HILL SPRINTS TRAINING PROGRAM

Hill sprints have been a staple of elite athletes since the dawn of time, purely because of their simpleness - find a hill and run up it!

Perhaps the best thing about hill sprints is that it can be used as a preparatory tool for high speed/velocity running as it trains the action and thus muscles of sprinting, but with far less joint impact and ground reaction forces.

It's great for older players, those coming off rehabilitation and those who haven't sprinted for a while

Win-Win.

Here's a 4 week, twice a week hill program you can follow to prep for the rigors of pre-season coming up very shortly for most of us.

WHAT YOU NEED...

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EVASION/DECISION MAKING TRAINING DRILL

A training drill involving:

• Clean Hands
• Evasion
• Decision Making
• Awareness...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - CLUB/TEAM CULTURE

Successful teams possess high culture values and more importantly, follow through on them in good and bad times.

To do this you must:

• Create an identifiable culture... 

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TEACH ANYONE TO KICK TRAINING DRILL/S

I've coached Auskick for 4 years and obviously have put my own son through his paces in regards to footy training but I've always been a little stuck on teaching kicking from an absolute zero base.

I'm a pretty good kick personally but it's one thing being able to do something and then to be able to teach it so when I saw an advert from the Lindsay Gilbee Kicking Academy to run a kicking/coaching course I booked myself in immediately.

There were a few guys from AFL Victoria assisting with the course, 1 of them being Phiv Demetriou who took the teaching kicking aspect specifically.

Here are the 9 most important teaching points in teaching anyone to kick from that training course...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TREAM PREPARATION - 4 CO-ACTIVES

One of the major driving themes of the Game Changer book is the 4 co-actives being:

1. Tactical
2. Technical
3. Psychological
4. Physical

Every singular action in any sport involves these 4 aspects so it stands to reason that you must expose your players to all of them in training to prepare them for game day.

TACTICAL...

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LOWER BODY STRENGTH PROGRAM

Just over 4 years ago I did a little post on Nat Fyfe's body transformation, especially his legs, from his first 4 - 5 years in the AFL system, and had won his first Brownlow Medal the year prior to that.

In a game that requires speed, endurance, strength and resiliency from injury/collisions, a strong pair of legs is essential and in my eyes, is way better then a strong core.

The problem with local/amateur footy players is that they feel the need to run 365 days of the year which doesn't leave a lot of extra time to work those legs in the gym like they need to be...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - TEAM DEFENSE

There's not a lot of man-to-man defense in AFL or local/amateur footy anymore with the emphasis moving to a team defense through the use of zones and compression of space in your won forward line.

That being said there are still times that defenders can caught in 1-on-1 situations but these days it is minimised and harder to manufacture as well, especially against top defensive teams in all levels...

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RONDO TRAINING DRILL

A Rondo training drill is a soccer-based exercise and is essentially a game of keeping's off but with these characteristics:

• Confined Area
• Keep possession while completing a series/number of passes
• Attacking players generally outnumber the defending players
• Stationary but involved players surround the playing area

As per Dutch soccer player and coach Johan Cruyff, everything that goes on in a match you can do in a rondo such as making space, on/off ball decision making positioning, taking clean possession and winning the ball back.

I have many variations of these that I'll draw up in time but today I'll show you the very basic version of this drill...



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