AEROBIC THRESHOLD TRAINING - RUN WITH A PURPOSE

You're on the Xmas break and to keep the legs ticking over, you head out for a little 10km run.

You get back to training and your coach lines you up for 400's.

During the season you do some high intensity/short rest running work to maintain fitness during the year.

But what are you actually doing during each of these sessions?

How is it increasing your fitness?

Is it actually increasing your fitness?

How do you if it is?

You're running without a purpose.

You're running without a why.

Without a purpose and without a why how do you know what you're doing what you're intending it to do?

And if in fact it isn't then have you totally wasted all your time and efforts?

I wouldn't go that far because some running is better then no running but with everything that you need to be prepared for a 360 degree high collision, high mileage team sport, then efficiency has to be at the front of your mind for pretty much everything you do.

Saying that specific running work should not really be a huge part of your regime until after max speed has been brought up to par and tactical team training scenario's have been performed which indicates a need for greater endurance to complete these scenario's up to the standard that you need to come game day.

For example if you're using the small sided full ground drill but a lot of players getting fatigued early in the drill affecting the technical/tactical level of the drill negatively, then SOME players might need a fitness intervention and a specific running program might be needed for them.

Introducing aerobic threshold training where you can expect a 100 - 200m improvement from test to test performing this 20 - 30min program 1/week that can easily be added into your training week.

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SMALL SIDED FULL GROUND DRILL

Everyone loves a good old fashioned full ground training drill because it usually involves kicking which is the name of the game.

A few issues with how these drills are usually done include:

• No tactical decision making at all via the cone to cone drills
• No positioning/locationing aspect
• Too many players in the 1 area, limiting the importance of hitting the target thus decreasing efficiency dramatically
• Limited game transfer because of the above points

Here's a full ground drill using 2 - 3 teams all at the same time that patches up all those issues.

The biggest thing to remember is that training shouldn't always look pretty because that means that your training is not at a challenging enough level for your players - you MUST remember this at all times.

These scenario's could be your full training session as you get a lot of conditioning, touches of the ball and cognitive training all at once - your players will be well spent after this with all that stress upon them.

HOW

Break your playing group up into 2- 3 teams depending on total numbers of 8 - 10 players, but you can go higher teams and/or numbers if you have the numbers.

Split each team up into forwards, mids and backs and you can mix seniors/reserves/thirds in the same teams and/or have full senior/reserves/thirds teams but always mix up who plays with who...

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THE PROCESS PART 5 - MACRO + MICRO PRINCIPLES

Offensive and defensive macro principles govern proper execution in specific moments.

Each macro principle contains micro principles...

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SPECIFIC SKILL DRILLS (SYDNEY SWANS)

ALL coaches should be extra familiar with the SAID principle.

What?

You're not?

Simply outrageous.

Put your learnin' hat on then.

Specific

Adaptation to

Imposed

Demands

Right now I want you to think of all the footy drills you run for your players.

I bet not 1 of them focus on 1 specific task to be carried out with perfection.

Even basic handball drills can be displayed poorly and why is that?

My humble opinion put forward that the main reasons for this is:

• There has been no expectations set before doing the drill
• There has been no context mentioned in relation to the drill
• There has been no goal or end result mentioned for the drill

With these 3 points not being mentioned and all that said is to "go straight into 5 star handball, even up the groups" it can become a cluster quite quickly, even for the simplest of skill drills.

If anything else is mentioned then it's usually "get the talk up", bit if this is a skill drill then is the aim to work on the specific skill or training talk and evening up the groups?

Too often coaches just set a drill with the belief every single player there, all of various levels of experience and playing age, know exactly what you want to happen.

This is a simply ridiculous assumption to make and if there has been some instruction about the drill, there's too many points to focus on and most of them aren't anywhere as near as important as making the actual handball the way it needs to be executed.

The problem is that local/amateur training is far too general in nature.

Every drill is general as we try and condense as much "footy" into a single drill as possible and sure there is a time and place for that, but only after a specific skill has been "mastered" in isolation.

Yes this takes time and resources like more coaches but to simply ignore it totally because of these reasons is why grassroots footy is still 10 - 20 years behind the AFL - but it doesn't have to be.

I'm a Swans supporter who I follow on Twitter and earlier this year they posted a quick snap shot of their training and here's what was going on...

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THE PROCESS PART 4 - OFFENSE + TRANSITION DEFENSE

The 4 game moments of team sport are:

• Defense
• Transition Offense
• Offense
• Transition Defense

and at any time in a game you are involved in 1 of these moments.

In my last post we looked at defense and transition offense so this time around we'll touch on the last 2, offense and transition defense.

OFFENSE...

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GET SPEED TRAINING PROGRAM

The thing that stands out THE MOST in any game of footy at any level is sprinting speed - it's that crystal clear what that player can do it's ridiculous.

Physically they have 1 specific trait over every single player on the ground and psychologically they have a huge edge as those playing on them are more worried about about being exposed themselves and shift into a defensive mindset.

Next to the Yo-Yo endurance test, the 20m speed test is the most looked at by AFL recruiters.

Having more speed gives you more space which gives you more time to find and make the right decision on top of having more time under no pressure to make the right technical choice (kick, handball etc).

Clearly the snowball effect can have massive implications.

So why do 99.9% of local/amateur football teams not bother training max speed in an effort to try and increase it?

You know what?

Most local/amateur footballers are actually faster then they "are" because we're rarely, if ever, in the correct physical state to be able to reach our potential max velocity speed from residual fatigue from the way we train at team training.

With such a focus on doing endless running, whether it's on it's own or in ball drills, fatigue is constantly present in our body and mind and max speed can only be expressed in a non-fatigued state.

If you ever hit up a track coach and do a sprint focused session, you'll do 10 - 20 sets of 5 - 6secs and stand around the rest of the time.

In a 1 hour session that's 2 - 3mins work and 57mins rest.

The easiest thing to train in my book.

With the pre-season break next week where you can control all physical and psychological fatigue, now is your chance to train max speed, train it properly and reap the benefits.

Here's how.

WARM UP

No need to get too technical here for now, we just need to get your central nervous system used to sprinting and sprinting fast so 3 - 5 gradual speed runsover 20 - 30m or so will do the trick but if you wanna throw in some high knees and butt kicks then feel free but those exercises don't really do anything for speed or prehab but you'll have done them in the past and will gravitate to doing them so no stress whether you do or not.

So something like 50, 65, 80, 90% then start the sessions below

SESSION 1...

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THE PROCESS PART 3 - DEFENCE + TRANSITION OFFENSE

The 4 game moments of team sport are:

• Defense
• Transition Offense
• Offense
• Transition Defense

and at any time in a game you are involved in 1 of these moments.

In this post we'll touch on the first 2, defense and transition offense.

DEFENSE...

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4 TEAM RONDO

This is the 3rd variation of the Rondo Drill.

Part 1 can be found here.

Part 2 can be found here.

As per all Ronda variations this drill will train:

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

On top of that though this will also introduce a very basic ball transition to and from 2 playing area's with defenders already having the chance to position themselves before the ball come into play, giving them a very small advantage early in the drill to cause a turnover.

HOW...

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THE PROCESS PART 2 - GAME MODEL + GAME PRINCIPLES

This is part 2 of my idea's taken from the book The Process with part 1 being found here.

THE GAME MODEL

What is it?

Why should you develop one?

How can it help you?

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HAMSTRING STRAIN RETURN TO PLAY PROGRAM

What you'll see below is a real life scenario from the middle of last season (2019) when one of my teammates pulled his hammy for the 2nd time this year.

We put together a return to play plan with a specific game times in mind for his comeback games, to be cherry ripe for the main game we were aiming for.

Rest on it's own doesn't do anything really and will result in re-injury as you'll see from his first injury below.

Initially for season 2019 he stated he was happy to play 2's as he was coming off a 3 - 4 year lay-off from footy but in the end worked his way into the senior team in the 2nd last round of the season then kept another forward out of the Grand Final team who had played every game up until that point and preceded to kick the 2 most important goals in our club's history in a Grand Final win.

Here's a timeline of how it went down...

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KICK FROM THE MIDDLE DRILL

This kicking drill is best used as part of the warm up, after your dynamic work and maybe a handball if you just can't bring yourself to go straight into kicking even though players get there and do nothing but kick before training starts anyway.

It involves an element of technical skill but it's best quality is the cognitive enhancement it can have on players that they can take in to more decision making based scenario's/drills to come later in the session.

If you want to your players to think during training, then get them thinking in the warm up, not relying on the same old warm up routine you've used for 3 seasons.

SET UP...

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THE PROCESS PART 1 - DEVELOPING A WINNING MODEL

A couple of months ago I ordered and received a new team coaching based book titled The Process by Fergus Connolly (author of Game Changer I've posted about recently) along with Cam Josse from Defranco's Training Systems.

It picks up where Game Changer left off and is actually the 1st in a series of 4 books that uses the Game Changer principles and applies them to American Football.

Fortunately for us principles from 1 sport can can be used and modified to fit any sport so there are still plenty of takeaways from this book in relation to Aussie Rules.

This will also be a series of posts so this is part 1 - Developing a Winning Model

Here we go...

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4 GOAL SMALL SIDED GAME

This is a simple small sided game can be set up for players of any level.

It encourages players to:

• Find space
• Create space
• Communicate
• Be in constant motion
• Clean hands
• Quick hands
• Decision making in congestion
• Perception-action coupling

HOW...

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5 THINGS TO ADD INTO YOUR TRAINING SESSIONS

Earlier this week I posted 5 Things to Get Rid of From Your Training Sessions but I'm well aware that if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem so here's 5 things to add into your training sessions.

1 - TAKE DATA...

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LOWER BODY FINE TUNING PROGRAM PART 1

Whenever we train, whether it be on the field or in the gym, the goal is to increase our maximum outputs referring to speed, strength, power and endurance.

We put the most important exercises in our programs to make this happen which usually coincides with being the most technically complex, the most heavily loaded and performed with the fastest actions to replicate game speeds and loads.

Let's look at it like this:

Your car seems to be playing up slightly, not enough to take you off the road but you know in the back of your head that something just isn't right.

You have your car enthusiast mate have a peak and he says it might be A, B, C or D and to definitely take it in to get looked at.

You listen to what he has to say, agree with him, have a beer or 2 and then send him on his way.

A couple of months later you still haven't taken the car for a service but you've flogging the shit out of it, travelling over an hour each way each day for work, on top of your travel requirements.

All of a sudden your on the West Gate in peak hour and the car blows up.

This is your body, especially your lower body as it relates to football.

The intense and fast nature of footy, plus the collision/contact element, means we are usually never 100% with past injuries always popping there head up every now and then.

As we let those little small spots sit and idle, we are trying to put as much loading into these somewhat vulnerable area's as possible, but with little support from the assisting structures and actions of our legs.

When your supporting structures are down or simply not there, the heavy loading you're trying to put in becomes too much and something breaks.

Enter the lower body fine tuning program which is robustness based program where if you put in the time to do this low load/effort program, by mid to late season when everyone is starting to slow down, you should still be on cruise control from having your car serviced before the season started.

We're gonna focus on 6 area's/actions of the lower body...

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GAMECHANGER ELITE PLAYER/TEAM PREPARATION - GAME STYLE + GAME DAY + MORE

This is the final post in this series and will touch on these points:

• Recovery
• Nutrition
• Technical Co-Active
• Locationing
• Game Day
• Game Pace
• Structure
• Tactics
• Game Style...

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5 THINGS TO GET RID OF FROM YOUR TRAINING SESSIONS

Aussie Rules Football, and especially the AFL's rulebook, is forever changing with the aim being to improve how the game is played whenever a rule change is introduced.

They're a funny bunch the AFL as they like change in area's the viewer doesn't seem to care about yet won't change in other area's that blind Freddy could see needs improvement.

Some local/amateur football clubs on the other hand haven't changed a single thing about their football club's for decades whether that be on-field or off-field.

Always remember it's not the strongest who survive, it's those that are most adaptable that survive.

Adapt to fit into a different landscape or get swallowed up - something we see at local/amateur level too much these days.

Below are 5 prehistoric team/player preparation idea's that need go and what to replace them with...

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STRAIGHTENING UP KICKING PART 2

Here's a follow up to part 1 of this from about a month ago.

This will go through 5 drill variations to focus on straightening up on your kicking with the main rules being to:

• Get your hips/shoulders square up to your target
• Get some steps/momentum behind your kick

Try not to use anymore cues than that really and let the drill variations and self organisation do their thing.

Let your players know that initially the focus is on those 2 main points above, not necessarily hitting the target, which would be used later as a method to match the stress/anxiety of a game.

I'll outline the 4 drills, what constraints (task, environment, performer) you can use and then how to use this during a single training session.

KICKING DRILL #1...

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