FOOTY SECRETS #3 - HYPERARCH MECHANISM

I’ve covered this before in the last couple of years but it’s still a little, if at all, used piece of magic you can do right after you read this article.

The hyperarch mechanism is something “discovered” by Chinese strength and conditioning coach Chong Xie and refers to link between fascia tensioning and elite athletic performance.

He believes that elite athletic ability does not come from muscles like the glutes but rather the intrinsic muscles of the foot, which includes the fascia that runs through there.

Glute dominance according to Chong is not as simply achieved by doing some banded glute bridges but is a by-product of training your feet like they are intended, an impossible task if you train over cushioned shoes.

Only once your feet are working optimally can you truly be glute dominant because now the body can access the posterior chain by unlocking the power of the feet.

To get a little more technical on the matter once fascia is activated it provides a lot of tension that pulls your body parts internally into optimal position.

When you can optimally stack joints in the correct positions then you can transmit force more efficiently and effectively resulting in a more powerful athlete at a far lesser cost metabolically.

So as you improve your hyperarch mechanism your power improves but the effort required to display it decreases.

Here's a very quick video on the short foot exercise and how it works, which is the base level of hyperarch mechanism mastery...

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FOOTY SECRET #2 - LOSE WEIGHT THE EASY WAY

If you switch onto Fox Footy every now and then you'll see a classic game or 2 and for games in the latse 90/00's it's hard not to notice how much bigger the players were across the board.

With a more continuous game these days, but not neccesarily faster, and the need to cover more distance per game even though we use more zones then before, the less mass you can carry and still be an explosive and endurance running machine is what teams are after.

Max Gawn, Luke Hodge and many others all went down the weight loss path to acheive the above as well as limit wear and tear on joints from a potential 10 month season - you could never imagine
Plugger dropping 7 - 10kgs in his hey day and for good reason, he never did!

Right now you've got the time and control over your life to eat what you need to eat rather then be eating lunch at 3pm after 3 meetings in a row and having a quick container of paste from the cafe.

Sure we can't eat everything we want to now from lack of availability but this should make it easier because having less choice simplifies things dramatically.

I'm a boring eater having the same things everyday for the most part and itmakes this way easier for me personally.

I've gone down this path for about the last month or so having dropped 5kgs in that time with minimal effort and diatery changes.

And here's how you, or anyone, can do it.

STEP #1 - Get the MyFitnessPal App...

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FOOTY SECRET #1 - SPEED DEVELOPMENT

Today is day #1 of the 10 Secrets of Footy that Players & Coaches Can Train in the Time Off.

I forgot to add 1 secret to the list so that will actually go to 11!
#1 - SPEED DEVELOPMENT

I've harped on about developing your max speed for years and for good reason - the fastest players at any level, regardless of skill level, can usually have an impact on games purely through their speed via chase down tackles, accelerating away from the opposition or over the back type goals.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before there are certain rules you need to follow in order to develop speed and they pretty much go against everything you've ever learnt about football conditoning such as:

• Full rest between each set with the easiest guiudeline being 1min per 10m sprinted (30m sprint  = 3mins rest) during which time you can be active (walk, stationary skills etc) but that's it.
• You CANNOT, I repeat, CANNOT develop speed in a fatigued state so you want to be in a totally fresh state when scheduling your speed sessions.
• Speed sessions will be the easiest session you'll do as initially you won't cover anything over 30m which will be 6 - 7secs tops on the slower end of the scale, then you'll rest 3mins minimum before going again. 
• Sessions can be pretty short too if you get a quick warm up in and then get straight into it and stay off your bloody phone!
• Depending on your injury history and how you "feel" generally some people will need more extensive warm ups than others but at the top end anything over 10mins is probably overkill - stay specific to what you're about to train. There's no need to do 4 x 400m jogs to prrepare for sprinting (laps suck in general!).
• Each day you feel different in regards to speed and power (good and bad days like everyone) but regardless of that make sure that you are putting everyhting you have into your sprint sets because remeber they'll only be 6 - 7secs in length at absolute maximum so there's no time to ease into it for 5secs, be explosive from the start.
• Speed takes the longest time to develop out of all other fitness qualities and also is the fastest to dissipate when it isn't being trained meaning you have to put more time into developing then more sessions then anything else to maintain it.

OK here's yet another speed program but this is probably the easiest one to follow and consists of just 2 sessions that you'll alternate every 3 - 4 days depending on how you pull up.

If you're not a big sprinter then you might use somemuscles in a way that they haven't been used for in a while and you might get a bit sore so start off every 4 days and work down to every 3.

Also for the first 2 - 3 sessions ease into your speed rather then to be explosive from the outset (like I mentioned above) but by session 4 you should be good to go.

Speed is the most neurological dependant action that the human body can do meaning it has much less to do with muscles compared to your nervosu system so improvements you make from this program will be from an improved functioning of your nervous system making frequency a pretty big thing to adhear to for this program, hence the every 3 - 4 days guideline.

To show how simply getting the sessions in and tghus increasing your "practice" time of sprinting (like walking as a toddler) check out this Twitter post of a kid doing repeat sprints and how much his time went down in 1 day - simply from the nervous system practicing the action of sprinting and getting better at it.

Here are the 2 sessions you'll alternate through:

SESSION #1...

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10 SECRETS OF FOOTY PLAYERS & COACHES CAN TRAIN IN THE TIME OFF

We moved house last week so I was a bit light on for content in what was probably the weirdest week most of us have ever been part of.

The unceretainty of the AFL was changing by the hour but what is certain is that all local footy is off until at least the start of May.

Now a lot of us are probably "fit enough" from our team's pre-season training so any extra training on that front will have minimal further benefits so what I'm going to do is give you 10 little known aspects of football that you can train in your time off, now that time has freed up for most of us.

By taking a marginal gains approach where increasing 10 things by just 1% can yeild a 10% increase in overall performance (a very loose interpretation that one but you get the idea), training these 10 sectret aspects of football up to even a minmal level, apsecvts that noone else at local/amateur level is training I can assure you, on top of maintaining where you're at right now, will put you at the front of the pack for an instant impact when games start again (which I think they will).

Starting tomorrow here are the 10 aspects I'll write about in no particular order:

• Hyperarch Mechanism
• Vision
• Speed
• Decision Making/ Chaos/On-Demand Calls
• Ball Handling/Ground Balls
• Opposite Side of the Body (Kick/HB/Bouncing)
• Watch/Study the Game
• Weight Loss
• Lower Body Strength
• Develop a Game Model

Strap yourself in as it all starts tomorrow.

ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD TRAINING PROGRAM

I'm about to give you the secret...the secret to endurance training.

I'm going to tell how it works and how that translates to increased running ability.

What most footy teams is increasing your running power, it's simply getting you back from a low base to a medium, maybe high base but year in, year out, your literal running ability stays the same.

Your time to exhaustion stays the same.

Your anaerobic threshold stays the same so your running potential cannot actually improve once you hit the upper limits of your running potential.

You try to go harder but all you're doing at this point is increasing localised and systemic fatigue for ZERO benefit - all the while increasing your risk of injury the harder and longer you go.

Until you increase your anaerobic threshold, you literally cannot go any further.

Here's how you can...

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THE SPIRAL DRILL + 10 TRAINING POINTS FROM IT

Last night we did a drill I'd never seen before and with some time to kill between clients this morning I wrote down some points on it.

The more I wrote about it the more it represented a great meeting point between drills and scenario's/games.

Then that got me thinking that maybe you can make drills more closely resemble games/scenario's simply by focusing on the right things which will require some detail and a layering of learning but can still be very effective.

Here's the basic drill set up that I've coined the spiral drill...

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DON’T MISTAKE ACTIVITY FOR ACHIEVEMENT – ARE GPS READINGS NECCESARY?

This article popped up on my feed last week looking at AFL Queensland implementing Catapult, a GPS tech company, into it's pathway programs.

Before I start be sure to remember that I am talking from a local/amatuer football point of view, not AFL.

Late last year it might have been, I saw another article on a local women's team implementing GPS's into their training and possibly games.

Too early?

I'd suggest it is...

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PASSING DRILLS PART 5 (3 MORE!!)

Part 1 x 6 drills, part 2 x 8 drills, part 3 x 6 drills, part 4 x 4 drills and part 5 right now x 3 drills.

That's 27 new passing drills for your training pleasure and above all, to keep your players motivated, engaged and focused from the constant new challenges and formations of these drills.

I'll make up a package for these passing drills as well as a combo with the game sense drills too, so 2 new packages available from early next week.

PASSING DRILL #25...

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PASSING DRILLS PART 4 (4 MORE!!)

You've already received 20 passing drills that you can use tonight at training through parts 1, 2 and 3.

Part 4 has another 4 bad boys.

PASSING DRILL #21...

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PASSING DRILLS PART 3 (6 MORE!!)

Part 1 gave you 6 passing drills to start with, part 2 gave you another 8 and today you'll get another 6.

Again I just want to touch on that you need to make your expectations of any drill crystal clear and make sure, do not assume, that everyone knows what expectations you/end goal you've set.

Last night at training we did a bit of 12v12 game simulation with the instruction being to see who could keep possession of the ball for the longest total time for a 7 - 8mins.

Kicks that missed the target (a gripe I'll get back to another day) or were intercepted were given back to the kicker who missed the target.

At various times in the drill players opted for long, over the zone kicks of which maybe half of them missed the target/were spoiled because of too much air time with the kick.

After the drill I brought this point up with the playing group.

Getting changed after training I asked a new player I'd never seen before tonight how he went and he asked about what I had said, specifically saying if the player is on shouldn't we go to them?

I said in a game probably yes but the instruction was to keep possession of the ball and when there were many other shorter and easier passes to do, that would have increased the possession time for our team which was the instruction, not how fast can we get it out of the backline.

So make your expectations/end goal clear as day and after a few minutes watching the drill unfold without instruction, let your the players know how they could best acheive what your expectation is of the drill even if it is basic lanework which I don't why you'd bother with now as you have these 20 beauties!

PASSING DRILL #15...

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PASSING DRILLS PART 2 (8 MORE!!)

Yesterday was part 1 in this series featuring 6 passing drills that you could use immediately at training tonight or later this week.

With passing drills being the feature of the week here's another 8 drills to put in your toolbox.

Remember that there is only limited learning attained from passing/cone to cone drills so once your team has mastered the drill which can occur in as little as 1 single exposure then you need to bring something new to keep their minds focused and above all, challenged.

PASSING DRILL #7...

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PASSING DRILLS PART 1

I know I've blabbered on about how crap cone to cone drills (or passing drills as I'll call them from now on) are for a while but there is still a place for them, it's just that you shouldnlt really rely on them to transfer into games very much so if that's all you're doing then you're training needs an overhaul.

One of my many gripes with passing dxrills is that teams tend to stick to the same one's week after week and really, once you've nailed a passing drill once then whatever learning it provides ahs been learnt and repeating it does not serve your players any real benefit and it can even result in a decrease in skill performance from a lack of prsonal challenge and motivation.

My suggestion is to devise as many passing drill sequence as you can, never repeat oneyou've done before and when at all possible, include some form of game play action within them.

Below are 6 passing drills and I'll be posting 5 or 6 of them each day this week that can be performed literally by any team of any grade, age or ability.

You also want to expose your players to as many types of kicks and leads as possible in a controlled setting.

You could layer these drills where you can starting wqith handball only, stretching it out to incorporate handball and kicking and lastly stretching it out to just kicking so you've essentially got 3 drills you can perform continuously with 1 set of instructions basically.

Less Talk = More Training!

Finally you should always be specific in what type oif kick you want from what cone/group whether it be a turn and burn kick, a push back 45 kick or a kick to space to run runonto kick etc.

Feel free to alter the drills as you see fit and you can decide what leads to do from what group but I'll provide suggestions below as well.

PASSING DRILL #1...

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