FOOTY POST COVID-19 PART 3 (FREE CONTENT)

The 3rd and final part of what ended up being a monster peice of writing!

BUILD CONFIDENCE EARLY WITHIN EACH PLAYERS BANDWIDTH

I'm not sure if anyone has heard of bio-banding but it refers to grouping juniors into levels based on ability and/or size rather then simply age.

Big kids play with the big kids in rugby, skilled kids play with the skilled kids in soccer and so on.

This means that ALL kids are playing against or with kids at their own level and hopefully each can develop at the pace they want to, rather then too slow or too fast, both of which can be the cause of early sport drop out.

I would suggest trying this with your playing groups because getting back to the fitness point above, it's not about improvement here, it's about getting players back to their normal in-season skill level.

The 1-drill-fits all mantra of local/amateur footy has been needing to go for a long time and this is your chance.

This is something I would try and do:

1. Group players into top end senior, low end senior, top end reserve and low end reserve or whatever age group/s you have.
2. Run the same drill for each group where obviously skill level and speed will increase from the lowest group to the highest group - the drill might also increase in complexity from level to level too.
3. At anytime, players from 1 group can go to the next group up to "try their hand" and if they feel comfortable and want to stay there, then they can.

This provides a no-stress environment for players to push themselves to new levels at their own pace while training all players at something way closer to their correct level then all players performing the same drill.

Over time most players will hopefully move up a group and then it might work better to move to 3 groups such as top end senior, bottom end senior/top end reserves and bottom end reserves.

This might be the best idea I've ever had to be totally honest and is totally doable at any football club - raise the floor to raise the ceiling.

ALTERNATIVE TRAINING SCHEDULE

Some players might still feel a bit iffy about being out so much, somemight still have kids at home from school, some might be still looking after relatives etc so maybe training 1/week when games start is your best option.

Sure I'm one of the oldest players going around but footy really needs an extra day in the week for mine so we can play/train/train/play 3 days apart - that would be perfect from a play, recover, train point of view but alas I don't think I have the pull to change that.

For this season at least I could see a sole Wednesday night training as an extremely viable option.

Players will be coming off limited preperation and games will be bloody hard, especially the first 2 - 3, without any practice games beforehand, froma loading/recovery point of view.

On top of that it'll be tough, contested footy with plenty of contact straight up because lack of game practice, skill work and fitness will mean slower and less skilled ball/player movement which increases player loading by a huge margin compared to dryer, less contact games, so again extra recovery will be needed.

By having players come to Tuesday training still sorry and sore from the weekend will only put players at risk of injury, putting at risk every other point I've made here under the initial and most important one - player availability.

It will also lessen the required committment in this tough time which may get players more on-side with playing each week then if a 2 x training and 1 x game committment is required.

Yes, we've always done that but this a different time and to think people won't start to think differently now compared to just 6 weeks ago is incredibly niave.

It may not end up being an issue but if it is you better be prepared and organised to be able to roll with it at a moment's notice.

Another lesson - "Control What You Can Control", and that's non-contact injuries.

TRAINING IN SMALL GROUPS

It looks that if and when we do go back we could potentially be limited to smaller training groups which feeds my bio-banding point above a little bit.

What you'll need then are drills specifically designed for smaller numbers, meaning you're gonna need a helleva lot more drills, different drills than you have right now.

As mentioned in part 1, the most efficient way to do this is through small sided games but they still need to have a purpose and progression.

You can't slap a 3v2 handball together on it's own and expect it to transfer to games.

Yet another lesson - "Learn to Solve the Same Problem as Many Different Ways as Possible or a Lot of Different Problems".

Focus on 1 at a time though.

I'll try to put something together to use for this very soon.

PUT TRAINING BEFORE TRAINING + REVIEW EACH SESSION ON YOUR SOCIALS (VISION IF POSSIBLE)

As part of the Game Model it's a great idea to:

• Put training up in your private socials prior to the session so players have an idea of what they'll be doing, the focus of the session and can therefore think about it prior to the session
• Review training sessions and games with vision if possible for individual players and/or the team

Again this might be a little time consuming but with limited training time you've got to find other avenues for teaching and learning through vision is extremely underrated in local/amateur football.

Most senior leagues now video their games and make them available to the clubs so this can easily be carried out now.

You might even find some vision from last year to reiterate what you'll teach going forward to get a jump on things.

PLAYER ENGAGAMENT

I mentioned player engagement above but here are some more idea's to get as many players involved as you can:

• Joke of the Week at training, filmed then put up on your socials
• Have different players do the warm up, warm down or set a challenge for everyone to try (goal fromthe boundary etc)
• Edit the top 5 plays from last week's game
• Edit the bottom 3 plays from last week's games (choose your targets wisely though)
• Tic Tok has huge engagment at the moment so maybe steal some idea's from that such as short dances, acting out a movie scene etc and pull players out of a hat to do it each week either live or recorded.
• My club did a simple trivia night last night with 40 attendees

(SENIOR) COACH THE PARENTS

At junior levels the standard of coaching will often dictate how far players develop and it's a thankless job most of the time and far harder then coaching adults/teens as attention spans and personal motivations can vary greatly from player to player.

Another time consuming but extemely worthwhile endeavour is to have your senior team coaches (mens and women's) train up your helper parents to become "coaches" too.

It might be as simple as the club putting together some workshops on teaching basic skills of footy (kicking, handballing etc) to parent helpers (mum's and dad's) simply so everyone is delivering the same message all the time.

So there it all is.

I've had most of this stuff on my mind quite sometime but couldn't get it out, or quite know the best way/time to get it out but here it is so let me know whatever feedback and/or questions you have on any of it.

FOOTY POST COVID-19 PART 2 (FREE CONTENT)

POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT YEAR

With a shortened season and potential partial playing list maybe it gives you the perfect time to try something you've always wanted to try but always "having to win" stopped you from doing so.

This could relate to anything from training to games to off-feild developments.

Maybe try that full ground press you've never really gotten to implement, a new structure of bringing the ball out of the backline, whatever.

If you do this then ensure, reiterate and ensure again and again that any errors that occur during this time WILL NOT be discouraged or punished.

Richmond were terrible in 2016 but half way through the season they changed their game plan to look more like they have been from 2017 onwards and look how they've gone in that time.

You won't lose anything by trying something like this this season, that's for sure.

MAKE THE CLUB FUN

Round 1 for season 2020 could potentially be played in 8 degrees, hail and gale force winds - not fun on it's own that's for sure.

Tagging on the back of getting players back in the fold after this lay off is the idea of fun - yeah novel I know - but at adult levels of sport we often disregard it as we "seem" to have other motivations to play, whether that be said or implied.

Making your club the most fun place a player can be at can bluetack over those cracks a little, off setting what night be a tough year on the feild.

You might have train at your sponsor nights, joke of the week videos, player game commentary - there's a million things you can do to involve as many people as you can and then share it with them all on your socials public or private.

Another question you can ask - when you are enjoying footy the most, what does it look like?

This information can help you shape your club to what the players want it to be.

MINIMUM REQUIRMENTS/MINIMUM IMPROVEMENT

Getting back to fitness for a bit, physiological adaptation, the act of actually improving fitness of any sort, cannot be done in probably less then 6 weeks.

When I'm talking improvement I'm actually talking being to provide a consistently output higher then the year prior consistently every season.

Most players will at some time in their career put in the "big year" where they do all the training and get themselves to the highest physiological level they have ever been at.

It's easy to reach new levels when you've never really put the consistent effort and time into it beforehand but to do it like AFL players do is bloody hard work.

The cycle of most players is for their fitness to drop when the season ends then build it back up to the same level, or thereabouts each year.

That's it.

No actual improvement and that's fine for the most part bcecause that's all you can hope for in the best case scenario for this season.

What will have the greatest infleunce is if players can stay injury-free or not (player availability from part 1).

Lesson #3 - "Don't Run the Skill and Speed Out of Your Players"

MANAGE AROUSAL LEVELS

We've all got those keen-as-mustard players who are great and extremely infectious around the club, and they will be valuable when we return to play but as a coach you will be in charge of keeping these players, and all players for that matter, at the relative arousal level.

Yes we want to "train like we play" but this year is completely different - we won't be close to doing that.

Just be aware that some players might try to pick back up where they left off in Jan but without the work behind them.

High Arousal = Higher Outputs = Increased Risk of Injury.

You will need to guide some players through training and into early season games as well and this may well be a part of your rotations strategy on game day.

Shorter stints per player and greater rotations overall which may require a system of some sort.

TRAIN LIKE GAMES WILL BE BY THE TIME WE START

If we start in June or whatever, it'll be winter football.

Here's another lesson for you all: "Train How the Gme Will Look Like, Not What You Want It to Look Like".

This means congestion, stoppages, clearances and ground balls in wet conditions.

This certaintly does not mean clean, fast moving football that we train for in the dryer summer months and hope to continue with in the wet months.

It just never happens.

This season will be exclusively tough football so train like that.

The grand finale part 3 will be posted tomorrow.

FOOTY POST COVID-19 PART 1 (FREE CONTENT)

With the ever-hopeful impending commencement of local/amateur footy somewhere in the not-to distant future, here are my thoughts on bringing your footbal club back to its regular programming under unprecedented circumstances.

A lot of the following issues aren't new by any stretch but this pandemic has really put a spotlight on what the true deficiences are in local/amateur football and as has been showed by people all over the world in the last 8 weeks or so, a rebirth through forced innovation can, and will, save a lot of football clubs, many of who are already struggling mightily.

Some of the issues will be more related to junior football then senior and vivce versa but I won't specifiy either way as all football clubs are in different positions in their different age groups and levels of play.

I'll leave it up to you to decicde what's needed by your football club and to take action.

REGAINING PLAYER NUMBERS

Throughout this time off I have had severe reservations about our men's football program going forward if football does not get played in 2020.

For a low resource club it's not quite a year by year proposotion like some clubs, but we suffered a drop in player numbers last year compared to past years, and then had another 15 or so not commit to this year from last year's senior preniership winning team.

As always we have been able to organically recruit plenty of players of varying quality but without them getting to play for us in the first place, not even a practice game, will they return in the middle of winter?

Will senior players non-comittal in January, fully commit in May?

Who knows.

If they don't then we will potentially struggle to field a reserves team consistently in 2020.

My suggestion would be to put out your feelers to all potential players again right now like you would in November, essentially "re-recruiting" every player all over again.

Shitty I know but this is what you just might have to do or you could just sit on your hands and assume they'll just return.

I know what I would be doing.

PLAYER AVAILABILITY

I am certain most football clubs will have a drop off in player numbers for this year which could easily extend to next year and beyond.

It's not often that someone stops playing football then returns again in the short term.

I don't know if players, and past players, having been starved of football, will be keen to take it back up.

I don't know if existing players will find it worthwhile to play potentially 8 - 10 games then finals or simply think it's easier to take the year off and maybe try again next year.

In some instances it can only take 1 player to not to play for another to not to play for another player to not play and all of a sudden you've got a mass exodus on your hands in the toughest climate local/amateur sport has ever seen.

All of this means that for the players you do end up getting back, player availability should be 1, 2 and 3 on your priority list.

For this season at least I would also forgo how competitive we could be in favor of maintaining 2 teams on the park each week.

This may mean you need to investigate such things as:

• Finding out why players play and cater to them individually as best you can.
• Finding out what each players expectations are in regards to playing time, position, level of play, off-feild requirments etc.
• Asking them what they would like at the club to make it as enjoyable as possible including training nights, game days and functions.

DEVELOP A GAME MODEL

Here I go again, the bloody Game Model!

NOW is the perfect time to implement a Game Model.

Why?

Because you might be forced to because of the limited training time we might get before games start back up.

By developing a model I am positive you can fast track what you would like to teach your players from a tactical point of view.

To go 1 better, developing it in conjunction with your leadership group can fast track taching it even more as they can help you, the head coach, in training it.

It does not have to be complicated but it does have to be simple to explain, train and carry out on game day.

If you want help with this then hit me up.

FITNESS LEVELS

Everyone thinks you need a high level of fitness to play football which is partly true but what exactly is a high level of fitness?

Is a super 2km time?

No way.

Is a great Yo-Yo score.

Try again.

Both of those tests and all other tests train only 1 of the 4 Co-Actives of Performance being:

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

It's now clear to see you can put 30mins of each training session towards the phycial aspect of football and "mistaking activity for acheivement" thinking that it's something that transfers to games but you'd be wrong.

The physical Co-Active, being the one most frequently trained by most footballers already has by-far the lowest potential for improvement and would sit no better then 3rd in my order of priorities.

With minimal time contraints, which we'll have when and if we re-start,  you have 1 rule in regards to fitness work:

"Only Do What's Neccesary"

What this means is that you are FAR BETTER working on operational outputs (game outputs) rather then focusing on mechanical outputs (training outputs with no constraints).

I'm not talking running with balls because that can mean cone to cone drills only, not exactly perfect albeit on the right track...sort of.

I'm talking small sided games along with game scenario's and situations left up to players to solve on their own, mixed with tactical stuff from your Game Model.

If players feel they want to do more "fitness" work as it's been drummed into them forever and a day, then provide them with something specific but then you bring in another rule you HAVE to follow:

"Don't Do Today What Wrecks Tomorrow"

Part 2 tomorrow.

FOOTY SECRETS #10 - DECISON MAKING DURING CHAOS (14 VIDEOS)

Earlier in this series we looked at how improving your vision and the amount of information you take in and compute can dramatically improve your decison making and now we put it into practice.

To quickly touch on what goes into clean, fast and efficient decision making you need to have the ability to react to auditory, visual and tactical information, oftne simultaneously.

For auditory cues to work optimally you need to develop a language/set of terms for your team that everyone uses all over the ground - the smaller this on ground vocabulary can be the better.

The ability to process visual and tactical information will come from training in situations/scenario's that are game like but not always the same, taking a repetition without repetition approach to make you as variable as a player in these game situations as possible.

The videos below touch on all of these aspects and you can very easily implemet these drills with minimal explaination beforehand, allowing exploration which leads to far better learning outcomes for your players that will actually transfer to games, unlike cone to cone drills...

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FOOTY SECRETS #9- DEVELOP A GAME MODEL

I've been ranting about game models for a while thanks to Fergus Connolly and they are used extensively at elite level in various capacitites and if and when I coach I'll definitely be implementing one regardless of the grade or age level.

We all know of how Richmnond have a specific game plan that they play that no one else can really copy for a variety of reasons.

A game plan is what we're all familiar with and is a what I'd call a very general outline of what a team is trying to do, in Richmond's case they want to apply huge pressure on the ball carrier and keep the ball moving forward at all costs.

Those 2 things on their own don't really tell us, or the players, anything more then what it should look like - the end product.

The game model on the other hand literally lays out specific roles by each player and/or position to make the game plan possible.

You can't apply huge pressure if players aren't in close enough vacinity to do so.

You can't keep the ball moving forwards at all times if players are running towards the ball into the space you're trying to create, to allow constant forward movement.

At local/amatuer level the talent of 2 teams can be extremely 1 sided, there's no suprises there, but what the lesser talented team can have on the other is team cohesion.

The talented team is usually relying on it's talent more then anything else to get them wins, and when faced with 22 players on the same page, can often be found out for depth, when the top end players
can't have things there own way.

Last season my senior team didn't dramatically change a lot from 1 year to the next with a change of coach, albeit we changed from 1 coach to his son who had played 3 - 4 years for us already.

But the changes we did make, or the focus of emphasise, was more trained in most drills we did in some capacity and encouraged during training and games.

We wanted to acheive 1 aspect of the game to be able to do another and so on.

Here's what we wanted to do:

If you would like help developing a game model then hit me up and if you'd like access to the rest of this footy secret then register at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

FOOTY SECRETS #8 - CLEAN HANDS

In 2017 Sydney Swnas premiership coach Paul Roos released a book called Here It Is mostly detailing his rebuilding of the Melbourne Football Club of whicvh I did 3 different posts on.

I specific comment I remember from the book was one of the first things he wanted his players to be extremly good at was handling the ball when it was on the ground with pretty much everything bring built of clean hands.

Having clean hands has a multitude of game changing affects such as:

• Taking less time to gather ball leaving more time to make the correct decison
• Constantly making the opposition react to you essentially keeping them 1 step behind you
• Allows for your teammates to more easily play off of you
• Limits the opportunities of the opposition getting the ball
• Fast ball movement beats fast player movement every day of the year

As you make your way up grades of footy the cleanliness of handing the footy is what mostly separates the ordinary to the average to the good to the very good to the elite because at lower levels of footy you can always find players with similar endurance and max speed ability compared to the elite and skills also sometimes not being too far behind in some small cases.

But what allows you to display high skill?

Having time and space.

How do you get time and space?

Being clean with the ball.

It's not fancy and is pretty boring to train but if you can't pick the ball up then anything else you have to beat your opponent doesn't really matter because you'll rarely get to use it effectively.

Here's some at home drills you can do tomorrow while we're all isolated, toimprove your ball handling in different situations.

WALL HANDBALL REBOUND...

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FOOTY SECRETS #7 - WATCH/STUDY THE GAME

2004 was my last season back in the country before moving to Melbourne where I had 4 years off from playing football of any kind.

In that time I watched so much footy is was ridiculous.

From all that watching I unconsciously picked up/learnt many 1%er type aspects of footy that when I returned to playing in 2009, I was able to kick 2 goals in my first 7 - 8mins of my first practice game.

I can't actually tell you what I learnt in that time but it definitely enabled me to pick up where I left off almost immediately while also providing mea buffer until my conditioning got up to scratch.

As my readings have shifted towatrds to coaching over strength and conditoning the last 2 years or so the most important thing I've come to realise is how much the football fraternity, especially at local/amateur level, overrate the physical aspect of the game.

I am by no means saying that not being able to run at all doesn't matter but there is definitely a point where players can be "fit enough" and only tactival/technical mastery will take any further.

A few years ago I started doing some ALW insight posts on short passages of play that I noticed while watching games and giving my opinion on what could and/or should have happened.

The Melbourne metro league I play in started filming all senior matches last year enabling teams do go back and study aspects of the game.

Watching passages of play of myself there were plenty of times where during the game it seemed like I was under immediate pressure but on film not so much.

This can easily show players who often cough the ball up, can most of the time have more time then they think.

From a team perspective it can also show that better directional talk could have helped the player quicken up their decision making.

The potential benefits are endless if you can study your games on film regardless of the angle.
Fox Footy's 360 I think usually had David King showing game film on a Wednesday and my favourite On The Couch is also pretty good with the game vision it shows from time to time.

There's also a website at www.theshinboner.com that posts game film which is also very good.

Below are links to all my AFLW Insight posts and I in my opinion most of us are closer to AFLW in the style of play of local/amateuyr football then AFL and the game is also "slow enough" where you can see tactical things happening and not happening where in thge AFL it's so quick it's hard to see in real game time.

I have no doubt that you would have seen yourself in plenty of these situations before and will do again in the future and you can only reposnd quickly to what you've been exposed to before.

Watch these clips, note the lessons from then, own the learning process from each and it will translate to games when we start back up even if you don't notice it at the time.

Here are the clips:

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FOOTY SECRETS #6 - OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE BODY

Is this really a secret?

I dunno but it is still lacking in players from all levels, including the AFL at times.

I feel I'm in a pretty good position to comment on this being a left footer but also being pretty good on both sides of the body in kicking and handballing.

I'm also a mixed bag where I kick left footed, handball right handed, jump off my right leg, write right handed, hold a single racquet right handed but bat left handed.

I am not sure what that is all about but that's what I was dealt.

In footy terms what that meant early on in my playing career was that which ever way I needed to go I could do "something" going that way via handball or kick, without having to fully change direction compared to a full left or right sided player.

Back in the 90's when I was a junior almost all training drills were straight ahead lanework type drills or circular/square drills that followed a single direction and that meant the right sided player biased direction.

As a left footer this drill was near impossible to do with the "no U-turns rule" in great effect but as a kicker, that's what I wanted to do.

For a left footer to get the ball going right and then be able to turn all the way around then to go into a complete oppposite (left footers) hook then kick was, and still is, way too time consuming and time you'll very rarely have on game day.

In the end my only choice was to kick right footed to "fit the drills" which is something I started doing in my mid teens and have continued to do ever since.

Now at training and in games if I'm running to the right then automatically I will kick on my right foot if that's where the option is, regardless of distance, type/level of kick required or the position on the ground.

It's THAT automatic.

What that means is that my decision making can still be pretty good as I'm not losing time by slowing down to attempt a skill on my bad side, I'm not holding the ball longer going through 2 decision making processes at the 1 time (making the right decision and executing the skill) and I have access to 360 degrees of the immediate playing area.

You can't tell me this doesn't make me a better player then if I couldn't.

As a deep small forward I also see plenty of opportunities where using the oppsoite side of the body will be of great assistance for us forwards.

Even simply being able to quickly get the ball to foot out of a pack is a huge skill to have which I'll show in this quick video...

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FOOTY SECRETS #5 - IMPROVE VISION TO IMPROVE DECISON MAKING

To make the right decisions in congestion you need the following:

• Clean and fast ball handling and disposal skills
• To know where your teammates are or where they will be
• To know where the opposition
• To be able read cues from the opposition so you can predict their movements

These can all be developed individually as well as collectively but regardless of how you decide to develop it, the ability to take in more information is the absolute key to doing so.

To be able to take in more information you need to see more, it's as simple as that.

You can't process information that you don't know exists nor make the right decision without knowing what your options are, without guessing.

This exercise can improve your vision range by up to 8 fonts in as little as 2 weeks if performed as prescribed for anyone of any vision quality...

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FOOTY SECRETS #4 - BE ACTIVATED

This is quite hard to explain quickly but here goes...

Be Activated is a treatment developed by South African physio Douglas Heel of which I caught wind of back in 2014.

Here’s the quickest way I can explain how it works.

• Under stress your body starts to go into survival mode the further away you get from your “baseline” point so the harder and you train, the furtherer away you get from your fully relaxed state.
• When the body goes into survival mode it then wants to become more efficient so then it starts to down regulate other bodily functions perceived as not really required by the nervous system in an attempt to leave more resources for what really matters – survival. For example as your breathing rate increases it shifts the muscles used from the diaphragm to the often more easily recruited chest and shoulder muscles. It can also decrease range of motion to limit power output and thus energy expenditure.
• This is a perfect storm for injury if you fail to recognise what’s really happening and you continue to push the envelope.
• If this stress is not addressed then in the long term your mechanics can change from a change in your movement and injury can be the end result.
• The Be Activated protocol aims to press reset on your body, attempting to take it back to your baseline fully relaxed baseline state to enable you to regulate your breathing better and to get range of motion back and a greater freedom in your movement.

Yeah it’s pretty hard to explain to be honest but the last thing you need to know is autonomic nervous system which has 2 branches – sympathetic and parasympathetic.

A sympathetic response is what you want in a case of a fight (adrenaline, instant energy, heightened senses etc) and a parasympathetic response is what you want a case of flight (eat, rest digest etc).

With the constant-ness of society these days most people are in a constant state of sympathetic dominance and unable to get anywhere near parasympathetic state so with all that stress build up, you are unable to fully rest and recover before your next stress build up and it simply compounds over time.

The breathing aspect of Be Activated can have almost anyone enter a parasympathetic state and if you haven’t been in it for some time, the feeling can be quite dramatic initially as well as in the short term post treatment.

I haven’t ran the studies but the secret to starving off illness and pain is to be in a parasympathetic state as much as you can and when you do go all sympathetic (which you need to be able to do as well) then you must have a system in place to get back to parasympathetic to recover from the stress event.

When you have no ailments in the form of sickness or injury/pain then the nervous system recognises this and releases the brakes on your performance, enabling you to perform at the top rungs of your potential.

Here’s a quick video of zone 1 which is all you need to start the Be Activated system...

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