AFL CHANGE POINT ACTIVITY DURATION STUDY

                                          

Here's another AFL-specific study looking at how long you let training activities run based on a umber of factors.

Most of the time we see activities run for too long and the players lose interest,which us coaches see as "a drop in talk" - if there was something interesting to talk about then they would be.

Drop the footy cliches, they're just holding your coaching and your players back from improving in the current form of the game, of which I'll touch on in my next post.

Here were my notes from it:

• 5 behaviors were analysed being disposal frequency, efficiency, pressure, possession time and player movement velocity in an even numbered small sided game and each team scoring at each end of the ground
• There were 10 – 12 players/team on a 90x60m playing area with a minimum activity duration of 4mins
• For each rep, coaches chose teams mostly based on position but had different players in most sessions
• Skill data composes was disposal (kick/hb), type (in/effective), possession time (-/+2secs), physical pressure (within 3m yes/no)
• A kick longer than 40m is effective if kicked to a 50/50 or outnumber advantage for the attacking team
• Kick under 40m are effective if the intended target maintained possession
• There were 4 sequences to describe the skilled behavior during each training activity x disposal frequency (possessions/min), efficiency (%), pressured disposals (%) and disposals under 2secs (%)
• 6 iterations of a training activity were also evaluated resulting in common change point locations between 196 – 252secs (alterations in player behavior) x disposal frequency x 5 – 7/min, 71 – 88% efficiency, 24 – 54% pressured possessions, 8 – 38% possession time, velocity x 120 – 135 meters/min
• All 6 reps totaled 185 skill involvements and 29mins
• Players had reduced aggregate physical/technical performance following periods of peak high intensity in match play during 2^nd halves + 2^nd half physical activity is influenced by 1^st half activity meaning training can be designed more specifically to player activity levels
• Change point for pressure was 124secs probably from fatigue and thus defender's adapting to how they defend (space v player)
• Use change point to identify the moment a behavioral change occurs that signals the end of an activity rather then just going for time, or for a coach intervention and an added perturbation to preserve the metrics above such as number advantage to make it easier/harder for the offensive team

THE 3 WORSE FOOTY TRAINING DRILLS IN HISTORY

All cone-to cone drills can completely die off for me but there's 3 in particular that I still see constantly and that's lanework, 5 star handball and triangle kick.

I mean if I have to do these again then I'll just flat out refuse - it's lazy training design and it's lazy coaching.

At local/amateur level there's only so much time we have available to train and to waste any of it on something that is close to completely useless just does not make sense to me.

"It's just for the warm up though" I'll hear but really what are you actually warning up?

Decision making? No.

Thinking? No.

Learning? No.

You might argue that a) you're working on skill development/acquisition, or, b) getting the legs going but 1) no you're not, and, b) there's you can do other warm up activities that do that as well as the other aspects listed above.

What ends up eventuating when starting with drills that are too basic such as lanework is that then we then move to something like I'm going to describe below but we've already wasted time at the start that could be going to something far more representative later in the session and over a year this equates up to a hellava lot of time dedicated to pretty much nothing.

Now I know change is hard so I'm just going to give you 1 kick and 1 handball option that can deliver a proper warm up that activates your players physically, technically, tactically and psychologically.

Hopefully these training activities will get you thinking about how you can alter your current cone-based training activities into something with closer representation to the game and dramatically increase your chances of training transferring to games, which is kinda the point!

HANDBALL OPTION...

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AFL REPRESENTATIVE LEARNING STUDY

                                   

I've got a bunch of AFL-based studies from this year that provides great statistical insight into the inner workings of training and games that you can use to base your own training game plans around.

Today we look at representative learning which refers to how much your training includes literal game information and this study compared the constraint interactions and their frequency in training.

Here are the notes I took from it:

• The constraints of pressure and time in possession were assessed alongside disposal effectiveness through an association rule algorithm and then expanded to determine whether a disposal was influenced by the preceding disposal
• Disposal type differed between training and competition environments, with match simulation yielding greater representation v small side games
• The subsequent disposal was generally more effective in small sided games compared to the match simulation and competition matches
• Pressure possession is graded when the opposition defends the ball carrier from any direction
• Time in possession is graded on less or more then 2 seconds
• Effective kicks are graded as over 40 meters in length, to a 50/50 contest or better or a kick less then 40m that maintains possession
• Association rules were a) kick/under no pressure/possession time under 2secs, b) kick/under no pressure/possession time over 2secs, c) kick/under pressure/time in possession under 2secs, d) kick/under pressure/time in possession over 2secs, e) handball/under no pressure/time in possession under 2secs, f) handball/under no pressure/time in possession over 2secs, g) handball/under pressure/time in possession under 2secs and h) handball/under pressure/time in possession over 2secs
• The lowest support was rule E and highest was rule G
• Match simulation greater reflected game representation v small sided games
• Rule G has highest support in match simulation v rule D in small sided games
• Occurrences of sequential rules were similar in match simulation v small sided games
• The 3^rd disposal in the sequence was more likely to be effective in small sided games relative to games and match simulation
• The frequency of the 3^rd disposal being effective ranged from 54% – 89% for games, 49% – 84% for match simulation and 77% – 88% for small sided games
• 3^rd disposal effectiveness in games was +70% with only 6 sequences less then 70% v 28% sequences in match simulation resulting in -70% effectiveness
• Match simulation was more similar to games v small sided games in regards to disposal type but games incurred a greater frequency of pressured handball’s performed with in 2secs (Rule G) relative to match simulation
• The difference between training and games can be from activities intentionally favoring a specific disposal type (kick or handball) as well as less pressure v games and this can help with task manipulation to ensure adequate representation such as big and small spaces to encourage no pressure and/or pressured disposals

AFLW GRAND FINAL GAME ANALYSIS

 

North Melbourne were just far more superior over the weekend, not even giving the Lions a sniff of a sniff!

Hopefully teams go to work on what North do and how they do it and we get a more aesthetically pleasing product in the years to come, after a drop in quality this season.

In the last game analysis for the year we look at:

• Excellent deception used by Brisbane
• Brisbane wing crossing over the mid-line then causing confusion
•  Garner forward run
• 4 clips looking at North's around the ground stoppage set up

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