PSYCHOLOGICAL FATIGUE
In the strength and conditioning game we're close to exhausting what we can do in training the body and the next frontier is what we can do in training to the mind.
Physically we get tired and psychologically we get tired too and you can look at it like this:
Physical Fatigue + Psychological Fatigue = Total System Fatigue
The constant decision making required by players causes fatigue just like running, jumping and tackling does so you need to train decision making just like everything else.
MECHANICAL VS OPERATIONAL OUTPUT
For any skill you have mechanical output and operational output.
Mechanical output is what you can do with zero pressure to perform, unimpeded route and zero decision making.
Operational output is what you can do in a game when all those things are present.
It can be a good idea to rate players on these 2 aspects of various football skills such as decision making, disposal and marking.
If the gap is too wide then you need find a way to replicate game conditions at training and train operational output again like everything else instead of hoping it will all come together in the heat of battle.
TECHNIQUE RESERVE
Technique reserve is what the elite players in spades over us local/amateur types.
What you think of increased fitness is really increased technique reserve.
There are players at pretty much all levels of football who can run a pretty decent time trial but what they don't have is the elite skill level of the pro's.
To build technique reserve you need to first nail the easier skills of footy and build on this in regards to speed and level of preciseness of movement to such a level that it becomes automatic and your technique is dialed right in.
When fatigue starts to settle in late in quarters and games, you're technique is still there and you're disposal drop off will be way less then someone not as proficient from a skill level point of view.
Don't keep pushing fitness, fitness, fitness when you're players can't kick!
IMPLICIT LEARNING
The definition of this is "the learning of complex information in an incidental manner, without awareness that it is being learned".
To do this set up drills with limited information, usually just letting the players know a particular scenario (transition defense, offense etc) or the end goal (10 kicks without hitting the ground etc).
This way players have to decide for themselves the best way to play out the scenario or reach the end goal.
Don't provide them with the answers ans really there isn't any "right" answers anyway because on game day it's total chaos.
You also want to look at the decision making process here.
FAIL AT SOME DRILLS
How many times do we make the wrong decision in games?
Plenty.
How decisions do we usually make at training?
Not many as we kick from this cone to this cone.
Setting drills that might get messy are a great idea to again see how players respond top adversity as well as seeing who provides leadership, who sticks with your game model/pillars and each player's decision making process.
Failing at training also means that it's challenging enough where drills where the ball whizzes around freely isn't challenging enough for most players.
Obviously don't set a drill that's way too hard for your group, it's still got to fit the ability of your team, but don't afraid to throw some little spanners in the works to make it messy and see what happens.
RUN MULTIPLE DRILLS AT THE SAME TIME
We played about 120 last season and have 3 teams playing every weekend so when we're up and about we can potentially have 50 blokes on the track.
Running 1 drill at a time can then mean a lot of standing around and " lost time".
Instead of thinking up whiz-bang full ground drills where players still don't get enough touches of footy, use less complex drills and run 1, 2 or 3 of them at a time, splitting your team up into smaller groups.
Players will get more touches, more QUALITY touches too and they'll stay switched on for longer if they're not waiting 2 minutes at every cone for the ball to get there.
CONTINUOUS WARM UP DRILLS
I got this idea from a local team in the western suburbs of Melbourne I went and watched 1 night where they started with a low complex handball drill and gradually spaced it out to a medium to long kicking drill over 2 - 3 progressions.
This again means lots of quality touches, quick changes from drill 1 drill progression to the next and also covers most skills of the game.
I've made up a bunch of these for us to use from now on instead of the short to long lanework drill we've used for eons.
10,000 TOUCHES
We've all heard of the 10,000 hour rule to become a professional in something and in soccer they have the 10,000 touches rule following the same idea.
Most teams will have 25 - 30 training sessions between now and practice games/round 1 and having every player perform 300 - 350 quality touches before every training session will get them to 10,000.
Instead of rolling up and shit kicking and talking for 15 minutes, get your players onto this doing short and sharp skills on both sides of the body.
TRAIN ABOVE AND BELOW THE DEMANDS OF THE GAME
Definitely thing missing from 99% of footy teams training where they try to train at game speed which is the most fatiguing way to do things, often called "training in the middle".
What that means is that it's too fast to get any true aerobic benefits from but too slow to get any true speed benefits from.
In the end you want to get to the ball first using speed, then be able to do it repeatedly by being able to quickly recover between speed bouts.
Take your focus on seeing how fast you can get tired and then seeing how much you can do (it will be minimal and what do do will be of a low quality) and see how much you can do at high intensity while not tired as well as much you can do at a low intensity before you get tired.
Training at game speed indices high fatigue with means low skill level, decreased decision making and worst of all high injury risk.
SKILL CONDITIONING
We've got 3 - 4 hours to train 40 - 60 players so is it wise to do a 3km time trial every week?
That's 20 minutes gone focusing on 1 single aspect.
If you're going to focus on 1 single aspect it cannot take more than 10 minutes per session at the very longest.
Being conditioned to display the skills of footy is the name of the game, not marathon running, so why not combine the 2?
Set up 3 man drills using various handball and kicking drills where the "working" player goes for a specific amount of time and then have a quick changeover and rotate x 3 - 5 cycles per player.
How far one can run is pointless if they can't be skillful with the ball when they get it.
Do skill conditioning pre-Xmas then introduce running conditioning later
You can also set up skill conditioning tests to gauge progress just like running tests and again I've made yup a few drills for this that we'll use pre-Xmas.
