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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