AFL & Other Football Training

[Guest guest]

Tim Bickerton wrote:

<<....and progressed to a 1.5 hour session using Swiss ball and cable

exercises, bridging etc. The program was extremely beneficial as I was able

to play out the whole season (only a little bit of adductor and IT

tightness occurred in the first 2 games)

Australian Rules Football, for those uninitiated is a game that demands

plenty of athleticism from it's players; full contact, speed, endurance,

power, strength, agility, core stability and mass, to name a few, of course

very few players are able to achieve all categories.>>

Burkhardt:

A 1.5 hour Swiss Ball session!!?? Too bad you didn't spend that 1.5 hrs

doing snatches, clean and jerks, push presses, squats and deadlifts. You

would have developed most of the qualities you list above all without having

to mess around with silly balls.

Mel Siff response:

Here, I fully agree with . Previously I wrote about the selection of any

type of exercise being based upon considerations of economy as well as

mechanics and bioenergetics and here is a typical case study in programming

inefficiency. To spend so much time on any single type of non sport

specific training is very excessive and inefficient, especially since the

limited type of relatively slow imbalance over a very small range of action

involved in ball training has never been shown to enhance dynamic sporting

proficiency under rapid, dynamic conditions involving actions at speed or

actions with heavy or impulsive loading. I trust that more of those 90

minutes was spent on cable exercises and that the ball was not used largely

to enhance stabilisation.

Remember that serious strength training sessions should not even last for

more than about 45 minutes and that it is even more productive if one can use

frequent, shorter modules (less than 30 minutes long) of a few well chosen

intensive exercises which allow for adequate recovery and sustained intense

mental focus. This may involve several training sessions per day, as was the

case in Russia, Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries and, besides

being very effective in 'anaerobic' sport, this type of modular interval

training can also produce equal or superior 'aerobic' fitness to conventional

long slow duration (LSD) training.

As comments, it is far more productive and efficient to choose weight

training exercises which integrate the development of strength, stability,

speed, flexibility and other motor qualities. All of the exercises that he

mentioned really challenge one's ability to stabilise under forceful,

unpredictable conditions (of lifting, rugby and Aussie Rules).

Wrestling (not much grappling on the ground), as well as shoving, hitting and

barging drills on one or both feet can also offer a more challenging and

thorough approach to dynamic and static balancing capabilities, particularly

since this offers tough contact which relates far more directly to the sports

of rugby and football. At a more advanced level, you can do these

grappling, pulling and pushing drills with eyes closed or blindfolded to

ensure that both the proprioceptive and visual components of dynamic

balancing are adequately trained. Ball drills do not offer this type of

random, heavy contact loading and destabilisation action. If you are

injured, of course, then you choose your drills to suit your level of fitness.

As a former conditioning consultant to the S African Rugby Football Union and

some of the Provincial Unions, I used to teach these types of activity to

many top level S African and Springbok rugby players, none of whom would

have had the time or inclination to spend 90 minutes on ball balancing drills

or even weight training. All types of rugby and football player do not want

to spend hours in the gym. As you are probably well aware, they tend to

regard prolonged periods of strength and other supplementary exercise as

being mostly redundant and irritating, especially if they do not see an

obvious connection to their sport. I found that shorter, multi-joint and

multi-faceted training sessions using no more than 4 exercises at a time

worked very well.

I still have a ball in my Denver gym, but really do not find that it is as

useful as the drills and exercises that I mentioned above for enhancing a

player's static and dynamic balancing and stabilising capabilities. The ball

offers some interesting and enjoyable variations of various trunk exercises,

but, quite frankly, I have never found that it offered any special measure of

conditioning that was not already being achieved by the above mentioned

strength training and one-on-one combat drills.

On several occasions I had to cope with offering strength conditioning to

about 100 juvenile schoolboy rugby players at a time and the purchase and

storage of balls was a huge problem in most S African schools. I simply used

broomsticks, bands, ropes, partner resistance and combat drills on the rugby

field, and the kids, like the elite players, really seemed to enjoy and

profit from it, plus discipline was never a problem. A very valuable aspect

was that the close and vigorous one-on-one contact toughened them up and made

them less liable to lose their cool under game conditions.

There are many such methods that I used in training rugby players at all

levels, but this should suffice to underline 's contention that 90

minutes of ball exercise (if that is indeed what your brief comments

implied)looks like a serious case of overkill. Where did you pick up this

curious advice to use so much ball training for footballers?

Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

mcsiff@...

[Guest guest]

Mcsiff@... wrote:

> Wrestling (not much grappling on the ground), as well as shoving,

> hitting and barging drills on one or both feet can also offer a

more

> challenging and thorough approach to dynamic and static balancing

> capabilities, particularly since this offers tough contact which

> relates far more directly to the sports of rugby and football.

And it's fun!

Really though, that's an important factor.

> At a more advanced level, you can do these grappling, pulling and

> pushing drills with eyes closed or blindfolded to ensure that both

> the proprioceptive and visual components of dynamic balancing are

> adequately trained.

Make sure to use your best Master Po (or Mr. Miyagi) voice before

blindfolding them.

Matt Madsen

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