A-League Soccer - S&C - Q's for Nanny

Other Sports Soccer
1

HI - Here is hoping Nanny will put some light onto his Top level Soccer team in the Aussie A-league.

I take it, a basic template would look along the lines of:-
sun - off - recovery from match
mon - explosive med balls - starts up to 30m or such - weights
tue - tempo - how many klms here? 4k? Med ball circuit
wed - as mon
thurs - as Tue
Fri - small circuit tempo
Sat - soccer - if no game organized, then game play? Weights afterwards perhaps?

Just wondering a few things - Agility work - other than the gameplay itself, do you guys do any during the wk?

Are any players subjected to speed endurance or max speed work at all? Does the play of the game require such? If so, what positions?

what about ball skills? how is that implemented in to the program? ie, i take it there is the Team coach in-charge of ball play and tactics, and then there is the S&C coach?? How do you work hand in hand? Do the ball skills take anything out of the Players recovery ability? if so, how do you manage such?

2

a brief background!!!

i started with them in a consulting role after rnd7 in the 2006/07 season, at that stage that we were last on the table and inc preseason went roughly 12 games without a win.

as a result the coach, conditioner name escapes me and 1 assistant got the sack.

enter Gary Vanegmond, (dutch aussie)highly successful youth coach in sydney he appointed a good friend of mine from the national womens program (matildas) and nswis who i have worked with for a number of years before asia venture.

with the payouts to staff they had no funds at all to pay me so i did reviews, consulting for free for the remainder of the season on the promise that if the team went well the $$$ would be there for the 2007/08 season.

we went on to finish 4th in the regular season, i think losing only 2 of the next 14 games and missed out on the grand final after losing on penalties to adelaide…

from what i saw on program notes, the preseason and early season was full of cross country runs, sand dune runs, 400 & 800m runs with no speed work at all… and maybe as a consequence suffered a bad run of soft tissue injuries in the first 3rd of the comp.

I must admit i am lucky that the coach is a mad sprints and athletics fan and was there to watch Flo Jo and Ben J in 88 as part of the olympic soccer team, since then he says he just loves to watch the sport and is a big on the fact that speed should come first in the pre season.

a point which is lost on alot of league teams here.

i will dig out my programs from this years pre season with all the numbers for hills, speed, tempo, core, and post it here… will try and post the graph if i can

but like i did with my time at the roosters we were strictly short to long, the longest we did in speed was 60m with the first 6 weeks all done as hills sprints and extensive tempo work we did alot of 2x100m runs and 4 x 50m tempo runs… 2-3 times a week.

3

Your a legend Nanny. Cheers for that. :smiley:

Good to see that background info too.

4

Nice post Nanny.

Rupert
CharlieFrancis.com

5

last season the teams last game was played late Feb 07…

from there we had 2 weeks break, trip away etc etc… due to the comp being only 5 pre season games / 21 comp games / 3 semi finals for us, we came back for another 6-7 weeks of work, during this time we mainly did swimming, boxing, yoga, pilates, hurdle walkovers and some field sessions with the ball mainly to keep the players touch with the ball going these sessions were only in the mornings all afternoons were off.

we pulled the pin after 6 weeks as you could see them going stir crazy training for no games… we started back in June giving us 12 full weeks before the first comp game

our typical week from June onwards went along these lines with a 2 days on, 1 day off, 3 days on, 1 day off rotation.

Monday
am field session
pm massages at tafe

Tuesday
am speed and weights
pm field session

Wednesday
off - massages at tafe

Thursday
am speed and weights
pm field session

Friday
am field session
pm medball and tempo

Sat
am speed and weights

Sun
off

i introduced twice weekly free 1hr massages at the local tafe with the massage students there with great results however when needed most in jan leading into the semis they are on holidays so we dont have access to it, so our massage guy is working overtime right now…

we have not had 1 soft tissue injury all season, and all up the number of games missed by the entire squad is 4 maybe 5 games max due to injury… (touch wood with 2 games to play :smiley: )

6

pre season weekly set up between games

and note field sessions last no longer than 90 mins…

Sat
game v perth LOST 1 NIL

Sunday
recovery travel home - 2 HRS IN THE BUS FROM PORT MACQUARIE

Monday
off

Tuesday
am speed and weights
pm field session

Wednesday
am field session
pm meb ball and tempo

Thursday
off

Friday
am field session

Sat
travel to melbourne then field session in the pm

Sun
we smash melbourne AGAIN

7

our Preseason numbers over 12 weeks were

Bounding Contacts - 2070 (ave 172.5 a week)

Core Work - 38000 (ave 3166 a week)

Tempo - 74,000m (ave 6,166m a week)

Speed - 17,600m (ave 1466m a week)

8

what kind of work do the goealkeepers do with you? thanks

9

the keepers do everything the field players do in regards to hills, core, gym and tempo.

When the field sessions are on the goal keeping coach takes them aside for first 30 mins for skills before they join in on the game related sessions

10

same volume also?

11

nanny69, how would a typical speed/tempo/weights/medball session in the off/pre-season be structured (I realise it would vary, but just a roughish idea)?

12

reading the above it looks like they had May off is that correct?

What was the expectation of the players over that time?

While the coach may have been supportive what was the reaction of the players to a vastly different preseason?

When were you at the Roosters?

How has what you do in A league differed to NRL?

Have you been approached by the Phoenix :o yet :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Wow you are really privileged to be able to choose what they do! If I had to add up our numbers it would be more like 15K a week of tempo or such! Just crazy.

14

volume exactly the same for the keepers…

15

see answers below

16

sorry TC missed this post our actual highest week of tempo was 8k for 3 straight weeks

17

Field sessions - i take it, that means working with the coach doing ball specific work?

Do you count how much running is performed in such a session into the weekly volume? How would you do so? Do you count this as pretty low key INTENSITY wise?

18

What you often see with field sessions is a quick deterioration of skill level with fatigue. Just like with Plyos, there is initially a rise in quality as they “warm up” mentally and then once the peak is hit there is a sharp decrease in performance. With a pro side better to have more shorter practices rather than one long drawn out one. Even the best strikers start to lose the ability to aim the ball after so many high intensity kicks.

19

Hello Nanny

I also have experience in team sports. I have a question for you. Given your background in team sports, how does that prepare you for training a 10.08 runner?

Could you also give us an overview on your experienced coaching sub 11 men?

I know from my personal experience in team sports. I wouldn’t have the confidence in preparing an elite 100m runner. Maybe your answers could help me.

Thanks- and keep up the good work :smiley:

20

Interesting what you say about the roosters and their change of approach Nanny.
I saw some of the roosters doing an early morning run session last week. I was there for about 20-30mins and when I left they were still doing the same thing… running the length of the field hard then jogging across the ingoal and repeating. Didn’t look like they were enjoying it too much.
I sent you a PM Nanny.