Ok. So to make sure I got it right. This is how I plan to have my training look:
Sunday: Performance day
Warm up-strides
Stretch
60 m buildups (generally 4-5) at 60%?
Lift weights (light reps)
Monday: conditioning
Warm up -strides
Ten-200m at about 60-70%
Pushups and situps and then 3-5min rest in between
Tuesday: Performance (Same as Sunday) .
Wednesday: Conditioning (Same as Monday).
Thursday: Performance (Same as Sunday)
Friday: Conditioning (Same as Monday).
Saturday: off
Tues or Thurs: off (if needed)
I guess I need to know what I should be doing on Performance days…what rate for 60 m? No, we were doing 60m max on recovery (performance) days shown above.
Damn, I can’t believe they have womens Aussie rules in the states.
Adonail, have you ever watched a game of AFL? The elite midfielders run close to 20km in a match.
I’m not trying to start an argument here, but the plan you are recommending looks like it is designed for a 100-200m sprinter. 2000m of extensive tempo done a few times a week won’t provide the fitness necessary for aussie rules.
Personally I think that including some distance work is extremely important for this sport. I also don’t see the need to be doing sprints 3x per week.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes it’s ALOT of running. I have taken everyone’s advice, but I agree with you. I’ve been incorporating more 400meter and 800 meter runs in addition to 200m and 150’s.
I think long distance running is useful about only about 1-2x a week in addition to what I’m doing, but no more than that. I believe that training your body to run at a certain tempo rather than paced-runs are the best approach. I’ve tried running long distances, and that helps for weight loss, but I know I’ll have a tendency to just jog the distances rather than run at a certain tempo.
I’m not a midfielder though. I’m a center half-back.
Yes. I was confused before at what my bf was trying to design for me.
We are currently doing tempo/conditioning days as our recovery and performance days as our main workouts. However, I’m wondering if it is better to increase the distances on my performance/speed days and recovering on my conditioning days by doing longer tempo runs (800 meters).
It’s difficult to give any advice without knowing why your boyfriend designed your training the way it is.
Your training seems to be heavily biased towards speed work, rather than fitness work. Maybe what he is thinking is that there will be heaps of fitness work when team training commences, so the best time to build speed is now, with fitness being a focus later on. This would be a reasonable way to do it.
In terms of your question about tempo runs, I prefer to keep each individual rep in the 100-300m range. For aussie rules training I also prefer using a higher volume per tempo session than a 100m sprinter would typically use (eg today I did a tempo session of 4x3x300m)
Are you sure about running 20km in a match ? The accuraccy of this volume estimate is pretty critical for designing the endurance part of a training programme.
A match is 80 minutes playing time (4x20 minute quarters according to wiki).
This means the player covers 10km per 40 mins, which is a respectable time for a recreational runner racing 10km non stop !
Top soccer premier league players in the UK cover 10km in a match.
I wonder therefore if an AFL player is closer to covering 10km rather than 20km.
Should the training regime therefore be based on a soccer player protocol in terms of distance covered and type of training speeds.
A typical quarter lasts around 30 minutes, including when the ball is out of play.
The 20km figure is not an average, but is on the high end of what the elite midfielders cover in a game. I don’t have an exact figure, but I remember watching a game where one of the players (Robert Harvey) wore a GPS unit, and the distance he covered was around 20km.
A centre half back would probably be closer to 10km though.
In terms of your question, I think it would depend on the position. For non midfielders, I think the running demands would be somewhat similar to soccer, but there are some major differences. The sprints in soccer tend to be pretty short, wherea’s in AFL a player might make a lead for well over 50m at 100% effort. Also if the ball goes to ground, you may have to follow up the sprint with another burst of energy to fight against the opposition for the ball .
Do you play or coach soccer? If so, what does a typical off season training setup look like?
Ever since I started playing Aussie rules I have been struggling to come up with a suitable training setup. The sport is a mix of speed and endurance, which are a bit contradictory, so it’s really hard to know how much to focus on each element.
edit - I realise that any Europeans or South Americans reading this might cringe at hearing their sport referred to as “soccer”, but it would be too confusing if I call it football.
Chupacabras is right. I midfielder will certainly run close to 20k during a match if they are playing the position as it should be played. My coach has been trying to get me to play this position, but I don’t feel that I’m in what I believe is “mid-distance” shape. I believe that the folks who excel as midfielders are excellent mid-distance runners (400m-800m-1600m runners). Folks who typically are used to running 2 or 3 miles tend to lack speed, and those who run less than 400m tend to lack endurance. This is why I think I’m going to up my conditioning to 800m and 1600m repeats. I’m already seeing a difference, and I’ve only done it for a couple of weeks.
So you play center halfback too in the UK or Aussie land?! I love that position. I like seeing what’s in front of me.
We were actually in Australia this past August. We played games in Cairns, Bendigo, Melbourne and Sydney. We, unfortunately, lost all 4 games, but our fitness made up for our lack of skill. We even almost won a two games.
I believe that fitness is a pre-requisite for this sport. Not something you can start to tackle while in season.
To take it a step a step further, I don’t think you can compare this to soccer, because typically after you’ve had to sprint 50 or more meters…you have tackle someone, then get up and then sprint again. Very different from soccer!
A sample of 113 midfielders showed that the average on-baller covered 13.2km in 2006 compared to 12.9km in 2005, ran at a higher average speed, recorded an unchanged pattern of fast accelerations and reached a similar top speed while spending two minutes less on the ground.
Because of the exhausting physical demands placed upon umpires during the course of a match, all umpires - field, boundary and goal - are required to meet stringent fitness benchmarks in order for them to be appointed to officiate in the AFL competition.
Field umpires must run 4km in a time of 14:35mins or better, 5 x 1km at an average of 3:25 mins or better per 1km with a 6min break in between each 1km run, and 10 x 80m at an average of 13 seconds or better with 25 seconds recovery between each 80m sprint.
Boundary umpires must run 10km in 39:00 mins or better, 4km in 14:10mins or better, and 5 x 1km at an average of 3:25mins or better with a 3 minute recovery between each 1km.
Goal umpires must run 4km in a time of 18:30 mins or better, must obtain Level 10 or higher in the beep test and average a time of 25 seconds or better over 3 runs in an agility test.
Yeah, if I had to pick an athletics event with the most similar demands, I would say 800m for midfielders and 400m for most other positions.
It’s still a fair bit different though as you are generally running for around 20-100m at close to full speed followed by periods of slower running / then followed up by another burst at close to full speed. For this reason I think its good to also include some conditioning work involving short runs with short rest periods.
For example at a recent training session we did the following conditioning session after our ball work:
20x20m, 15x40m, 10x80m, 8x120m
The rest periods were - jog back between reps and 3-5 minutes between sets (with pushups etc done between sets).
Yeah I’m Australian. I play in a league in regional Victoria.
Is your team made up of mostly expat Aussies, or mostly Americans who have taken up the sport? If it’s the latter then you did pretty well to come close in two of the games, as it’s not an easy sport to pick up if you didn’t grow up playing it.
I would have expected it to be a bit higher than 13km, although an average on baller would probably spend a fair bit of time on the bench.
It makes me laugh that the goal umpires have to get level 10 on the beep test etc. I know those standards aren’t very hard, but all they have to do in a match is stand there and decide whether the ball went through the goals or not.
I played a bit in italy ( rugby field 9 vs 9, we are trying to qualificate for 2011 world cup 18 vs 18)…yes they run lots of miles, but speed is much mor eimportant than in soccer, so the conditioning should reflect this…also many AFL teams have a speed consultant…speed enable you to have the breaking burst.
There ar emany miles also beacuse of the lenght of the games…in soccer the 90min clock is always running.
Many successfull aussie rule players are fast, with high school or ( rarely)college sprint experience… plus add upperbody strength and bodyweight, so you have players who do not resemble milers at all.
GPS technology is intriguing…with my sprinters on tempo day, counting every drill, run, and the walk between exercises,+ cool down I’m sure to be over 6km…
