Some TESTING results

[duxx]

We are not talking here on pass/fail tests aren’t we? Your girlfriend can be pregnant or not but not in between, while the athlete can score a continuum of results, ie 10m run from 1.6-1.9sec…
If you use 10m run to judge whether the soccer athlete will be fast on the field, then you are stupid, because this depends on host of other factors. But if you use this test to ‘see’ training improvement over time, to judge what have to be worked on, what not then it is informative

Why are you guys so ‘oneness’ (bad english?) and discriminative? And btw, this is the same question I got from my proffesor when I told him that tests are BS in most of the cases. I do share your opinion to a degree, but I think the tests can be usefull to a degree too. I am not training for the tests, I am just using them as ‘instruments’ to have more information about what is happening and maybe to answer why is something happening. I am not going to say that one athlete is better than another except for the test only. But playing and doing test are whole different issues…

[duxx]

BTW, when I said ‘then you are stupid’ I am not reffering to you no23 but rather talking in general

[no23]

@duxx

We are not talking here on pass/fail tests aren’t we? Your girlfriend can be pregnant or not but not in between, while the athlete can score a continuum of results, ie 10m run from 1.6-1.9sec…
If you use 10m run to judge whether the soccer athlete will be fast on the field, then you are stupid, because this depends on host of other factors. But if you use this test to ‘see’ training improvement over time, to judge what have to be worked on, what not then it is informative

Why are you guys so ‘oneness’ (bad english?) and discriminative? And btw, this is the same question I got from my proffesor when I told him that tests are BS in most of the cases. I do share your opinion to a degree, but I think the tests can be usefull to a degree too. I am not training for the tests, I am just using them as ‘instruments’ to have more information about what is happening and maybe to answer why is something happening. I am not going to say that one athlete is better than another except for the test only. But playing and doing test are whole different issues…

Two things

1. If the improvement cannot be seen in the actual practice of the event (whether the 100m race or the soccer game) then the training is not working - WHETHER or not improvement is seen in a test.

2. If you are training the athlete, then by definition you should see improvement in the athlete while training - all training aims to improve some quaility. Therefore there is no need to ‘test’ to see the final improvement, it’s unnecessary.

[no23]

Another point -

Using a combination of tests for comparison with other athletes is pointless too - especailly in soccer.

If this was the case there would be only one type of athlete chosen as a child to train for sprinting.

[duxx]

@no23

1. If the improvement cannot be seen in the actual practice of the event (whether the 100m race or the soccer game) then the training is not working - WHETHER or not improvement is seen in a test.

True, but sometimes you can’t see the improvements in the event cause ‘the eye is tricky’ and we sometimes see what we want to see (subjectivity). Also, the improvement in the event depends on a lot of factors, and you cannot indentify them easily, why, because our vision is subjective and limited

@no23

2. If you are training the athlete, then by definition you should see improvement in the athlete while training - all training aims to improve some quaility. Therefore there is no need to ‘test’ to see the final improvement, it’s unnecessary.

Yes in ‘single factor’ sports like weightlifting, sprinting, long jump… You see the improvement cause you deal with it every day (stopwatch, weight on the bar…). and what are you doing — TESTING on daily basis! In more complex sports this is hard to do!

@no23

Another point -

Using a combination of tests for comparison with other athletes is pointless too - especailly in soccer.

If this was the case there would be only one type of athlete chosen as a child to train for sprinting.

But you are doing it anyway based on your subjective evaluation of game performance… can you compare the play of attacker and back? No, because they don’t have same tactical roles. Is attacker better player than back due higher goals score? Hell, no —
You recently wrote to me in that you noticed improvements in strength, power and body comp with your players. Well, how do you know this? Did you test them or you ‘saw’ them?

[no23]

@duxx

True, but sometimes you can’t see the improvements in the event cause ‘the eye is tricky’ and we sometimes see what we want to see (subjectivity).

But that still doesn’t justify testing

@duxx

Also, the improvement in the event depends on a lot of factors, and you cannot indentify them easily, why, because our vision is subjective and limited

Again - This doesn’t justify testing.
Secondly I don’t agree our vision is subjective, experience and skill are probably greater tools than stats.

@duxx

Yes in ‘single factor’ sports like weightlifting, sprinting, long jump… You see the improvement cause you deal with it every day (stopwatch, weight on the bar…). and what are you doing — TESTING on daily basis!

No - that is not testing - that is monitoring.
Herein lies the difference.

@duxx

In more complex sports this is hard to do!

No - it’s the same thing.
A guy who is squating each week is either getting stronger or not. He is either looking faster in training or not, his touch is better or not etc. etc.
You don’t need to test all of it.

@duxx

But you are doing it anyway based on your subjective evaluation of game performance… can you compare the play of attacker and back?

And nor would I - In fact I wouldn’t really compare any two footballers with anyone other than themselves.

@duxx

No, because they don’t have same tactical roles. Is attacker better player than back due higher goals score? Hell, no —

[sprinterouge]

But that still doesn’t justify testing

When you are put on the cross because the team owner or the fans think the team is slow or unfit just because of certain tactical choices, well, you better be able to put out some papers, or you will remain on that cross.

I have seen a few times a “slow” team become “fast” because of a tactical change. The eye CAN be tricky…

As team sports, and especially soccer, are multifactorial sports, you can’t always see a relationship between what’s done on the S&C side and the actual performance, as Duxx wrote.

If you think otherwise you are either speculating or have not worked with soccer long enough, if at all.

experience and skill are probably greater tools than stats

Exactly.

No - that is not testing - that is monitoring. Herein lies the difference.No - it’s the same thing.
A guy who is squating each week is either getting stronger or not. He is either looking faster in training or not, his touch is better or not etc. etc.
You don’t need to test all of it.

You have 25 players and two eyes, and no matter how experienced you are (or you are not) you can’t tell what is affecting the perfomance of each single player on that day, period.

With one of my team we have monitoring devices that cost from 400 euros (HR monitors with telemetry) to 2500 euros each player (HR monitors + GPS with triaxial accelerometer), passing by a HRV control system, just to list some of the machine we use. We monitor AND do the tests, because, again, monitoring is not enough for a multifactorial sport.

And nor would I - In fact I wouldn’t really compare any two footballers with anyone other than themselves.

Each role needs certain physical qualities upon which tactical models can call upon to a higher or lower extent, but a player has to have them at least at a certain level (can be more, but it cannot be less) to compete at the elite level.

[duxx]

@no23

experience and skill are probably greater tools than stats

Yes, but I don’t have it with 24 years and without experience of playing soccer at elite level or at all, thus I must ‘think’ something which enables me to ‘see’ things clear before I gain 10-20years of experience… and by time my vision will be screwed by posting on this forum
You are mistifying training no23. We are not ‘wizards’, we are just humans. Charlie might be a wizard, but I am certainly not (at least at this level of development). Same thing for Alex Ferguson, Guus Hidink, Scolari (who tried to punch Dragutinovic at the Portugal/Serbia match). But they are ‘coaches’ and we are s&c coaches dealing with multifactorial sport not with sprinting.
Sprinterouge, we are on the same frequency TNX

[no23]

We’re going to have to agree to to disagree on this.

Test is for the most part a waste of time and particularly a waste of training time.
Of the elite coaches I know (including WC winners) none test
Tests can lie and a stat can be used to say anything if you use right.
In team sports you have even more variables and this just makes the exercise even more pointless.

Train your players, monitor your players and talk to your players and don’t waste the precious time you have with them.

[Nikoluski]

Duxx, I think you said in a previous post that you don’t base your training on these tests, am I right? So, if you train them for the sport (i.e., different kind of training vs. the what a certain test needs) and test them with a different kind of process (a) is this a valid procedure (does it reflect what you are doing so far?) and (b) what are you really taking from these tests (since you will continue training based on the sport and not the test)?

Please, help me further understand your approach! Good points from both sides though!

[sprinterouge]

@no23

Of the elite coaches I know (including WC winners)

WC in soccer?

Because I am a sprint coach I can see when my players are not pushing in our speed training, they can fake as much as they want, but I can always tell them who is doing what is supposed to do and who is not.

Despite my backgound, my experience and the fact that I spend almost everyday with them, I am still unable to tell at what degree of his capability each player is playing a game let alone what factor is the responsible for performance hinderance.

talk to your players

You have not worked in soccer, I guess.

[sprinterouge]

@Nikoluski

Duxx, I think you said in a previous post that you don’t base your training on these tests, am I right?

I speak for myself.

We don’t train for the test, but we adjust the training to what they tell us.

Example: power is going down, we analyze if it’s due to neural or metabolic overload and we unload that element. HRV values are screwed, we either reduce the volume of work or have the athlete skip the training session. YYR test are very bad, we increase the metabolic work, and so on.

Try to go “by the eye” with a feverish player, for istance, then wait for him to recover in two weeks after a great session.

[no23]

@sprinterouge

WC in soccer?

Because I am a sprint coach I can see when my players are not pushing in our speed training, they can fake as much as they want, but I can always tell them who is doing what is supposed to do and who is not.

Despite my backgound, my experience and the fact that I spend almost everyday with them, I am still unable to tell at what degree of his capability each player is playing a game let alone what factor is the responsible for performance hinderance.

So? What’s the point?

Is testing the answer?

@sprinterouge

You have not worked in soccer, I guess.

Little do you know

Have you?

Anyway - what’s that got to do with this debate on testing?

[no23]

Lets get this debate back on track and look at the principles …

In team sports monitoring is far more important and a far better option than testing.

I also believe that observation is a far more important skill in coaching than is being given credit for.

I believe that the more complex the event the LESS testing - not more - should be used.

If you want to test go ahead and test, but I think testing removes the focus from training to testing and performing not to mention complicating the training week too much.

[sprinterouge]

23,

Just like when you go to a foreign country you don’t pretend to speak your own language, soccer culture and peculiarities are so very much distant from the ones of individual olympic sports, that the “individual sport approach” is the most bound to fail.

For istance, if you are training a world level sprinter, his feedback, your trained eye, a stopwatch, your good manuality (in checking soft issue) and your training plan supported by your informed guess, are all you need to monitor (as you rightly wrote above) the training. Not as much need for “dry testing” there (you may think “simply no need for testing there”, and there’s no problem in agreeing to disagree on this point).

When I first came in contact with the soccer world I first thought that they were overtesting and under(smart)training/planning. Which I still think to a degree, at least re. what’s generally done. But then you get into the system and understand that the vast majority of soccer players don’t even know how to give you a feedback, don’t have the same relationship with their body as an individual sport athlete, may be because it’s a mediated sport where they have to play a tool (the ball). Related to that they sometime give a feedback on their fitness according to the way they are playing in the game and even when it might be at an optimal level, they might pretend it is not in order to cover technical/tactical issues (I have a couple of real world examples here, in case I have not being clear).

You understand that you can get a feedback from Monday to Wednesday, and then, from Thursday to Sunday, they all pretend to feel great because they want to play the match; that the first time they get an adductor strain because they went to fuck a girl the day before the game in a town 200Km from your place, drove 5 hours total, slept 3 hours, ate like crap, let alone the energy “wasted” (well… not so badly wasted…), they will blame the squat you had them doing 5 days earlier because they have never done it before in their career, because it’s hard and because they’d rather play with the ball all the time than have you bust their balls with weights and sprints and runs. This is the real world… how reliable is their feedback?

The complexities of teams sports, and those of soccer most than others, are really hard to guess if you are not into the system.

[no23]

Ok we’re talking about feedback here -

It some cases it all depends on the level of soccer player.

Sprinters and Soccer players are not the same true … and many are not as serious as you might like … all true …

But I don’t think you give soccer players all the credit they deserve.
Many players are able to give good feedback AND they can be ‘trained’/encouraged to do this too.

But this still doesn’t prove to me that testing is ‘absolutely needed’.

[Charlie_Francis]

@sprinterouge

23,

Just like when you go to a foreign country you don’t pretend to speak your own language, soccer culture and peculiarities are so very much distant from the ones of individual olympic sports, that the “individual sport approach” is the most bound to fail.

For istance, if you are training a world level sprinter, his feedback, your trained eye, a stopwatch, your good manuality (in checking soft issue) and your training plan supported by your informed guess, are all you need to monitor (as you rightly wrote above) the training. Not as much need for “dry testing” there (you may think “simply no need for testing there”, and there’s no problem in agreeing to disagree on this point).

When I first came in contact with the soccer world I first thought that they were overtesting and under(smart)training/planning. Which I still think to a degree, at least re. what’s generally done. But then you get into the system and understand that the vast majority of soccer players don’t even know how to give you a feedback, don’t have the same relationship with their body as an individual sport athlete, may be because it’s a mediated sport where they have to play a tool (the ball). Related to that they sometime give a feedback on their fitness according to the way they are playing in the game and even when it might be at an optimal level, they might pretend it is not in order to cover technical/tactical issues (I have a couple of real world examples here, in case I have not being clear).

You understand that you can get a feedback from Monday to Wednesday, and then, from Thursday to Sunday, they all pretend to feel great because they want to play the match; that the first time they get an adductor strain because they went to fuck a girl the day before the game in a town 200Km from your place, drove 5 hours total, slept 3 hours, ate like crap, let alone the energy “wasted” (well… not so badly wasted…), they will blame the squat you had them doing 5 days earlier because they have never done it before in their career, because it’s hard and because they’d rather play with the ball all the time than have you bust their balls with weights and sprints and runs. This is the real world… how reliable is their feedback?

The complexities of teams sports, and those of soccer most than others, are really hard to guess if you are not into the system.

The problems as I see them:
1: Adjusting training to a test relies on the test being relevant OR the means being used, ie Omega Wave or other vs fitness tests and so on.
2: Even with OW, you must decide whether to follow standardized recommendations or work backwards from your own experiences to duplicate the values you’ve seen when all is at its best game-wise.
3: And perhaps the deadliest. Preservation of your ability to function as a S and C coach AT ALL when other staff are looking for scapegoats. Sadly, ass-covering is one of the main reasons for testing.
I’ve been lucky in such team situations as it’s been tough for others to dispute my outside speed results, so it’s been “my way or the highway”.

[sprinterouge]

1: Adjusting training to a test relies on the test being relevant OR the means being used, ie Omega Wave or other vs fitness tests and so on.
2: Even with OW, you must decide whether to follow standardized recommendations or work backwards from your own experiences to duplicate the values you’ve seen when all is at its best game-wise.
3: And perhaps the deadliest. Preservation of your ability to function as a S and C coach AT ALL when other staff are looking for scapegoats. Sadly, ass-covering is one of the main reasons for testing.

No disagreement here.

@no23

In team sports monitoring is far more important and a far better option than testing.

What means do you use to monitor?

I also believe that observation is a far more important skill in coaching than is being given credit for.

What do you observe?

I believe that the more complex the event the LESS testing - not more - should be used.

Why do you think is this way?

I think testing removes the focus from training to testing and performing

In what sense?

complicating the training week too much

Can you expand on this too? Thanks.

[duxx]

[QUOTE=]Duxx, I think you said in a previous post that you don’t base your training on these tests, am I right? So, if you train them for the sport (i.e., different kind of training vs. the what a certain test needs) and test them with a different kind of process (a) is this a valid procedure (does it reflect what you are doing so far?) and (b) what are you really taking from these tests (since you will continue training based on the sport and not the test)?

Please, help me further understand your approach! Good points from both sides though![/QUOTE]
Great question as allways Nikoluski!
Altought I am not traing for the tests, I might use tests results (if I find the objective and reliable) to group the players into groups of same abilities (rather than by position) in tempo work (if done for general conditining) – yoyo test. But basicaly, I am now more leaned toward using technical work and small sided games for general and specific metabolic conditining, and tempo for recovery (same progression for all guys—but this might change again).
Look at the test results as a POTENTIAL which players might use in a game. You are trying to explore the ‘underlying’ (physical) factors that may affect performance (and with OTHER DATA explain why is it, and identify strength/wekanesses). There are other factors too, like tactical, technical, psychological… The more info you have, the better…

[duxx]

@sprinterouge

You understand that you can get a feedback from Monday to Wednesday, and then, from Thursday to Sunday, they all pretend to feel great because they want to play the match; that the first time they get an adductor strain because they went to fuck a girl the day before the game in a town 200Km from your place, drove 5 hours total, slept 3 hours, ate like crap, let alone the energy “wasted” (well… not so badly wasted…), they will blame the squat you had them doing 5 days earlier because they have never done it before in their career, because it’s hard and because they’d rather play with the ball all the time than have you bust their balls with weights and sprints and runs. This is the real world… how reliable is their feedback?

So bloody true!!! I had simmilar scenario, but luckily the player admitted heheh LOL! Great thread!