Thoughts on Charlie Francis and soccer

[jamirok]

@svincenz

Good points!

1. I think it is quite difficult. First, for different players the same element can be high or low intensity, and it may depend on a range of factors, first all the effort put into the practice. Soccer is first a game of skills. By the way, a soccer match is high or low CNS-wise? I wouldn’t say it’s high intensity, but we need to take into account the emotional part (CNS stress here also).
2. Apart from traumatic injuries, pretty unavoidable, you can see that the athlete injured now has a higher probability of having being injured in the last years. In Italy, say at serie A level, we have examples of players having 2/3 muscle injuries a year for ten years, despite changing teams, physical preparation, access to top-notch recovery means etc. Most injuries are athlete-related and not preparation-related, broadly speaking.

1. You cannot speak only about CNS low/high stress, because any soccer tactical role has a specific stress and time to manifest it.
   Then CNS fatigue is not so common in soccer, generally you can monitoring hormonal/metabolic/neuromuscolar/cardiac stress.
   You can see CNS stress during pre-season and during the season in the soccer team that use weight training or some strange training approach (as high volume plyo…ARGH!)
   Actually the general trend is high field specificity with low or no gym work and much ball work at various intensity (see Mourinho approach i.e.).
   Soccer is first tactical and situational game, where aerobic component is prevalent with really short repetitive sprint (10-30m) and often is the aerobic componet to be stressed.

2. Injuries are FIRST AT ALL and repeat FIRST AT ALL training related, the most great problem in the European soccer is the not well balanced ratio between work/recovery, some terrible training idea (10x1000 meters) and the really low level (specially in Italy) therapy approaches.
   Few minutes of massage, in the jargon of the soccer players is called “Beauty Farm”, is not enough for any kind of problem!
   Spinal care is so terrible, that is better after “pop”…“pray”! I’ve seen things your human mind cannot imagine!
   There is only a great business with Physiotherapic Machine and any kind of device on the market!
   The only fault of the athletes is dancing on thursday, bad diet (cappuccino prior to a match) and sometime do sex the night before the match (someone has won a world championship with this approach!).

This is the REALITY of soccer!