@speedcoach: recovery is not so simple to evaluate with only the help of your eyes or with experience specially when you work with a team and have different athletes with different skills.
At the end if you have enought informations about recovery, it’s not a bad thing!
Just to make my own position on Vo2 clear.
In ‘general’ I think it is very important.
The ability to manage O2 is critical to all sports and every sport.
I don’t think testing it is useful however and focusing on it is less important. Monitoring it is however - like Jamirok says though, not on a daily basis.
Every 6 weeks is fine - 4 if you’re paranoid.
I agree to this. Unfortunately, the soccer players who workout with me in off-season, all of them have fitness tests the first week of practice. Not one school out of the 20 I’ve come across, decided it wasn’t important.
I guess the question is how does one go about “breaking” tradition of this? Ultimately, it has to come from those in charge of the program/team.
Examples of tests used:
*Danish Test:
*2mile run
*Cooper
*Beep (continuous and intermittent recovery)
*1 mile
*“Gauntlet” consisting of 1 mile, rest 2 min, 1/2 mile, rest 2 min, 1/4 mile, rest 2 min, 2x200m, rest 35 second, 8x36yd (rest 15 second).
*Manchester Utd recovery test
Most common test is the 2 mile run, then intermittent beep.
Yeh, you’ll not change it really, all you can do is do your own work and let them test what they want to.
Charlie had some funny stories about test days - he had much the same problem of course with ice hockey players.
Thanks a lot.
In the West anyway …
Tell me about it!
I’ve had experience in Germany and new technology and complementary approaches are welcome!
France, I know a guy in a team that have a 360° medical doctor and physio.
Ditto for Holland.
Speaking about ARP, other European country are much open…respect to Italy.
In Span, Applied Kinesiology is a must…
Italy has a really closed medical lobby…
I go…it’s late for me…
Jamirok,
I agree eyes don’t cut it, although I don’t train a massive amount of athletes. Just a visual on body language. Love to PM you if ok with a few questions. Unfortunately, I don’t get to control my players conditioning when season starts. I get them fit and prepped, then they get smashed in camp by coaches who have no clue what recovery looks like. They treat it as though the body can endlessly endure whatever they throw at them, and if they don’t peform, they are out of shape or lazy. The life of a private athletic prep coach.
PM me when you want.
The life of a “modern” physical coach is not simple, old school coach are too much interested to do their work, at any cost!!!
Off to class. When I get a free minute, I will PM questions. Thanks for be so helpful and open.
This is not exactly my experience, in the sense that a normal distribution holds, but you are much more experienced than me it this field, so your point of view is always very interesting.
I don’t work with soccer but I have an interest in proper training methods for many sports.
I’d be interested to see general recommendations by some of the experienced coaches around here as to how they would train a top level guy with the two months available in the off-season. Of course that means, as has been mentioned by a number of you, that maybe only a month of training-give or take a week or two- could be realistically done as they need more down time after 10 consecutive months of playing.
The other scenario is where the collegiate player is involved so naturally much more time to train would be available.
Nothing too detailed as I know that would take quite a bit of time but possibly a brief template or overview and for someone training the lower level player, how the training would transition during the training year as the player neared their season.
Thanks.
I met a brilliant massage therapist in Spain back in 2007 when I was working with Benicio Del Toro when he was shooting “Che”. We stayed at this therapist’s lodgings in the Spanish countryside for two weeks. He was the primary massage therapist for Miguel Indurain. We had very interesting discussions in French (I didn’t know Spanish and he didn’t know English) about recovery, regeneration and rehab using only the “hands” as the primary tool. In every country, I’m sure there are a handful of great craftsmen.
Jamirok, it depends on the people.
It’s too broad a classification to put complete countries in.
Some teams are open to therapies, but most/many are not.
It all comes down to the attitude of the head person - whether in a organization or team setting.
The osteopath of Lance Amstrong happens to live in my town. I went there for a tuning a couple of years ago.
Indurain was an amazing cyclist, a true great, for those of you who think cycling never existed before Jonny Mellow came along.
Spencer? The Chiro?
He’s Canadian I believe is he not?
In most cases it ends up very much rehab focused as most guys who want to do something usually are coming to rehab or prehab an injury.
They will also sometimes want to do a lot of running like 800’s or 200’s because they know that’s what they’ll do on day 1 when they go back to training and they need to be ready for it.
I’d never do any running of significance with them, unless I was rehabbing a knee injury and was looking at running mechanics and/or for movement pattern breakdown.
But generally you’d work on strength training, body control and regeneration.
Probably in reverse order actually. these guys have had such a long season, recovery and regeneration is the most important thing.
Once you have them back or rather if you have them back to the point where they have no restrictions or limitations, do you train them in the ideal fashion with what you believe to be best or must you cater to what they know they will be doing when they come back?
I guess if you had enough time, which you obviously don’t with the top guys, there has to be more of a concession to what they will have inflicted upon them when back with their team?
If you had an athlete over a longer period of time would you just train them the way you knew to be best which would likely leave them performing better during the “less than ideal” training they must do when they return to their teams?
Thanks.
Always prepare the athlete to play the game, not to be ready for training. You must explain that to the player too though.
Occasionally you have to prepare them - or bullet-proof them for team pre-season training.
Yes, if you train a player for 6 weeks at dominoes but when they go back to the team and they perform better - the coaches or the player don’t care - they just want the player playing well in matches.