Thoughts on Charlie Francis and soccer

[svincenz]

[QUOTE=Charlie Francis;214928]1:One of the issues I ran across was the breakdown of running velocities and the interpretation of high speeds.
For example, one differentiation was measuring total time spent above 20kph. What does that mean?
If the accel to that speed is over a very short dist, it requires maximal acceleration but beyond 40m the average may be intermediate speed. You need an average burst distance and you need to know their starting velocity to qualify intensity. How fast were they going when they started the burst?
Examples for top sprinters (no R/T):
0-30 avr 29.67kph
0-40 avr 31.85kph
0-50 avr 33.58kph
0-60 avr 34.95kph
From any motion at all these speeds would be much higher.
I agree with point 3 but there are many authors of this situation.
In-fighting and positioning by coaches and medical personnel are a big issues.[/QUOT

Charlie,
let’s say you need to organize physical sessions in a professional team in-season (it also depends heavily on the intensity and volume of more tactical or skill elements, but only a general scheme), using the usual scheme (game on Sunday), daily training, two sessions on Wednesday. I’d say, tempo on Tuesday, speed training on Wed morning, brief tempo session on Wed aft, friendly match on Thurs, low-volume speed work on Friday, only tactical on Saturday. I think that as general scheme it could work and can also be accepted by players and head coach (major issue).
Major emphasis on flying 20’ and 30’ on Wed and starts up to 30 m on Friday (no need for more than 50-60 m, maybe every ten days). Weights can be Wed aft after training on the pitch and a brief session after Friday session. Med ball and bodyweight circuits on Tuesday.
Volume to be kept pretty much stable during the in-season, slight reduction on the fourth week, but on-the-fly decision, as injuries (muscle and traumatic) can rapidly make unavoidable to change pre-planned plans.
A major issue is the technical component. A lot of players running is not “appropriate”. Can we put technical elements also in the in-season (power drills etc.)?

[mighty]

@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. It ultimately has to be classed as high intensity as it contains high intensity elements, as well as the additional emotional stressors you mentioned.

2. I see what you mean now. I agree, but I wouldn’t say it’s their fault so much (not sure if you meant this), as in they don’t take repsonsibility to look after themselves, rather the physiological reason why some people continue to pick up injuries no matter the situation. I would be interested to read detailed case studies into the injury history of Owen Hargreaves (Man Utd), Louis Saha (Everton), Ledley King (Tottenham) and Micheal Owen (Newcastle Untied), including all attempts at rehabilitation, physcial preparation and the Physios’ opinion on the matter.

[svincenz]

Yes, physio and pshychological reasons.

[mighty]

[quote="“svincenz,post:11,topic:41078”]

@Charlie Francis

1:One of the issues I ran across was the breakdown of running velocities and the interpretation of high speeds.
For example, one differentiation was measuring total time spent above 20kph. What does that mean?
If the accel to that speed is over a very short dist, it requires maximal acceleration but beyond 40m the average may be intermediate speed. You need an average burst distance and you need to know their starting velocity to qualify intensity. How fast were they going when they started the burst?
Examples for top sprinters (no R/T):
0-30 avr 29.67kph
0-40 avr 31.85kph
0-50 avr 33.58kph
0-60 avr 34.95kph
From any motion at all these speeds would be much higher.
I agree with point 3 but there are many authors of this situation.
In-fighting and positioning by coaches and medical personnel are a big issues.[/QUOT

Charlie,
let’s say you need to organize physical sessions in a professional team in-season (it also depends heavily on the intensity and volume of more tactical or skill elements, but only a general scheme), using the usual scheme (game on Sunday), daily training, two sessions on Wednesday. I’d say, tempo on Tuesday, speed training on Wed morning, brief tempo session on Wed aft, friendly match on Thurs, low-volume speed work on Friday, only tactical on Saturday. I think that as general scheme it could work and can also be accepted by players and head coach (major issue).
Major emphasis on flying 20’ and 30’ on Wed and starts up to 30 m on Friday (no need for more than 50-60 m, maybe every ten days). Weights can be Wed aft after training on the pitch and a brief session after Friday session. Med ball and bodyweight circuits on Tuesday.
Volume to be kept pretty much stable during the in-season, slight reduction on the fourth week, but on-the-fly decision, as injuries (muscle and traumatic) can rapidly make unavoidable to change pre-planned plans.
A major issue is the technical component. A lot of players running is not “appropriate”. Can we put technical elements also in the in-season (power drills etc.)?

From a completely general perspective, inseason, based on a Saturday to Saturday gameweek, for the playing squad only, I would look at something like this;

Saturday - Game/Post game recovery

Sunday - Recovery/Restoration

Monday - Aerobic Maintenance/Low level skills such as certain set-pieces. Tactical/technical review of game. Low volume/intensity auxillary weights maybe an option on this day.

Tuesday - Longest day of the week;
First Session - Post Warm-up - Low volume speed - Technical components such shooting practice, defensive drills, and practice of tactical elements.

Second Session - Various games with the intention of development/maintenance of “conditioning”.

Third Session - Submax weights (lower) for maintenance of strength/hypertrophy

Each session with a break for food and rest.

Wed - Aerobic activity. Tactical preview of Saturday’s game.

Thursday - Various games, total time/volume less than Tues. In-depth tactical preview of game. Further practice of specifc tactical elements.

Second session - High intensity MB throws. Upper weights.

Friday - “Walkthroughs” - either physically or tactically.

Saturday - Game.

Allow for the lack of context; we know the logistical problems away games bring, and the 1001 problems that may arise. This is a blueprint only, and it will be down to the creativity of the coaches to figure out the optimal situation when these problems rear their head. And massage and physiotherapy is a constant throughout the season.

[sprintor123]

One issue i have which maybe you guys can help with is trying to find the balance between getting the younger players in good physical condition, whilst at the same time improving their technical skills.

In the UK its becoming obvious that their younger players are in general at a far lower level from a technical standpoint than their european/south american (french, italian, spanish, brazilian, argentinian etc) counterparts which is hampering their chances at the elite level. Note the spanish national team and Barcelona ball retention skills as evidence.

The reasoning for this is obvious having been part of a premiership team academy for 5 years as a defender the focus was largely on making players stronger, fitter and faster with quite an alarming neglect of improving on technical and tactical skills.

The key i believe to being better technically is by having as many touches of the ball in training from a young age which may sound like common sense to some but over here games involving just 2-3 touches before passing is very common.

So my question is, would it be viable to implement these fitness workouts such as tempo, mile runs etc whilst controlling a football or do coaches on here feel its important to not mix the fitness elements and skills elements together?

[vedette]

How old are these “younger players?”

[ESTI]

@sprintor123

So my question is, would it be viable to implement these fitness workouts such as tempo, mile runs etc whilst controlling a football or do coaches on here feel its important to not mix the fitness elements and skills elements together?

In younger players (16 or younger), skill sets should be separate from physical training. Once skills are mastered would I introduce ball work into their physical training. However I have never been a fan of doing fitness work with a ball, since it’s been shown less than 2% of the game is spent with the ball (~3 minutes per 90 min game).

[ESTI]

Having now had a much larger college female soccer group, it’s quite clear to me that most HS females going into college have a hard time doing a Big Circuit type tempo, with times being 18-20 seconds for the 110 yds (100m) and 40-44 sec for the 220yds (200m ).

I have had 2 dozen girls this summer be introduced to it and only 1 could do it with flying colors. None have any training background besides “athlete conditioning” in their high school PE class.

I am curious to see how many can adapt to 4000m/workout in a 6-7 week period.

[UKcheetah]

@sprintor123

In the UK its becoming obvious that their younger players are in general at a far lower level from a technical standpoint than their european/south american (french, italian, spanish, brazilian, argentinian etc) counterparts which is hampering their chances at the elite level. Note the spanish national team and Barcelona ball retention skills as evidence.

England U-21’s beat Spain 2-0 the other day…

[sprintor123]

@UKcheetah

England U-21’s beat Spain 2-0 the other day…

But more importantly Spains national senior team beat England comfortably 2-0 a few months ago.UK sprinters have had great results at junior levels for years but on the senior stage…its a similar situation in football. One result doesnt change anything!

[Nikoluski]

@sprintor123

…UK sprinters have had great results at junior levels for years but on the senior stage…its a similar situation in football. One result doesnt change anything!

I suppose you are not comparing the sprinters of the two countries… But what exactly do you mean re: the British sprinters at senior level?

[sprintor123]

@Nikoluski

I suppose you are not comparing the sprinters of the two countries… But what exactly do you mean re: the British sprinters at senior level?

I mean’t that Britain have consistently had juniors sprinters which have produced very very fast times for their respective age and produced medals at international junior level but then those results have not translated into the senior ranks.

[ESTI]

@ESTI

Having now had a much larger college female soccer group, it’s quite clear to me that most HS females going into college have a hard time doing a Big Circuit type tempo, with times being 18-20 seconds for the 110 yds (100m) and 40-44 sec for the 220yds (200m ).

I have had 2 dozen girls this summer be introduced to it and only 1 could do it with flying colors. None have any training background besides “athlete conditioning” in their high school PE class.

I am curious to see how many can adapt to 4000m/workout in a 6-7 week period.

The results are in for this years group!

Again, my girls have finished in the top for their teams in fitness. They all reached upwards of 4000+ m of tempo 3x/wk. Times reached 18 seconds for most, and in a few cases, low 17s for 100m and 36-38 for 200m tempo.

One observation, girls who had to do the continuous Beep test or 12 minute run saw limited improvement throughout summer. Not sure why that was. All other tests were sprints with limited recovery.

At one school, the coach ran the team so much girls puked, girls stopped running etc, the only girls left were two of mine. I have several stories of this.

The point is having athletes trust me to do this fitness work pays off in the end. All the while I saw squats increase consiberably for beginners, as well as 10-30yd sprint times (improvement upwards of 0.1 for 20-30yd sprints).

With some of these girls, they went from 2000m/day to 4000+ in 4-6 weeks. Having seen the results, I think I will increase my limit on the high school players from 2000-3000 range upward towards 4000 in certain circumstances. Will report back sometime in the future.

Again I thank Charlie for his open forum and advice which has helped my business, but also the lives of my athletes.

[WRCortese5]

ESTI, nice work as usual!

[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!

[boldwarrior]

ESTI - yes, great work.

[system]

@jamirok

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!

Is this meant to be said in jest or as a joke or are you serious about this being a problem?

[ESTI]

Thanks for the comments!

[jamirok]

@fogelson

Is this meant to be said in jest or as a joke or are you serious about this being a problem?

I’m serious…

[svincenz]

@jamirok

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!

1. I think we can divide high CNS, low CNS, at least for some activities. hormonal/metabolic/neuromuscolar/cardiac stress - are you talking about the output of the OW system?

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.).

From what I know, this is the Mourinho’s and Faria’s approach, not a lot of followers. A lot of what is done by athletic coaches in soccer is rubbish, lately they present a lot of graphs, a lot of names, not a lot of results. A lot of pseudo-science, but at the end it is only to seem more professional.

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.

Just like any team sport. But speed is so underrated in soccer, better, the development of speed. Tell me, how many players at the highest level have you seen improving their acceleration through their career? Yes, it is the aerobic system to be stressed, but gains are elsewhere…

2. You can write with capital letters, but injuries IMO are not first of all training related. First of all they are traumatic. The first problem (training-related) is insufficient strength-endurance. Others are bad running technique (this is interesting, you run 10 kms or more during a match with bad running technique and no one had the great idea of “correcting” it) and yes, rest, insufficient therapy, even if it is not the same for every team (you have much more info than me on this aspect).

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!).

I don’t understand here.

Otherwise, great post.