The Sweat Science
The Age
Saturday January 5, 2008
Despite scientific advances, gut-busting pre-season drills are still valued at AFL clubs, Rohan Connolly writes.
MODERN football continues to lean heavily on sports science and innovation as AFL clubs spare no effort, and certainly no expense, in an attempt to gain a critical edge over rivals.When most AFL clubs resume pre-season training on Monday after their Christmas break, they'll be continuing programs which already have, and will still in some cases, take in all manner of activities and exotic locations.Collingwood leaves Australia in a fortnight for a three-week overseas trip which not only takes in a NAB Cup clash with Adelaide in Dubai, but a high-altitude training camp in South Africa. West Coast was in South Africa early in December. Carlton and Fremantle are headed to Pretoria to play an exhibition match early next month. Hawthorn provided its players with a history lesson in its December trip through the gruelling Kokoda Track.It's all very new millennium. But sometimes the old-fashioned serves as much a purpose. Take some sand dunes on a beach, a fitness coach and a bunch of footballers heaving their guts out and you have what, for the likes of Essendon and the Western Bulldogs, was a very effective pre-season drill.The Bulldogs climbed their own Everest at the mouth of the Darby River on the slightly less exotic Wilson's Promontory. Brad Johnson, a 31-year-old veteran of 15 pre-season campaigns, rated it some of the most physically demanding training he'd done. "It's not fun, not at all," says the Bulldogs skipper. "It's one of the hardest things I've had to do, but we struggle through it and at the end of the day we walk away and we're better for the experience."Essendon hardly lashed out, either, with its week-long camp in Tasmania a couple of weeks before Christmas, but to high-performance manager John Quinn, reviving the methods of athletics coaching legend Percy Cerutty, at Henty Beach, was priceless. "What I like about climbing sand dunes is that it's a minimum-impact activity that gets masses of lactic acid in them, and they've got to work through that, and from that point it becomes as much as anything a mental thing."I'm all for training players to be mentally and physically tough, but you've got to get them doing it together, and sand dunes are a way of doing that as much or better than anything else. There were just some great moments, when they really had to work together to get the job done just to finish the session."Quinn had his work cut out co-ordinating the whole Tasmanian camp, too.Collingwood will be doing its pre-season stuff at Potchefstroom, 120 kilometres south-east of Johannesburg, at the North West University high performance institute, which attracts athletes from around the world to train at 1400 metres altitude.Essendon's previous training camps at places such as Sydney and the Gold Coast have also been in athletically geared environments. That wasn't the case in Tassie."Normally all your meals are set up - it's all done for you," says Quinn. "In Tasmania, we were like the Travelling Wilburys, going from venue to venue, to places set up for tourism, not athletes. "You have to explain that you're not really interested in the char-grilled wallaby with a wild nut sauce." As well as sheer physical fitness, the cultivation of mental toughness and leadership qualities remain a big focus of the AFL pre-season. They were the rationale for North Melbourne's three-day visit to the Kapooka army training centre in Wagga in early December, which took in obstacle courses, bayonet courses and weapon simulation, even seminars on military history. Hawthorn's second visit to Kokoda (its first was in 2004) was also a prime example of the testing of footballers' inner strength.According to Hawthorn's head fitness coach Andrew Russell, failing to place emphasis on the psychological state of players can lead to misdiagnosis of fatigue, both during the pre-season and in the home-and-away season. "A lot of fatigue is psychological fatigue," he says. "A lot of people think that it's physical fatigue, but it's actually psychological and they misinterpret it." The Hawks started back post-season on November 12, but it was the Kokoda trek in the first week of December (for players who hadn't been part of the 2004 sojourn) which was the centrepiece of the pre-Christmas program When the whole group resumes on Monday, it will be a more purely football-based diet of nine to 12 training sessions per week incorporating skills, running and total body strength. Brisbane has put plenty of emphasis on leadership this summer also, the Lions having already conducted two separate leadership camps - one each for the older and younger heads on the list, at Runaway Bay in Queensland. They will return for a third stint at the same location in a couple of weeks. If there's a back-to-school feel about the coming week for many AFL players, it's probably justified, with an increased focus from now on game-plan and strategies for the 2008 season likely to have them feeling like they're back in the classroom. But as Quinn emphasises, even the latest advances in sports science and classroom theory can only go hand-in-hand with some good old-fashioned pre-season busting of the gut. "In my previous life in athletics, they went too far into science and forgot the art of coaching," he says. "If you leave everything to science, you're going to find yourself so bound up with what should be, but isn't, because human beings are very complex creatures. "Science gives you understanding and direction, but you've still got to have the ability to bring out the maximum in any individual you're working with then slot that individual into your team. If you move too far into the gobbledegook of science, you're going to lose the coaching." It's good news for the more traditionally inclined football coaches, but bad news indeed for the players who thought they'd had their last pre-season chunder.THE TIMETABLE ADELAIDE Crows resumed their pre-season campaign last Thursday. Play Collingwood in NAB Cup in Dubai on February 9. Community Camp is in May in Barossa Valley.BRISBANE LIONS Resumed last Thursday.Community camp in Townsville, February 6-9.NAB Cup v Essendon, Carrara, February 16.CARLTON Resumes on Monday. Training camp in South Africa from January 21-February 3. Exhibition game against Fremantle in Pretoria on February 2. NAB Cup v Port Adelaide, AAMI Stadium, February 16.COLLINGWOOD Resumes on Monday. Three-week trip South Africa and Dubai, leave January 19. NAB Cup v Adelaide, Dubai, February 9.ESSENDON Resumes on Monday. Community camp on Gold Coast and northern NSW from February 4-7. NAB Cup v Brisbane Lions, Carrara, February 16.FREMANTLE Resumed last Wednesday.Community camp in Albany January 30-31, and South Africa January 27- February 4. Exhibition game v Carlton in Pretoria, February 2.NAB Cup v West Coast, Subiaco, February 17.GEELONG Resumes on Monday. Community camp on Gold Coast from February 6-9.NAB Cup v Melbourne, Skilled Stadium, February 16.HAWTHORN Resumes on Monday. Community camp in Tasmania from February 4-8.NAB Cup v Sydney, Aurora Stadium, February 17.KANGAROOS Resume on Monday.Community camp in East Gippsland from February 4-7.NAB Cup v Western Bulldogs, Darwin, February 15.MELBOURNE Resumed last Wednesday.Community camp in Canberra from February 4-8.NAB Cup v Geelong, Skilled Stadium, February 16.PORT ADELAIDE Resumed yesterday.Community camp in Whyalla from February 5-7. NAB Cup v Carlton, AAMI Stadium, February 16.RICHMOND Resumes Monday.Community camp in Echuca from February 5-7.NAB Cup v St Kilda, Telstra Dome, February 15.ST KILDA Resumes Monday.Community camp in Ballarat from February 4-6. NAB Cup v Richmond, Telstra Dome, February 15.SYDNEY Resumes Monday.Community camp was in Coffs Harbour in November. Will conduct day sessions throughout Sydney in February. NAB Cup v Hawthorn, Aurora Stadium, February 17.WEST COAST Resumed last Thursday.Community camp was in South Africa in December. Second in Narrogin, WA, from February 5-6.NAB Cup v Fremantle, Subiaco, February 17.WESTERN BULLDOGS Resume Monday.Community camp in Darwin, February 12-15.NAB Cup v Kangaroos, Darwin, February 15.
© 2008 The Age