Training loads and tapering

[Luke 46]

Hello everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a theory about the Dees performance woes, gleaned from my background in elite swimming. I wasn't elite but I certainly trained at that level, in a squad with Olympic medalists and under the tutelage of an Australian national coach. None of this will be Earth-shattering, and Roosy touched on it in his press conference. Its just an insight into something I dont think the footy world understands very well.

Think about Dom Tyson early 2014. Limited pre-season. Huge start to the year, diminishing returns as it progressed. Now in 2015, despite a full pre-season, his performance aint amazing. Hes not alone: Chris Dawes, JKH, the list goes on. Its a very obvious trend.

In swimming, wed train 11 months of the year. The focus was on an annual competition, namely the Australian Championships. Youd spend the entire year preparing for that one week of racing. Other competitions would come up along the way, but your training was focussed on that one comp.

The training program would go through phases. The year would start with long, low-intensity swimming. As in, 100 km weeks. That would last perhaps three months. The next phase would be more intense- fewer kilometres but bloody hard. This phase would take up the majority of the year, perhaps 7 months. At this point, swimmers are constantly worn-out and have little in the way of speed. Racing during these periods would always produce poor results, and that was expected.

Then, a month out of competition, youd start to taper. And thats what I want to talk about.

Tapering is reducing training loads for recovery ahead of the competition. Its also a time when you build up your speed with short-distant sprint training.

Tapering is a delicate thing. Its really personal for each individual athlete, depending on their body makeup and the nature of their specialist events (eg. a 100m sprinter should taper differently to a 1500m swimmer).

Its really easy for an athlete and his/her coach to bugger up the taper. For instance, nearly everyone would have a month off after Nationals, but there was a semi-serious competition (a trial to get on a state team- so important in that sense) which was (oddly) scheduled about three weeks into that month off. Everyone would compete having not swam at all for three weeks. It was common for people to shatter their best times during that competition, meaning their coach had bungled the taper for Nationals in a major way.

Duncan Armstrong once came and spoke at our club, and he detailed his preparation for his 1988 Gold-medal Olympic campaign. The bloke had a preparation for something like two-and-half-years, without taper. Perhaps it was between the 1986 Commonwealth Games and the Olympic trials in 88, so two years. During that preparation, he raced without tapering, and produced results so bad that many people asked him if he was even going to compete in the Olympic trials.

Its my belief that the Melbourne Demons are currently stuck at exactly that point. Overtrained, exhausted, and not at all ready to perform.

Obviously, swimming training with one important, week-long competition per year is very different to training for a six-month footy season, but the Dees fitness management needs to be looked at seriously.

Perhaps, ideally, youd have a list full of AFL-ready players, who could cycle through different stages of taper at different times and be swapped in and out on that basis. And were a long way off having that kind of depth. Perhaps the Melbourne fitness staff know that the payoff for tapering our athletes for peak performance now, wont yield the returns that it will when the young list matures over the next few years, and theyre keeping the players in that Duncan Armstrong taperless period.

Or perhaps Australian Rules Football doesnt quite draw the world-class, high-performance managers that the impressive job titles claim they are.

Regardless, I think what youre seeing is a lot of over-trained players with no speed and explosiveness, who are performing at their best only after periods of injury-induced rest.

On a positive note, when Duncan Armstrong finally did give himself some time to recover and build some speed and explosiveness, he swam a world record despite going into the Olympics ranked number 46 in the world.

Maybe thatll be us in a couple of years. Go Dees.

Luke

Edited May 22, 2015 by Luke

[What 18,810]

Someone hire this guy as the MFC fitness boss.

Cant be worse than Dave Misson.

[What 18,810]

Someone hire this guy as the MFC fitness boss.

Cant be worse than Dave Misson.

[jnrmac 19,890]

Good first post, welcome to the nuthouse.

It doesn't seem to be an issue for a lot of teams until August. Maybe because we are coming from so far back and are relatively young...

I remember yrs ago when Adelaide won back to back flags. Blight famously trained them with really heavy loads in July and tapered them in August. Neal craig was the fitness adviser. They had a crap August because the players were exhausted but stormed home to win the flag both years. Charlie Walsh the cycling coach also introduced a heavy cycling regimine.

Both of these coaches were from an AIS background (and carried rumours of supplement use)

Daniher tried to copy it in around 2002 from memory. So there would be some history at AFL level as to what is the optimum training loads. We have seen teams win a pre-season comp (Carlton) and then win the spoon so the timing is pretty important. The Swans were also notoriously slow starters to the season but steamed home at the pointy end.

You would think there are enough elite coaches around to know the best methods but by the same token there must also be a lot of group think. Follow what last year's premier did kind of thing.

I have no idea but you could be on to something..

[olisik 4,060]

Dave Misson is one of the only lingering members from Neeld era.

We wernt so lethargic when Bailey was around

[DemonOX 8,692]

Someone hire this guy as the MFC fitness boss.

Cant be worse than Dave Misson.

No need to repeat yourself HH, heard u the first time!

[demon3165 2,569]

Last week Roos presser a reporter asked Roos did the players do about 14 kms during the week Roos looked surprised and then said I think it was about 7 but did not say that with conviction.

Edited May 21, 2015 by demon3165

[DemonOX 8,692]

Hello everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a theory about the Dees’ performance woes, gleaned from my background in elite swimming. I wasn’t elite but I certainly trained at that level, in a squad with Olympic medalists and under the tutelage of an Australian national coach. None of this will be Earth-shattering, and Roosy touched on it in his press conference. It’s just an insight into something I don’t think the footy world understands very well.

Think about Dom Tyson early 2014. Limited pre-season. Huge start to the year, diminishing returns as it progressed. Now in 2015, despite a full pre-season, his performance ain’t amazing. He’s not alone: Chris Dawes, JKH, the list goes on. It’s a very obvious trend.

In swimming training, we’d train 11 months of the year. The focus was on an annual competition, namely the Australian Championships. You’d spend the entire year preparing for that one week of racing. Other competitions would come up along the way, but your training was focussed on that one comp.

The training program would go through phases. The year would start with long, low-intensity swimming. As in, 100 km weeks. That would last perhaps three months. The next phase would be more intense- fewer kilometres but bloody hard. This phase would take up the majority of the year, perhaps 7 months. At this point, swimmers are constantly worn-out and have little in the way of speed. Racing during these periods would always produce poor results, and that was expected.

Then, a month out of competition, you’d start to taper. And that’s what I want to talk about.

Tapering is reducing training loads for recovery ahead of the competition. It’s also a time when you build up your speed with short-distant sprint training.

Tapering is a delicate thing. It’s really personal for each individual athlete, depending on their body makeup and the nature of their specialist events (eg. a 100m sprinter should taper differently to a 1500m swimmer).

It’s really easy for an athlete and his/her coach to bugger up the taper. For instance, nearly everyone would have a month off after Nationals, but there was a semi-serious competition (a trial to get on a state team- so important in that sense) which was (oddly) scheduled about three weeks into that month off. Everyone would compete having not swam at all for three weeks. It was common for people to shatter their best times during that competition, meaning their coach had bungled the taper for Nationals in a major way.

Duncan Armstrong once came and spoke at our club, and he detailed his preparation for his 1988 Gold-medal Olympic campaign. The bloke had a preparation for something like two-and-half-years, without taper. Perhaps it was between the 1986 Commonwealth Games and the Olympic trials in ’88, so two years. During that preparation, he raced without tapering, and produced results so bad that many people asked him if he was even going to compete in the Olympic trials.

It’s my belief that the Melbourne Demons are currently stuck at exactly that point. Overtrained, exhausted, and not at all ready to perform.

Obviously, swimming training with one important, week-long competition per year is very different to training for a six-month footy season, but the Dees’ fitness management needs to be looked at seriously.

Perhaps, ideally, you’d have a list full of AFL-ready players, who could cycle through different stages of “taper” at different times and be swapped in and out on that basis. And we’re a long way off having that kind of depth. Perhaps the Melbourne fitness staff know that the payoff for tapering our athletes for peak performance now, won’t yield the returns that it will when the young list matures over the next few years, and they’re keeping the players in that Duncan Armstrong taperless period.

Or perhaps Australian Rules Football doesn’t quite draw the world-class, high-performance managers that the impressive job titles claim they are.

Regardless, I think what you’re seeing is a lot of over-trained players with no speed and explosiveness, who are performing at their best only after a periods injury-induced rest.

On a positive note, when Duncan Armstrong finally did give himself some time to recover and build some speed and explosiveness, he swam a word record despite going into the Olympics ranked number 46 in the world.

Maybe that’ll be us in a couple of years. Go Dees.

Luke

Welcome to the fun house Luke.

Make sure u have padded room available after each game and spell everythin correctly otherwise the teachers around here will hound u.

Great first post.

[ignition. 1,454]

Well written Luke and welcome aboard.

I wrote Misson not long after Neal-Bullen's second patellar dislocation, quite frankly I was surprised how quickly he returned to training after the first incident after doing one myself a few months earlier.

[Dr. Gonzo 23,686]

Good post. While I think there may be something in it I also think there is a chance some of our platers just aren't up to it. Someone above said under Bailey we weren't so lethargic - I'd counter that by saying that many many times watching us under Bailey and Neeld I could only conclude our players were the least fit in the comp or the most lazy. Two way gut running was non existent.

[Moonshadow 17,471]

Someone hire this guy as the MFC fitness boss.

Cant be worse than Dave Misson.

What a rediculous comment, absolutely clueless again HH.

Luke, great first post and interesting theory, please contribute more often. As you mention, a full AFL season is a very different sport to swimming 1 x week long competition per year. Not sure it's comparing apples with apples in that regard. Are you suggesting we not train during the year, rather do more recovery, or that our loads are not managed on a week to week or individual basis? How does a team taper for a 6 mth season? I think you'll find Tyson has had issues with his knee for most of this season, which might explain much of his poor form. Dawes and JKH have also had persistent niggles. Unfortunately we don't have the depth luxury of resting them easily.

[biggestred 4,783]

Wouldnt surprise me if we were being overtrained with a view to future years

[Luke 46]

What a rediculous comment, absolutely clueless again HH.

Luke, great first post and interesting theory, please contribute more often. As you mention, a full AFL season is a very different sport to swimming 1 x week long competition per year. Not sure it's comparing apples with apples in that regard. Are you suggesting we not train during the year, rather do more recovery, or that our loads are not managed on a week to week or individual basis? How does a team taper for a 6 mth season? I think you'll find Tyson has had issues with his knee for most of this season, which might explain much of his poor form. Dawes and JKH have also had persistent niggles. Unfortunately we don't have the depth luxury of resting them easily.

I'm of the belief that playing a full game each week should maintain the fitness level achieved during the preseason, and that in-season training should be limited to skills, speed work, and recovery.

Perhaps the over-training with a view to reaping the benefits in the future is Misson's plan, and would concur with his 3-year estimate.

[dazzledavey36 52,724]

Good post luke.

But gotta love all the qualified sports science on here who clearly should be running the club fitness program instead.

[Adam The God 29,324]

Great first post, Luke. Could well be some truth in it. I trust our administration are asking these questions though. Particularly, the likes of PJ.

[binman 41,940]

I posted early in the week that I thought it possible we are training super hard now (during a run of games against the top 3 teams in the league) and will taper to best prepare for a run of more winnable games. No coincedence they had a very light week. I suspect in footy they have two taper periods if finals ate realistic. Port are an interesting case study. They are now running out of gas in last quarters where last year that was their strength

[Adam The God 29,324]

I posted early in the week that I thought it possible we are training super hard now (during a run of games against the top 3 teams in the league) and will taper to best prepare for a run of more winnable games. No coincedence they had a very light week. I suspect in footy they have two taper periods if finals ate realistic. Port are an interesting case study. They are now running out of gas in last quarters where last year that was their strength

Interesting. So in effect, what you're saying, B, is that we conceded those games against the top 3?

[binman 41,940]

Interesting. So in effect, what you're saying, B, is that we conceded those games against the top 3?

Yep, pretty much. I mean with our injuries we weren't a realistic chance anyway. I reckon they looked at and figured they'd make the best of it. To me the logical game to peak for is the Queens birthday game. Eddy's annoying but he's right about it being our grand final

[Henrietta Lumbago 331]

Hello everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a theory about the Dees’ performance woes, gleaned from my background in elite swimming. I wasn’t elite but I certainly trained at that level, in a squad with Olympic medalists and under the tutelage of an Australian national coach. None of this will be Earth-shattering, and Roosy touched on it in his press conference. It’s just an insight into something I don’t think the footy world understands very well.

Think about Dom Tyson early 2014. Limited pre-season. Huge start to the year, diminishing returns as it progressed. Now in 2015, despite a full pre-season, his performance ain’t amazing. He’s not alone: Chris Dawes, JKH, the list goes on. It’s a very obvious trend.

In swimming, we’d train 11 months of the year. The focus was on an annual competition, namely the Australian Championships. You’d spend the entire year preparing for that one week of racing. Other competitions would come up along the way, but your training was focussed on that one comp.

The training program would go through phases. The year would start with long, low-intensity swimming. As in, 100 km weeks. That would last perhaps three months. The next phase would be more intense- fewer kilometres but bloody hard. This phase would take up the majority of the year, perhaps 7 months. At this point, swimmers are constantly worn-out and have little in the way of speed. Racing during these periods would always produce poor results, and that was expected.

Then, a month out of competition, you’d start to taper. And that’s what I want to talk about.

Tapering is reducing training loads for recovery ahead of the competition. It’s also a time when you build up your speed with short-distant sprint training.

Tapering is a delicate thing. It’s really personal for each individual athlete, depending on their body makeup and the nature of their specialist events (eg. a 100m sprinter should taper differently to a 1500m swimmer).

It’s really easy for an athlete and his/her coach to bugger up the taper. For instance, nearly everyone would have a month off after Nationals, but there was a semi-serious competition (a trial to get on a state team- so important in that sense) which was (oddly) scheduled about three weeks into that month off. Everyone would compete having not swam at all for three weeks. It was common for people to shatter their best times during that competition, meaning their coach had bungled the taper for Nationals in a major way.

Duncan Armstrong once came and spoke at our club, and he detailed his preparation for his 1988 Gold-medal Olympic campaign. The bloke had a preparation for something like two-and-half-years, without taper. Perhaps it was between the 1986 Commonwealth Games and the Olympic trials in ’88, so two years. During that preparation, he raced without tapering, and produced results so bad that many people asked him if he was even going to compete in the Olympic trials.

It’s my belief that the Melbourne Demons are currently stuck at exactly that point. Overtrained, exhausted, and not at all ready to perform.

Obviously, swimming training with one important, week-long competition per year is very different to training for a six-month footy season, but the Dees’ fitness management needs to be looked at seriously.

Perhaps, ideally, you’d have a list full of AFL-ready players, who could cycle through different stages of “taper” at different times and be swapped in and out on that basis. And we’re a long way off having that kind of depth. Perhaps the Melbourne fitness staff know that the payoff for tapering our athletes for peak performance now, won’t yield the returns that it will when the young list matures over the next few years, and they’re keeping the players in that Duncan Armstrong taperless period.

Or perhaps Australian Rules Football doesn’t quite draw the world-class, high-performance managers that the impressive job titles claim they are.

Regardless, I think what you’re seeing is a lot of over-trained players with no speed and explosiveness, who are performing at their best only after periods of injury-induced rest.

On a positive note, when Duncan Armstrong finally did give himself some time to recover and build some speed and explosiveness, he swam a word record despite going into the Olympics ranked number 46 in the world.

Maybe that’ll be us in a couple of years. Go Dees.

Luke

Apparently we were in this over- trained state in 2012, because the pre-season was so intense and full of fitness work.

But in my opinion we haven't been a fit team in a long time...just look at how we finished off last season...

[bing181 8,907]

Tapering isn't applicable in sports like football, where you need to perform on a weekly basis over a 6 month (or longer period).

It's not just AFL, same for football everywhere. There are/have been tapers focusing on major tournaments, but they're built around competitions like a World Cup, where players can be loaded and then unloaded over a period of a month or more beforehand.

Also, it's not necessarily true that producing high level performances after your peak event is a result of messing up a taper, as it's possible (sometimes even necessary) to hold peak condition over a number of weeks. There's an element of "overshoot" as a result of tapering.

As you pointed out, tapering functions differently for different sports (type and amount of loading, and then type and length of tapering), so what's applicable for swimming isn't applicable for, say, cycling, or long-distance running - or football.

re the Dees, in spite of your post or what we've been seeing, I don't know that too many of the Melbourne players are tired as a result of training issues. Certainly, it's been a difficult 3 weeks against older, more solid, and more experienced opponents, which has no doubt taken its toll, both physically and mentally. Perhaps its having a more visible impact on the younger players, but I don't know that it's more than that. For example, a few people commented on Brayshaw, but turns out he was off-colour during the week. It's no accident that players start to look tired when they're losing, or that you don't notice the soreness as much after a win.

You mention over-training. That's very different to loading/unloading as part of a structured build using a build/taper. Over-training is a specific condition that's straighforward to detect through monitoring of performance, output and loads. Given the amount of data that's collected on the players, I'm sure that Misson and co. know exactly what's going on with each and every one of them - as would fitness departments in any sports at elite level (or even a sub-elite level) across the world. It's not for nothing that in all those training reports we hear that player X is only running laps because they're due for a reduced load.

Nothing specific to do with your post, but with the salaries and funds available to fitness and sports science departments in the AFL, hard to see that they wouldn't attract the very best. Neil Craig had a nice little earner with Cycling Australia - but bet he had a better one when he moved across to Adelaide. Of course being a cog in a wheel in the fitness department at a footy club isn't for everyone either.

Edited May 21, 2015 by bing181

[Ethan Tremblay 29,971]

Welcome to the fun house Luke.

Make sure u have padded room available after each game and spell everythin correctly otherwise the teachers around here will hound u.

Great first post.

Don't know if grammatical errors are ironic or not..

[bing181 8,907]

Port are an interesting case study. They are now running out of gas in last quarters where last year that was their strength

I don't know that we can read too much into it, would need a whole season of results/data to see if it was part of a longer-term structure in training loads. But in the AFL, it's too risky. In event sports, it doesn't matter when you don't perform so well in secondary tournaments, because you're working towards a world championship or whatever. But in footy, if you end up throwing a few matches because you're overloading, that ends up having a negative, even catastrophic consequence in terms of placings in the final 8 (if you even get in ...).

Edited May 21, 2015 by bing181

[Forest Demon 4,681]

I have heard from other clubs that this is a misunderstood area of the game. Clubs go through large training blocks and their performances dip temporarily. Admittedly, this is usually mid/late season gearing up for finals.

At the end of the day, we had two disappointing, but not totally unexpected, performances against 2 of the top 3 teams, and 1 horrible performance against the other. We have injuries within a squad with no depth and players simply out of form. I'm giving them this week to improve.

[Tough Kent 2,103]

I have heard from other clubs that this is a misunderstood area of the game. Clubs go through large training blocks and their performances dip temporarily. Admittedly, this is usually mid/late season gearing up for finals.

At the end of the day, we had two disappointing, but not totally unexpected, performances against 2 of the top 3 teams, and 1 horrible performance against the other. We have injuries within a squad with no depth and players simply out of form. I'm giving them this week to improve.

When teams play every week they don't get a chance to taper. In a sense, they do taper prior to competition by having a light kick and walk around the day before/morning of a game instead of doing a full session as they would early to mid-week. Training during the week is broken into 3 phases: 1. Recovery 2. Conditioning and skill work 3. Pre-game preparation. It's the same with pre-season. It is broken into 3 phases. And in that last phase leading into games the volume/load is taken right back so that players are going into the season fresh and ready to go.

Forest Demon has done a great job of explaining our dip in form over the last 3 weeks. Dom Tyson's drop in form? Perhaps the fact he has been carrying a knee injury. He has still been winning the pill but he has struggled to cover the ground (his GPS figures are down) and his kicking efficiency has dropped right off. I'd find it hard to kick with a sore knee too.

Luke, while your post is well thoughout you are comparing apples to oranges.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Tough Kent

[monoccular 17,305]

Great post. Welcome.

As another poster has said, maybe this is part of a three year plan. Let's hope so.