They are students of highly regarded international speed training expert Frans Bosch, and represented his training philosophies and practices very well. Their activities included hosting a one day speed workshop, combining their skills with that of Suntory rugby’s strength coach Hiroaki Nitta.

They coached for one semester at Bossley Park High School, the winner of the 2009 Bill Turner Cup. Their coaching at this school was very successful.

FootballFIT wishes them all the best on their short holiday in Australia and for the rest of their careers back in Holland.

Aside from attempting to train athletic qualities to meet the demands of the game it is also a consideration to condition players for intense sprinting from an injury prevention standpoint. Not exposing players to rapid acceleration and high speed during a pre-season can actually be doing them a disservice.

Research has shown that the hamstring activity is not significant until speeds above 90% of maximum speed are attained (Kyröläinen, Komi, & Belli, 1999). Improvements in speed and adaptation to sprinting can take several months. A long-term, systematic and collaborative approach needs to be taken in preparing players for optimal running performance and injury prevention.

It is impractical to discuss running performance without considering strength training and vis-versa.  Both of these areas of athletic development should complement each other.

Technical Development:

Running technique training for all running sports should be fairly obvious, but the necessary attention to detail and the time required to carry this out puts coaches off.  In reality most field sport athletes can learn and get by with a rudimentary running technique. As mediocrity is habitually accepted, quite often a disproportional amount of training is directed to solely developing the energy systems in order to make performance gains. Ironically, a lack of attention to the mechanical aspects of running can result in athletes ‘leaking’ enormous amounts energy with every foot strike and overstriding – the latter of which puts the hamstrings in a vulnerable position at ground contact. Poor technique when running curves and angles will put more stress on the hamstrings because of the work they have to do in the transverse plane.
The primary difference between track athletes and field sports with regard to good or poor running technique is in lower limb mechanics. Efficient upper body technique (i.e. arm drive) can be resolved and taught quickly. The three main errors that occur from the waist down can be improved effectively within a team sport setting with running technique drills that involve no arms or placed overhead. An ancillary benefit of these running technique drills is that they improve general coordination and dynamic balance by default, which often transfers to more fluid running mechanics.

Functional Development:

Gait is the cornerstone of function. If an athlete has the ability to operate their musculoskeletal system efficiently they will tolerate greater stress, strain and load.

Hip mobility or a lack thereof is the genesis of many hamstring problems. Without proper hip mobility the leg will not be able to work through the full range of motion. This limitation will eventually lead to flawed mechanics – especially in a fatigued state.

The hamstrings do not work alone, they need help. In particular, the hip abductors play a major role in stabilization. If they are weak or not coordinated with the hamstrings more strain will be placed on the hamstring group. Excessive sway or lateral deviations that forces the synergistic stabilizing muscles to work too hard subsequently shifts more stress to the hamstrings.

The Mach series drills should rightly be placed in the functional development category. Particularly when they are coached as resisted technique drills (as opposed to resisted running). They serve as tremendous developers of anterior hip ROM and specific posterior hip strength (stance leg), as well as facilitators of calf complex stiffness.  They do not necessarily improve running technique directly, but indirectly provide the means to express better technique.

Functional hamstring strength training should be seen as coordination training with resistance.

Furthermore, choice of exercises needs to be based on how the hamstrings behave not based on anatomy.

Most recently, Dean has been working with leading international speed coach Frans Bosch to develop an unequaled speed development model for the football codes.

(See Deans bio for details)

Dean Benton Bio

Dean Benton currently works as an elite performance consultant with Canon Rugby (Japan) and recently as an Athlete Performance Coach for current Olympic champion swimmer, Stephanie Rice as part of Stephanie’s 2010 Australian titles preparation. Prior to this Dean was the Physical Performance Director for the Brisbane Broncos Rugby League Club where he designed and delivered athletic performance, medical, sports science, recovery, rehabilitation, reconditioning programs to the National Rugby League Squad. Dean has also worked as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Leicester Tigers and has worked with Australian Rugby, Queensland Academy of Sport, Australian Institute of Sport and many other elite sport programs. He has published a number of articles and is a sought after Conference presenter

STUDENTS in Bossley Park High School’s Talented Football Program have taken their game to the next level.

FootballFit is running a semester-long program, providing students with a break down of their physical performance.

The GPS units courtesy of GPSports are used to measure heart rate, speed, distanced travelled, positioning and the impacts and forces on the body.

The advances in technology provide students and coaches with information to enhance performance.

Football Fit currently work with the Wallabies and have also run sessions with the Brisbane Broncos and the ACT Brumbies.

The statistics help determine players’ weaknesses and strengths and also offer the coach a deeper insight into his players.

During a 30-minute game of football (soccer) last Thursday, some students recorded travelling distances of up to 5kilometres.

This is in comparison to an English Premier League mid-fielder who will run about 14kilometres per match.

Heres the bottom line.

Speed equals stride length X stride frequency.

So if you are going to start faster off the mark, you have to improve one or both of these. Simple enough, but many people dont have any kind of strategy to do either. So if you are not currently training to do one or both of these, you are probably wasting your time.

Your stride length will be affected a great deal by your hip flexibility, and the explosive strength that you possess. Both of these are trainable. And hill training is a good way to develop both

Your stride rate is a little more complex, but again it is affected by your strength qualities and is very trainable. At top speed, footballers run at between 4-5 strides per second, and a higher stride rate is great for football as it allows you to change direction faster.

We use  the new Swift Performance mat to train footspeed at levels higher than 5/sec. This trains the nervous system to be able to generate the higher stride artes so desired in sport. But doing lots of fast footwork can also help.

Now go back and look at how you are approaching your speed training…..does it make sense?

However, many coaches and parents ask the question: What age should an athlete begin?

It is a good question and one that needs some consideration. The first point is that plyometrics is a form of training, and there is great variation from the simple and very safe, through to the complicated and much more dangerous. Plyometrics can be defined as a form of explosive power training that involves a stretch shortening cycle at high speed. A simple hopping movement can be a plyometric exercise, as can be a much more stressful depth jump performed from a height of 1 metre.

Plyometrics were popularised as an athletic training method in the eastern bloc countries, and it is true that some very stressful and dangerous exercises were utilised with elite athletes. When plyometrics were popularised in western countries, people tended to consider only the more stressful exercises, and therefore were very cautious and suggested that an athlete should have several years of weight training history before using plyometrics.

This is a misunderstanding. Plyometrics can be performed by young children in a simple and safe form. When young girls play the game of Hop Scotch in the school yard, it is in fact a safe form of plyometric training, because the hopping action involves a stretch-shortening cycle of the muscle, and therefore can be considered plyometric.

Children in under 12 teams can certainly learn plyometric training but only if the coach makes the appropriate selection of exercises. Some guidleines for this training will be addressed in further articles but for now, some things that the coach needs to consider are:

• select only low impact exercises
• teach good body posture and control as a priority over maximum efforts
• teach good landing technique, so the athletes learn to absorb force by bending at the ankle, knee and hip when they land from a jump
• mostly double leg jumps for beginners with only a few single leg jumps

FootballFit and Sydney trainer Gustavo Machado Pinto would like to congratulate the coaches and the whole squad who have worked hard to achieve this, taking out some much fancied opponents on their way.

FootballFIT has been working closely with Swift to design new systems specifically developed to assess and improve football specific speed and agility. The soon to be released products will be a big improvement for high performance football clubs and programs.

Players were divided into 4 teams and had to complete a number of challenges, the camp aided in developing the physical capacity, mental toughness and competitiveness of players.

The Orange team (self named SPARTANS) emerged victorious in a close battle.

Watch the Camp Video below!!