What does Running Capability mean in the Australian Football League?
In a previous post I spoke about the confusion that exists when people talk about AFL players and their “engines” or “tanks” or aerobic capacity. James Hird has added to the discussion after Hawthorn beat Essendon.
“There’s no doubt Hawthorn outran us for the whole game and it’s been a bit of a trend over the last four weeks. There’s no doubt that our running capability isn’t like the teams we’ve played and that is a concern,” Hird said.
“Particularly in the second quarter they opened us up through the middle of the ground.”
Most people think aerobic capacity. Certainly still a factor but again more about recovering ATP whilst “resting”.
Now the press is saying Essendon is slow. Is that what they mean (or Hird) by running capacity. A repeated speed test was designed recently for the AFL. The medline reference is below. Way back to Brian Dawson’s repeated speed test ( 20 7 second sprints on 30 seconds) this has been measured. So are we talking about repeated speed? I would assume this was worked on a lot at Essendon this pre season. Only an assumptiion but a few names in this link give a clue.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=repeated%20speed%20test%20Australian%20Rules%20Football
Has Paul Chapman got running capacity? Certainly explosive! Joel Corey? Probably the perfect AFL model. Bit of everything.
So what is RUNNING CAPACITY in the AFL especially with 3 interchange and rotations.? Well when one examines Collingwood and Hawthorn it is the ability to run multiple efforts over varied distances for short periods. Get into space a number of times after in close ATP sapping efforts and create the ability to open up the game. The Press has confused the issue. At the end of the day you can only do so many 150’s or 300’s at 100% pace with 2 to 5 minutes rest.
Well again what is running capacity? Is it recruiting enough hybrid athletes that have some speed, some “tank” and can run efficiently. We have seen Decathletes recently be a little lighter so that they can maximize their running points. Geelong Football Club switch back to more traditional conditioning methods this year rather than Game Based & RSA training. Certainly I remember doing a running session with the Geelong boys at Eastern Beach where they did 3 sets of 3 220m up the hills there! They also did 4 sets of 5 50’s one year and also did sessions of 300/400/500/400/300 all split up over every year from 2001 to 2004 to develop the players as efficient players. They also did heaps of sprints. Etc Blah Blah.
So is RUNNING CAPACITY the ability to accelerate hard for approximately 10 to 30 metres and then have the ANAEROBIC capacity to allow this to happen and enough of a “tank” to allow recovery on the bench or when resting in the forward line.
Are repeated speed tests a little confusing? No I found they reflected what happened in a game OK. But more so are traditional training methods ( Interval work etc) more relevant in underpinning changes that create hard running efficient runners?
In the old days ( 90’s) anyone with a beeper test of less than 14 simply struggled t repeat speed, But also those with amazing aerobic levels had no speed to repeat.
Over to you new Essendon Fitness staff. But there is a clue somewhere here in this post!
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