A Week in the Life of Shark

G’day Shark Fans,

Crippsy here to try and divulge a little more information to our loyal supporters about the life of a semi-professional WAFL footballer during the pre-Christmas period of preseason. I will try and shed some light about what goes on from a day to day perspective and give a little insight into how we are developing the players.

Monday & Thursday Afternoons

Firstly, Mondays start with the guys reporting to my data analysis queen Yzzy Jacob. With Yz the guys go through a number of load monitoring and wellness measures, these include assessments as simple as ratings of training motivation to mobility assessments. This data is a gold mine to us sport scientists and is essentially used to adjust individual training loads or to try and pre-identify guys at risk of injury. Following this players perform self-maintainence exercises, with the focus on addressing any point of muscle soreness and tightness they may have. This largely involves stretching, trigger point and muscle release and muscle activation exercises.

The players will then perform a group warm-up with myself. After a quick drink, the lads will be taken through a fairly heavy and structured skills/game plan session with Stav and the other senior coaches. The intensity and duration of these sessions depending on the weekly loading requirements but typically last around 60 minutes.

Following this the guys head back to me for their conditioning work. Pre-Christmas the major focus of these sessions is to build some high intensity running volume into the guys legs (think lots of 800-400m efforts) as well as prepare their bodies for the physical contacts they will endure during the season. My favourite way to achieve this, aggressive, high contact wrestling.

Following our conditioning the guys will either complete a follow-up “fatigued state” skill session or move into a cool down. My rehab coordinator Aaron Minovini takes our structured, targeted cool down. These sessions are hugely important for managing the injury risks to players and ensuring they can continue to push their bodies over the course of the week and season.

Tuesday Afternoons

The main focus of these sessions are functional strength and skill development. To achieve this after our warm-up we split the group in half. One group works with Stav and the senior coaches, while the other works in the gym with Dan Barry, my resident strength guru. The sessions with Dano pre-Christmas focus on two key areas of athlete development; functional strength and mobility. The strength side is largely devoted to the strength development of our athletes prime movers, their leg and hips (especially glutes). The mobility component is designed to ensure players are able to complete the prescribed lifts through a full range. The benefit of performing the lifts through full range? The guys can be stronger on the field through their entire range (on field they often don't get to choose what positions their body gets put in), and it reduces injury risks. After all they cannot compete if they are injured!

The skills with Stav is a lower intensity session than on the Monday and Thursday. These sessions involve kicking (both passing and goal kicking), handballing and decision making. Despite typically being performed at a lower intensity the players will touch the ball more often.

Saturday Mornings

These sessions are a follow up to Tuesday and are completely devoted to strength development (the balls stay packed away). The main difference is the guys come in for an hour and the groups are smaller. This means Dano and my team area able to spend more time correcting technique faults in the players.

A small group of players also complete an “extras” conditioning program. These guys may be returning from injury or be guys who need or want to do extra conditioning. These sessions include a small amount of running and a ton of off-leg conditioning (bike and rowing).

So hopefully this has shed some light on what the guys have and will continue to go through leading up to Christmas. I openly acknowledge that, for the players, the schedule (especially this time of the year!) can be gruelling. So we as coaches try and keep the players on their toes and continue to challenge them in other way than just in a football sense. One way we do this is a cohort group competition. Here are some of the results of this weeks challenge; ATOM Stadium Idol. Enjoy! (just make sure your sound isnt too high, you might regret it!)

Spice Girls

Horses

Go sharks!!