PENDLEBURY: BEYOND 400 PODCAST PART 1/2

                                           

I'm not a major podcast listener but I had this on my agenda to get to at some stage and doing the lawns the last 2 days was the perfect opportunity to do so.

Being a very older player (46) still playing senior/reserve grade football every Saturday and a senior coach for a women's team on a Sunday, this just delivered nugget after nugget in regards to everything football at the top level that local/amateur footballers can easily implement in their own lives.

Pendlebury: Beyond 400 is the brain child AFL commentator Mark Howard and is 8 episodes of about 25mins in length detailing Pendles' time from the first day of pre-season 2024 right up until Collingwood's very first game in opening round 2025.

Here are my takeaways.

EPISODE 1 - DAY ONE

In this one he talks fleetingly about the fundamentals of football which he mentions the usual go-to's of tackling, marking etc but also adds in spatial awareness so I want to touch on that a but more.

There are 4 co-actives to performance being technical, tactical, physical and psychological and they each have their own set of fundamentals so what he really means is the technical fundamentals of football.

Fundamentals for tactical would be things that your team is specifically trying to do during games such as switch kicks, kick-mark possession, territory dominant etc.

For physical we're talking endurance, speed, repeat speed, change of direction and robustness that we all pretty much work on to varying degrees.

Psychologically is where most local/amateur teams fall away dramatically where we look at things like confidence, resiliency, grinding and flow but that mostly comes from not having the knowledge/resources to deal with it but keeping some cash handy from overpaying players to developing a mindset program within your club would be a very wise-investment in my book.

Foundational fundamentals that also need to be trained from youth ages right through to adult ages are be things like knowledge of and in the game, perception, anticipation, space, time and timing but can also shift in team specific tactics.

My point is don't think ground balls and tackling are the only foundations of football - they're not - and you need to find a way to touch on them on in some fashion!

EPISODE 2 - CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

Here's a hill session that he did in place of main training on a hill that's about 350m long at an treadmill incline of 12 - 15 by his estimates.

120m  x 3 run up and jog back down, then 240m the same and then 350m the same for 4260m total but jogged there and back for 10kms total.

It's on the Sandy Trails so if you know where it is give it a crack!

He also detailed a change of direction conditioning at Collingwood training of 2 x 5mins of 30secs on/off of suicides, 90secs rest, adding that you should never leave this out of your training so you only go through the soreness once.

All in-close work is full contact but otherwise it's 50% contact early in the pre-season.

The final session before Christmas break they did main training with game play then the fitness crew get their rocks off with a free-for-all with the long break coming up.

After main training and game play was already completed he then describes a training activity I actually detailed in vol 3 of the Collingwood Training Activities but I've also seen Sydney do it and West Coast released a video of Josh Kennedy and Will Schofield doing it as well.

It's basically 3 lead and get back efforts with the defender giving you the absolute treatment the entire time with close to zero rules. 

Next up they put the runners up and headed down to the tan where they paired up and wrestled each other in the grass x 20mins then off to Anderson Street Hill for 12 - 15 half hills then jogged back along the Yarra to the start of the Tan at another grass hill for half way, 3/4 and full hill 5 reps each and finishing with bear crawls up the same hill x 2 reps for each distance again then 2 full hills running and Merry Christmas for 16 - 17kms followed by a pump gym sesh after lunch!

Pure madness.

EPISODE 3 - NO SUCH THINGS AS A HOLIDAY

Embrace those tough sessions and do the time so there's nothing you can't handle during games - train harder then the game while you have the time and resources to do so (pre-season and no games).

1 holiday running session consisted of 12 x 400 resting the time it takes you to perform the previous set + an off legs session of a 50km bike ride he does along the bay for about 90mins.

Christmas day he's relaxed his hardcore prep but still does some training Xmas morning at home 

Gets the plan from the fitness staff then adds in what he wants on top of it (mobility, gym etc) but gets it all ticked off to do while away on holiday.

Post Xmas starts watching some footy again.

At 46 I bank a lot of training from September to March having trained 231 out of 234 days at an average of 129mins/day that has already dropped a touch from practice games and less time to train during the season but the point is you can't catch up during the season so bank the sessions and the time when you can.

EPISODE 4 - COACHES

This episode breaks from tradition a touch where Pendles' 3 coaches (Malthouse, Buckley, McRae) talk about Scont (had to get that in somewhere!) while he talks about their different approaches to coaching.

Malthouse - very encouraging, gave him so much confidence and made him feel like he belonged well before he thought he did, train smart/no hero players (no tackling/back with the flight/hangers etc) - health is wealth!

Buckley - full contact straight away, OK with losing some to training injuries, train with purpose/as you play, specific conditioning via games, a general day is 10kms but if that's taken up by a lot of dedicated running volume then it leaves less room for actual footy training (activities + game play and footy) so instead of 4kms of running + 6kms of game play they shifted to 4kms of game play and 6kms of footy activities. mostly cone-less

McRae - you don't win without getting the process right, a lot of shuttle running but little long running which was slightly concerning for him, cone to cone stuff, did about 5 activities repeatedly, develop habits that become habitual so you don't have to think about them, training resets which are drink breaks over the line where you can decompress for 60 - 90mins but as soon as you cross back over the line it's back to focus, prior first pre-season game they'd done maybe 15mins of match play and wasn't sure how they'd go based on what they've done in the build up but were 80pts up at half time and everything that'd did at training came out in the game (high transfer) and he was the fittest he'd ever felt playing during his 15yrs. 

GAME/TRAINING SCENARIOS - UTILISING THE OUTNUMBER ADVANTAGE

In my opinion the biggest gap in local/amateur football by far is the ability to create, identify and utilise outnumber advantages.

We're not trained to identify/utilise them so of course we don't so this in obviously a coaching issue, not a player issue.

Shameless plug alert - I have a entire 20 page chapter on this in the Coaching Modern Football series you can pick up from the register page but for now you'll have to use this tiny snippet.

Previous Game Moment - we exit a stoppage inside defensive 50 and find an outlet on the half back flank

Game Moment - we mark and take some time to allow us to regain formation in front of the ball after a high press game moment on defense.

Game Video...

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COGNITION IN ELITE FOOTBALLERS PART 4

                                                                

So far we've covered the basics of stage 1, 2 and 3 in regards to cognition on footballers and now we double, even triple, down on detail so the future posts in this series  have the potential to be quite long!

Stage 1 - Assessment of the Current Play Situation

Visual Orientation and Attention

• Visual + relevant visual stimuli surrounding players in all directions via eye movements, head turns and whole body movements
• Orientation behavior is linked to attentional functions which guide exploratory movements to ensure that the most relevant information is focused on and perceived
• Visual attention is typically directed on the ball, opposition/teammate positions, open/closed spaces on the field or postural clues for anticipating the actions of others which guides the player’s orientation behavior but are weighted by events that occur during the visual exploration meaning the relation between orientation behavior/attention is highly interactive
• Conscious intentions such as specific instructions may also influence orienting behavior by way of executive control processes
• Skilled players search the visual surroundings for more relevant informatioin, flexibly adapting to current play situations + make shorter/more fixations when the ball was far away to perceive the general pattern of play but when the ball is close they made fewer fixations of long duration and focuses on postural cues of the possession player to predict the next movement v lesser skilled players who simply look at the ball in both situations
• Individual differences in creativity are related to visual search strategies x making short fixations of informative locations and a reflection of broader attentional focus
• Individual differences in working memory can also be relevant for visual orientation behavior but does not differ from groups with different working memory capacity as measured by object tracking
• Superior perceptual abilities leads to better anticipation accompanied by employing distinct visual search strategies
• Both players will fixate on the ball and the player in possession of it which aligns with a reliance on postural cues but experts do this far less indicating superior integration of other sources of information
• When provided with contextual priors via opposition action tendencies, experts spend far more time watching other elements in their visual field than the possession player v novices
• When the main action is far away, skilled players focus less on the possession player and more on other surrounding subjects
• Elite players incorporate multiple sources of information when anticipating and can adjust their strategy depending on the quality of available information
• Most visual research is lab-based which does not always match up with real-life sport
• Game specific data shows that head turn frequency is related to faster processing time
• Central midfielders/defenders scan more and forwards the least
• Less scanning under tight opposition pressure/close to opposition goal
• Probability of successful passing increases with scan frequency but not large but it still has a positive role in elite performance
• The amount of visual exploratory activities in relation to the penultimate pass predicted the adequacy of the subsequent pass by the player
• Midfielders make more visual exploration activities then defenders/forwards
• Eye movement patterns vary  with attacking/defensive phases as well as situational complexity with longer fixations when they were a high number of areas of interest (ball, teammate, opposition) were present in the visual field suggesting longer processing time is required when more information is available
• Scan times are way shorter then during lab testing, questioning study validity
• Visual orientation behavior/related attentional processes vary systematically with the play situation as well as individual player characteristics like creativity
• Skilled players focus their attention on the most informative aspects of the situation which can vary in several ways
• Most studies focus on players with the ball, not away from the ball

COGNITION IN ELITE FOOTBALLERS STUDY PART 3

                                                              

• Stage 3 occurs after the action has been carried out and the player perceives the outcome which is directly coupled to the player’s intention for action and implies an assessment of its level of success
• The assessment activates the brain’s reward systems and makes the player either more or less likely to repeat the same action in similar future situations
• Degree of behavioral modification depends on the difference between the expected and actual outcome of the action so large discrepancies will lead to more changes
• Feedback is implemented via modifications of the cognitive/neural settings that are involved in stages 1 and 2 such as leading changes in the orienting behavior at stage 1 or different response tendencies at stage 2
• Stage 3 feeds back into new cycles of perception/action providing opportunities for learning, and modifies the perceptual processing, decision making and motor execution in future play situations

With the general descriptions of each stage laid out, the next posts of this series will go into great detail on each of them where it gets pretty deep and full on but you don't learn if you're not challenged to thinking deeper!

FREMANTLE v SYDNEY GAME ANALYSIS

I've somehow edited these clips in reverse order of the game but today we look at:

• The next to last play we've all seen already
• Luke Ryan getting drawn to the ball, not impacting at all, and leaving his direct opposition open behind him
• 85m Bice defensive run 
• Freo having their own crack at a kick out set play
• Hayward from high defensive press to leading out of the goal square forward run

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COGNITION IN ELITE FOOTBALLERS STUDY PART 2

                                                             

• Stage 2 evaluates the current relevant response options in order to select/execute a particular action with response options being heavily narrowed down by the situation assessment from stage 1 which activates only a few responses in the player's procedural long term memory
• Response options are simultaneously activated in specific neural populations within motor-related areas of the brain and compete for action selection with the activation of them not being purely cerebral but also muscle actions/preliminary movements such as a defensive player on the ball with the options being to pass back to the goal keeper, direct a long pass ahead or to make a shorter pass to a supporting defensive player
• The speed of the game demands selection/execution of actions largely occurring at an automatic/non-conscious level with the activation of specific response options depending on previous learning/training
• Response actions are also influenced by recent events in the game such as a successful encounter with an opposition player or a missed shot on goal
• Action selection is determined by an implicit evaluation of the potential risk/benefits related to each potential action including the probability of carrying the action out as intended
• The evaluation is implicit as it depends on excitatory/inhibitory activity (formed by previous learning) in neural networks representing the competing responses rather than a conscious deliberation of choice options
• Risk taking levels depends on personal characteristics such as current confidence levels as well as the overall game situation
• The action selection process is non-conscious where executive functions can influence the outcome such as representing team strategy and other conscious intentions
• The automacity of the response selection varies both between situations/individuals where a player may be trained to systematically carry out a specific action in a particular situation but can also be trained/personally inclined to act in a more flexible/creative manner
• A largely automatic response mode corresponds to a strong activation of just 1 response in stage 2 whereas a more flexible response mode entails significant competition between several response options and typically more feedback interaction with the information gathering processes of stage 1
• The outcome of stage 2 is the full execution of a particular action within the action, implying an expectation of its likely outcome based on previous learning which leads stage 3.

HAWTHORN v CARLTON GAME ANALYSIS

As much as it pains me to say, the Hawks are awe-inspiring at the moment - winning in so many different ways it's near-impossible to nail them down when have so many different game phases they can play through.

I assume Geelong will keep Geelonging though to Easter Monday so I can't wait to see what Chris Scott comes up with to combat the Hawks.

On the other hand the Blues are struggling and I didn't have them in my 8 at the start of the year so I'm not fully surprised by their current form.

Today we look at:

• Hawks handball chain that creates the outnumber advantage up the ground
• Hawks going side 50 during a slow play
• Hawks again going inside 50 on slow play but the Blues adjust in-game
• Hawks again handball chain to create the outnumber advantage up the ground
• Hawks kick out #1
• Blues get their own outnumber advantage but have no idea how to use it
• Excellent Carlton pressing and chasing defense
• Hawks kick out #2
• Hawks kick out #3

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