Profiling a Football Player
We all like to see fast players doing extraordinary things on the pitch, we all like to see players doing explosive cuts playing 1vs1 with an opponent. We all like to see players jump high scoring with heading or clearing the ball in defense. So in the end, does it matter, and how much if a player is fast, cuts fast or jumps high? The answer is YES it matters, and a lot!
The physical performance of a player is an issue that we have been covering for quite some time now. However, what are the most important aspects when we profile a player? Lately, my colleagues here, in Qatar, studied the importance of physical fitness when it comes to selecting professional players to join the national team. They concluded that physical fitness qualities are likely to differentiate elite players from amateur or lower level players. Therefore, can we find specific tests providing us with all the information we need so we can make our training sessions more individualized and customized to the needs and profiles of our players?
First of all, we have to keep things simple. As one of my mentors (and brother!) said ‘’success comes from doing simple things extraordinary well’’. Keeping that in mind and knowing that football is a locomotor and explosive sport, we have to find running tests to build the player’s need analysis. Most of S&C (including myself at the beginning of my career), we are trying to transform our players to track athletes. Simple running mechanics or plyometrics are very generic compared to what a football player needs. In my system there are 4 important pillars that need to be measured in order to properly profile our players:
Max Acceleration:
If we start with acceleration, 0-10meters would be the ideal distance to get maximal acceleration. 0-5meters is considered to be more of a reaction test rather than acceleration. As most professionals agree, acceleration capacity is considered to be the number 1 training aspect that each S&C has to work on. Give to your player different stimuli and positions when you are doing acceleration training. Reaction sprints after (mostly) visual and sound cues. In this category we could also add the aspect of agility, which is how fast a player can cut and change direction. A simple test is running with maximum effort for 10m and the cut sprinting for another 10m. Therefore we could easily compare the time of the 20m sprint and have an agility index number (left-right).
Max Speed:
Maximal Speed is very important when profiling a player. Testing with a 40meter sprint could provide us with important information. Even if a player does not reach his max speed in a football game many times, it’s important to profile our players in terms of max speed. This way we can avoid running mechanical non-contact injuries, as we will know if the player reaches that speed in training and therefore is ready to achieve it in a game. Another crucial element is the load management during the week, compared with what the player is doing in the game. Acute to chronic ratio is used by top class football physiologists to get a readiness overview for their players and protect them from possible injuries. Therefore, a lot of high level S&C use long sprints (30-50m) in their training sessions. Although it seems irrelevant to football, is is of great importance to put a football player under that type of “pressure” during training.
Max Aerobic Speed (MAS):
As mentioned in a previous post, MAS is gaining more and more attention from fitness professionals. MAS can be a really useful tool when we are prescribing an endurance program. It could also provide us with information on the player’s readiness and his aerobic/anaerobic needs. How we can obtain MAS? We can get MAS using continues fitness tests (example VAM-EVAL) or intermittent fitness tests (eg. multistage beep test). Knowing the speed where the player switches to the anaerobic mechanism provides us with the information about their fitness level and is also a criterion to choose training intensity.
Max Strength:
Maximal Strength profiling is an issue that was raised in a previous post. It’s crucial to set standards and thresholds for each player. Force plate jumps (neuromuscular profiling), 1RM using accelerometers or getting maximal power using isoinertial technology are key elements to profile our player’s needs and also obtaining a high level training program. I personally believe in individual strength and power training. Team training cannot be achieved by usingthe same load for the whole team. So by taking each player maximum in each test, we can set their priorities, building up from the base to the top of the performance pyramid.
Performing one sprint (0-40m), an aerobic test and one strength test we are able to profile our players and make our program more efficient. Using the new technology (GPS systems and force plates), we can set the targets and thresholds we want for each player and in the end create acute or even chronic load reports which could help the training procedure of our team. It’s always very important to have relative data for each one of our players.