Evolution of external load during the preseason.
Today I want to show you some data related with the quantification of the external load of spanish first division soccer team, where we'll see that maybe some traditional concepts associated with volume and intensity doesn't represent really what we think (so better we should change the approach ...).
This time the audiovideo (first part) it's in french.
Enjoy,


Evolution de la charge externe au cours de la pré-saison.
Aujourd'hui, je veux vous montrer quelques données relatives à la quantification de la charge externe d'une équipe de première division espagnole de football, où nous verrons que peut-être certains concepts traditionnels associés avec le volume et l'intensité ne représentent pas vraiment ce que nous pensons (alors ça serait mieux changer l'approche ...).
Cette fois, le audiovidéo (première partie), il est en français.
Profitez-en,

Intermittence and metabolic power in small sided and possession games (part 4 of 4).
In this last part I show you some unknown data of the metabolic power demonstrated by two players in different specific task (small sided games and possession games) depending on the number of players participating, and the tendency of this value and its comparison with previous data.
I hope you will find it as interesting as me in order to relate it to different models of periodization and to help in the process of programming your training sessions.
Enjoy,

Intermittence and metabolic power in small sided and possession games (part 3 of 4).

In this 3th part you will find the essence of the analysis of the conditional demonstration on the specific task (small sided games mainly) based on the specificity of the intermittence.

With this information you will understand better the relationship of that conditional demonstration based on the number of players that are participating on the task, in order to use it to organize your training sessions and also your own model of periodization.

Enjoy,

Intermittence and metabolic power in small sided and possession games (part 2 of 4).
In this second part, and after the introduction to this issue in the first part, you will find the characteristics of the intermittence in the analysis of soccer.
This could be resume in two phases, called "action" and "pause", and both can be defined by its intensity and its duration.
About the intensity analysis, this should be done (in present and future) not only by speed, or also with acceleration in a better approach, but specially by a concept as the metabolic power, introduced by Di Prampero and col. (2005 and 2009), used for the first time in soccer analysis by Osgnach and col. (2010), and promoted by Colli and colleagues in a very practice way to training.
This concept bring us the opportunity to join speed and acceleration to better understand the conditional demonstration of players during competition and training.
Enjoy

Intermittence and metabolic power in small sided and possession games.
Today I become crazy, and I start to present you (part 1 of 4) a very special part of my doctoral thesis, where you can see the main parameters to understand not only how and till what extend the players demonstrate conditionally during games, but also in the main training tasks, that means small sided and possession games.
This information is more than basic to understand your own training methodology, and how to improve it, always depending on the competition demands, and the possibilities of periodization.
If you see all the details, you will see that must be applied not only in professional soccer players training, but also in developmental soccer players.

It's essential to progress in our soccer training understanding and further development.

Fot further details or professional requirements, just contact me.

A little detail: it's in italian ... and not very good ... but any way!
Enjoy,

These days where almost everybody (depending on the country and the characteristics of it's league) is engage with their own preseason, I wan't to show you an article that has been published in Spain last year 2011, in which you can find some data of a professional spanish team where I have been involved some years ago, that talks about how the week load of the team can be measured (in this case using a GPS System), and how this load changes depending on the model of your training week or microcicle, and evidently on the short of tasks that you propose on the training.
It goes without saying that implication of players and other aspects of their emotional - volitional and socio - affective level also condition their physical demonstration.
In this case it's in spanish. For further explanation just let me know.
Enjoy

Lapuente 2011 Control de la carga semanal en futbolistas profesionales mediante tecnología GPS

Just in order to clarify concepts, let me show you a little piece of my thesis (and the way I'm showing all this work done with GPS).

My first idea before having the possibility of using GPS technology (I'm talking around 1998) was to be able to detect how much power (force and velocity) was applying a player in order to relate it to his own thresholds (individualize), and to know what the exertion of the player was, comparing training and competition.

Then it appeared the possibility to work with GPS tech, so the analysis I did was implemented in two ways (2006-07): the usual till today, based on distances, time in HR zones, speed and number of maximum sprints detected by speed and by acceleration (this depending on the speed shown when starting the acceleration), impacts, etc, and the second approach that was introducing the number of "actions", what in fact are number of accelerations of low threshold, arbitrarily putted in 1m/s/s (after some simple studies).

After that point, I tried to reorganize (2008-09) the knowledge I got about the way we were interpreting soccer conditioning loads (and other sports), which is based in physiological concepts, absolutely necessary for understanding how our body reacts to different stimuli (training), but in some way it is based in a concept that means intensity and exertion are the same (related between them), but this, in soccer, is not completely true!!!

The fact that intensity and exertion are synonymous comes from other sports with a different motor pattern: the continuous one. In this case, it's clear that more intensity (speed of displacement usually) is absolutely related with more exertion.

And this has led to many people to confound that when a player was not showing higher levels of speed, this meant that his exertion was "bad" or "less" ... and this is not always the case.

My personal approach is that as soccer players show an intermittent activity pattern, is it possible to analyze it depending on the characteristics of the two phases: action and pause.

Both of them (action and pause) can be defined by it's intensity and it's duration.

And this is the key of the specific approach, which help us understand not only what are the cause of the transitional phases of higher conditional exertion during the games (without the problem of the time where the ball is not in play), but also to understand the specific characteristics that differ between the specific soccer drills, and also help us to a better comprehension of all the methodology and also the possibility of implementing different periodization models based (apart from the coordinative and cognitive level) on the conditional exertion.

Arrived to this point, I have been using the acceleration value in order to identify each "action" (traditionally sprint), but this is not the "complete solution" as you know, done that sometimes in a game, the player don't show a significant acceleration but he gains speed, arriving to a high level sprint speed.

So from my point of view, based on the way I work, there exist two ways (at first) to better understand our knowledge about the specificity of our methodology in soccer training system: the first is related with the reference framework of analysis, based on the possibility of detect the intensity of actions and pause, and the duration of those actions and pause. This could be done implementing the GPS or video based software for this analysis.

The second is related with the way we identify an action (or a period of action), that actually is just based on speed or acceleration separately. Here is where the proposal of Di Prampero and col. (2005, 2009) shown in Osgnach and col. (2010) and developed by Colli and col. (they are working on this in a simple way but with a low cost GPS ... that will break the market!) appears as a "not perfect but a big solution" for this issue.

In this way, there won't be the necessity to analyze speed and acceleration separately, but just look for metabolic power threshold to identify periods of action and pause.

Enjoy

Sorry, technical problem ...
Here there is the doc.
Enjoy,
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzUyjNP_M0NiLU5jSWRJZGtNS28

Demonstration of mechanical and physiological variables in professional soccer matches with GPS technology

I present you and "old" document that is directly related with the previous entrance, that means, with the game physical demonstration.
Enjoy

file://localhost/Users/manuellapuentesagarra/Documentos%20Manuel/Art%C3%ADculos/Lapuente%202008%20Demonstration%20of%20mechanical%20and%20physiological%20variables%20in%20professional%20footballmatches.pdf

Después de asistir como ponente al congreso internacional de preparadores físicos realizado en Valencia este fin de semana pasado (7 y 8 julio), voy a dar un nuevo paso con el blog con esta nueva entrada.
El punto de partida en la manera de entender el rendimiento (no solo la estructura condicional) viene determinada por la competición, y por lo tanto en las exigencias que esta impone sobre nuestros jugadores, siendo variable (como sabemos) en función de diversos aspectos.
A continuación os muestro este audiovídeo sobre una de las diapositivas utilizadas en mi ponencia en dicho congreso.
Saludos