Collective metabolic power exertion in soccer training: recapitulation 2.

And here we go again ...!
The concept of intensity ... so many times confused by the concept of exertion, specially when talking in an intermittent environment.
A higher exertion can be experienced by the increase of one or more aspects of the intermittence:
- the intensity of the actions (basically closer to its maximum, and always related to speed, acceleration, metabolic power, mechanical power ...)
- the duration of the actions (clearly longer time maintaining a higher intensity during an action)
- the intensity of the periods of relative pause, that is, between one and the next action
- The duration of those pause periods between actions (key factor in specific training tasks and competition!!!)

With this in mind, we are now just checking out the collective exertion based on metabolic power, because during a game, and also when performing an specific training task (as small sided games and others ...), specially those more similar to games (so with more number of players participating), the conditional effectiveness depends not only in one or two physically generous players who always accept the challenge of giving to his partners all his physical power, but much more important depends on the collective physical exertion, which implies a balanced conditional demonstration between all the players of the same teammate.

This leads as to the point of having to differentiate between individual conditional demonstration, more related with the individual experience of fatigue and the possibilities of increasing the individual specific conditional level (this is the usual approach), and the collective conditional demonstration, that is much more related with the collective performance (so not only conditional performance but also how this conditional performance adapts to the collective tactical demands of the game or training task.

So we have seen the main characteristics of the phases of higher collective metabolic power exertion during games of professional and amateur soccer players, and also how this collective metabolic power exertions is demonstrated during some specific tasks performed during professional and amateur soccer training.

Once decided which specific task we want to propose to our players in order to develop any of the targets that can be acquired (technical, tactical - cognitive, conditional, volitive - emotive, socio affective, creative - expressive ...), and with the idea of getting them ready for the competition, we have to choose which is the better way (and usually there is not only one way ...), so the methodology to be applied in training.

In practical terms, maybe we want our players to be able to achieve one or more of this targets:
- demonstrate higher collective metabolic power exertion during the more stressful phases
- demonstrate longer phases of higher collective metabolic power exertion
- demonstrate more frequent phases of higher collective metabolic power exertion (so lees time between this more stressful phases)
- demonstrate higher collective metabolic power exertion during the lower stressful phases
As you see, we are just applying the intermittence concept to the collective exertion.

So at this point, we have to decide the characteristics of the task in order to achieve the target.
And one important characteristic to decide is the duration of the interval time of the task (of each repetition).
Basically there are two main approaches: the traditional one, that implies to use longer interval times or the more recent approach that implies to use shorter interval times ...
And now we have to remember what we have seen that happens when using some specific tasks in training, in comparison with what happens in competition.
In general, longer interval time leads to a lower collective metabolic power exertion average. Depending of the demands of each task (related with the number of players participating so how the individual player must perform conditionally during the task), we will also see a progressive decrement of the collective metabolic power exertion (for the more demanding tasks) or just more or less constant alternation of those more stressful phases.

But if we want to achieve the targets mentioned above, maybe is gonna be much more time saving to choose the more recent approach, that implies to use interval times adjusted to the capabilities of our team players to show a higher collective power exertion.
This approach becomes much more evident in those more stressful specific tasks, in which we want our players to be able to show a higher "exertion" based on higher intensity of the actions performed, on more frequent actions (less time between actions), longer actions if needed, and also more "active" low stressful phases (more intensity in the pauses between actions), and also when there is a clear conditional main target for a specific task.
In those other specific tasks, more related with longer number of players participating, so with a prevalence of a more "tactical" target, then we have to choose again:
- tactical development in specific high collective metabolic power exertion will need a shorter interval time duration (and of course to apply the proper characteristics of the task in order to be able to develop the wanted target! not only the interval duration time ...)
- tactical development in the specific conditions of the game should need more longer interval time duration, in which the collective metabolic power exertion will show a similar alternation pattern than that showed during games.

If not, what do you thing will happen if when you look for increasing the exertion (also the intensity of the actions) performed in a specific task, you propose longer interval time duration ...?
As we have seen, lower collective metabolic power exertion, less intensity of the actions, more time between actions ... so the opposite of the target wanted!!!

Remember, if you want intensity, then propose any task with the constraints that allow the players to demonstrate your target.

Hope this make you thing about our own methodology in order to improve it (if possible!!!).

Stay tuned!!!