tazaa
Hall of Famer
Good read at a time where not much insight and content is sharedBuilding up the guns through beach weights really has very little bearing on whether a player has improved their physical conditioning for an upcoming season. And that includes whether they've improved their power.
The most important aspects for a player to improve by far is the amount of pressure they can put into the ground in all directions, the speed in which they can do it and their endurance in doing it. This means improving internal and external hip rotation, hip flexion and extension, all which requires highly functional abductors, glutes, hammies and core muscles. Then comes chest and back muscle strength - e.g. as measured through bench press and way, way down the list is bicep and forearm strength. It irritates me and others like nothing else when people think that players who've been doing a ton of bicep curls are going to become better. Look at Colin Sylvia or Kelvin Templeton way back - they could barely run 2 laps around an oval but sure, they had guns.
What Peter Burge (ex long and triple jumper - 6th at 2000 Olympics and Commonwealth gold medalist) has done at Richmond is use his AIS experience to set thresholds that players have to meet - agility, endurance and power testing depending on position. He's a big reason why Richmond has turned a low to mid talented list into a premiership side. He doesn't give a rat's about biceps and guns. They load up on pressure forwards and delist them pretty quickly if they don't continue to meet the thresholds throughout the year. They all have to reach endurance and agility standards and if they can't, they lose weight - muscle mass - until they can or they get delisted. Someone like Dustin Martin has unbelievable natural hip functionality and so can play at 92kg. Obviously if you can't actually play football you also don't last. But those same Richmond players didn't look like they could play football very well just a few years ago.
Brad Scott used to say he didn't really care about time trials or testing. He used to say that players who tested poorly often produced in games. That always sounded like him projecting - that his times etc weren't that good as a player but he could produce on match day. He had the luxury of a team of superstars around him that was also full of good athletes though. As a coach, he continually picked heavy sides and was apparently happy for players to build up into the high 80kgs, early 90kgs. Yet over his whole time, we were inconsistent at best when it came to running out games throughout the long haul of a season and really exposed in big games and literally over months in some seasons.
Anyone who has done any serious running knows how much faster and easier it is to run say at 77kg versus 87kg, even if you have the same fat ratios. And holding position against opponents (power) is about how much pressure you can put into the ground and then back into them. Michael Walters outbodies bigger opponents because of this for example.
Clearly Shaw wants our guys to become better runners and movers given there's going to be much more running this preseason according to Nick Larkey. It'll be interesting to see who becomes leaner. This is going to be a really testing preseason for some and hopefully an ongoing change in direction so we can get through whole seasons running strongly.
Thank you