This season’s articles will see further information in the area of human performance and how it relates to our team.
Welcome to the first article for the 11/12 season. This season-s articles will see further information in the area of human performance and how it relates to our team.
We have a growing human performance department that includes physiology, psychology, nutrition, rehabilitation, physiotherapy, podiatry, sports medicine and more. We have a coordinated approach to the management of our players, which will help them to maximize performance. I will discuss these areas in detail and how they relate to performance.
We have been very happy with our preparation and I believe that our players have demonstrated an improvement in overall fitness as compared to last season. I believe we are still able to achieve further improvement but there have been many positive outcomes of this preparation.
We have detailed monitoring system which includes information such as sleep, muscle soreness, psychological wellbeing, hydration, resting heart rate and this is all to prevent overtraining and subsequent injury. All sessions are closely monitored through heart rate and GPS so we have more data on all players. This information allows us to determine players that are reaching our requirements and those that may need extra work. It is imperative that players are viewed as individuals and that programs are individualized to reflect the specific requirements of each player.
We also have an extensive pre-hab program, which is focussed on reducing injury by working on specific weaknesses on players. This program is completed every day prior to training and takes approximately 30 minutes. The players can see the benefits of this work. We have identified these weaknesses through specific movement screening and a player-s injury history. These building blocks are establishing Sydney FC as the premier club in Australia.
Our performance analysis has also gone to a greater level thanks to Sportstec the company that makes our PA software (sportscode). We are now able to generate more data and I will share this with you weekly. Every touch of every player is now recorded and all touches are now databased and labelled so that players can view and reflect on their own performance and coaches can view common threads of individual performance.
So this year is very exciting and there will be much to discuss. Follow me on Twitter for daily updates on our team.
Dr Craig Duncan
Sydney FC – Head of Human Performance
