Physical Literacy & Junior Development for the highest level
We had a previous discussion about physical literacy and junior physical development and how much of the basic foundation is poorly lacking in young players coming up today. We had a brief look at why this is occurring too. But whilst this applies to young developing players – and the transition to healthy and successful transition to senior footy, the issues that we discussed that plague junior physical development effect all levels of the game – not just local, state and amateur.
That is, this lack of physical literacy in kids/young people – who are the young developing athletes of tomorrow – in all sports, shows up in the transition from junior football to AFL level.
“This issue gets accentuated in the high performance setting. In the high performance setting you will get that next generation – the late teenager – who has been identified as being talented – comes into a high performance setting – with the idea of making the international arena in the next 2-4 years in what they’re doing – and we look at them, and we have to start all over again. We have got to build them from the ground up because someone forgot to do it 10 years ago.”
Kelvin Giles
“We’ve had kids come in who have played 30 or 40 games the previous year at junior level, and they love it because that’s what you want to do: play the game. But for long term benefits and physical preparation and grounding, its more important than just playing as many games as possible, because that’s when you see players break down.”
Peter Burge
Richmond High Performance Manager
“A lot of the guys who turn up at our door after being drafted have never been in the gym before, or don’t know how to do a proper warm up. So never mind having a rep range or a loading scheme for having these guys get stronger in squats and power cleans – we actually have to teach them how to move properly first. And that takes a lot of time.”
Ian McKeown
Port Adelaide High Performance Manager
“In AFL usually paid and competent fitness personnel spend 2 to 3 years fixing up massive deficiencies in players from 17 to 20. And that works and we see a reasonable product by 21.”
Loris Bertolacci
Former Essendon & Geelong
Head Fitness Coach
“In my opinion, the vast majority of young players coming into the AFL system are grossly under prepared physically. There are clearly exceptions to this statement among the top 5-10% of players in the draft (evidenced by those that successfully play AFL in their first year). However, as I haven’t been in a position to have any of these kids in my program I can only comment on the players that fall outside this range.
That being said, at the recent ESSA (Exercise and Sport Science Australia) Convention, offline conversations with many of my peers in the AFL confirmed the same opinion…the kids being drafted are no-where near ready for fulltime professional sport.”
Despite the best coaching and high performance experts at clubs and the best practices in what they do at the professional clubs, it shouldn’t be a case of having the build them from the ground up, before focusing on high performance athletic development. Professional clubs should be receiving young players who are more physically ready or better physically prepared with a strong and sound foundation to build upon. This would be beneficial for clubs obviously, but even more so for the young individual players. This is because despite the fact that players are loaded and monitored individually, and developed based on their individual physical level by the high performance staff and program, there is still that underlying to pressure to perform to a certain degree – to show something. This will still obviously require a degree of pushing the envelope for that young player, as you attempt to bring them up to speed.
As a result, there will still be the issue of niggles developing, particularly if we are building on top of a less than sound initial platform – regardless of how tailored the program is. Because they will still be required to play (and of course want to play) matches straight away. They may not be at AFL level, but even at state level, match intensity and toll on the body is higher than anything you can do in training.
“Game stress on match day is massive compared to any training that we do, and the intensity of games is higher than the intensity of training. You try and replicate it at training, but it’s just not the same.
An example of that is that the soft-tissue injuries aren’t as high in the pre-season as they are in season, even though you are doing more work in the pre-season.”
Peter Burge
Richmond High performance Manager
In other words, even though the training and development emphasis in their strength and conditioning program may very much be aiming at finding a balance between performance and foundational development, the matches themselves will still be full throttle in impact, and the underlying pressure to perform will still exist. And if a young player doesn’t have a strong physical platform already established – which despite their enormous level of potential football wise when they come in, many don’t – this can create issues physically.
This issue is well as its potential solutions is multi-layered, and dependent on what level you are looking at. Much of the issue stems from the lifestyle habits of society today, how little physical activity kids coming up aren’y getting today on play and PE (they may still be playing organized sport, but this is still comparatively minimal, and is games based rather than proper physical literacy.) That is the world we operate in unfortunately, and so we in all levels of our sport, need to find a solution within this situation. At the highest level, under the current format of drafting kids at 18, the best solution is to increase the minimum first contract to 4 years, potentially even 5. That is, when an 18 year old comes it, he is guaranteed of still having a spot on the list until 22 or 23. This would likely result in the clubs being able to take a more gradual development process with the players, less games needing to be played, and less pressure being felt by the young player to perform inside 2 years, if not by the 3rd if they’re lucky enough to get one. In other words, the emphasis of those first 2 years switches completely. A different option which we discussed in detail elsewhere is raising the draft age – which has wide reaching benefits to far more than just the players themselves.
“It’s the 21st century – its different – its changed! We cant be doing what we have always done and expect a different result. We have the most unhealthy generation of children that has ever been seen since the 1st world war – in terms of their sedentary life, their health and their well being – which is the beginning – that is the base of the pyramid where our high performance comes from!”
Kelvin Giles
We are of course looking at this transition from an AFL point of view in this discussion, as this is where this issue it is most clearly demonstrable. But the lack of proper physical development and physical literacy from a young age applies to anyone playing football (any sport, but footy is what we are talking about.) The transition from junior to senior at any level has an impact on the body, and the dropout rate after the age of 18 is very high. Yes, university and trades and jobs will play their part here, but more and more kids are dropping out around this age – or in the year or 2 after citing the fact that they are always injured. Since we can’t rely on PE in schools, nor can we rely on physical play in leisure time by kids, more of a focus on physical development, rather than entirely skills, would be a very advantageous thing to bring in in things like Auskick and team training. Not long and boring blocks of it – merely several 5 minute blocks spread out over a session, that start from the moment kids pick up a football and start playing.
This does not need to be a detailed and complex implementation, just a slight change in thinking, and a little extra deed into the coaching education. However, many of these coaches of kids are PE teachers themselves, meaning they will already have a grounding in this. But if the sport want to do everything they can to ensure the physical health of young players coming up through the grades, as well as ensuring participation rates remain strong well into the senior level, this is something that more and more will become an issue, and needs to be addressed. Because the health and patterns of society are only heading one direction, and it isn’t good enough to say ‘well the best kids will still end up playing AFL anyway.’ Because not only will plenty who otherwise may have fall by the wayside thanks to their body breaking down, but it is also important to recognise that there is more to the game than the highest level. We need a strong sport as a whole – with high numbers of players out at all clubs – state, amateur, country and junior.
And whether it is the highest level at AFL level, or a lower division amateur league, it all begins with this junior level. And a greater emphasis needs to be placed on physical literacy and physical development.
Just finishing off back on the AFL discussion. It is interesting reading the thoughts of Loris Bertolacci, who was head fitness coach at Essendon under Kevin Sheedy, and then again at Geelong during the Mark Thompson reign.
In discussing the draft age Loris says;
“It is obvious the AFL simply copied the US system of drafting. But the massive difference is that in the NFL one has to have technically done years of college so average age is always 20 + and even in the NBL the average is well above that of the AFL with the player needing to be 19+ from what I can gather. So they are proven talents in college able to win games in pressure games. They are privy to fully professional fitness programs and simply are men.”
Loris has also presented the argument that the AFL wasn’t absolutely elite, in the sense that the young draft age meant that the competition was biased young – certainly younger than it would be if it was a truly ‘elite’ competition – with all the best of the best t the top.
“What I meant (in saying the AFL wasn’t ‘elite’ as such) was that it was biased young and clubs were forced to continually stock up talent for the future even though that could take 5 to 8 years to provide success. And in the end the AFL is not a development program. It is a cut throat business where winning or giving supporters and stakeholders the hope of success being the NO 1 aim.”
This may initially seem ridiculous – of course the AFL is elite. Of course it is – it is the elite competition in the sport. But by always effectively being forced to in in 3-5 teenagers each year through the draft – usually at the expense of older age players (24-28) who have played at the level for years but have fallen out of favour for example, you are lowering the quality. Because regardless of how good one or more of those 18 year olds may one day be, there can surely be no argument that the 25 year old 65 gamer who was just delisted is currently a better, more developed and experienced player. This one reason why the belief that their ‘isn’t enough top level talent to support an 18 team competition’ is so ridiculous. There is more than enough top level football ability in the country to support 20 clubs! The issue is that we delist older players and bring in 18 year olds – and sure, if you bring 80-90 18 year olds into the competition each year and start again with player development essentially each year as a result, of course there will be this perception of a ‘lack of talent depth.’ This is another argument supporting raising the draft age.
But the moral of this story, physical literacy and development in junior football is becoming more and more vital with what we face today, as well as a result what we are seeing at the highest level, and the transition from junior to senior football at all levels and grades.
If you would like more detailed and personalised direction, checkout our personalised online programming, or if you would prefer even more personalised and detailed in-person coaching (for those lucky enough to live in the beautiful city of Adelaide), check out our Athletic Development Coaching and Junior Athletic Development Coaching.
Strength Coach
