As professionals in a successful industry, we like to think of ourselves as pirates. We all start with nothing, traveling the seas of the ocean of sports science and, over time, stealing ideas, accumulating knowledge, concepts and viewpoints with which we align. We take from others to benefit from them and create our identity; we are efficient garbage collectors.
During the upcoming season, we will publish a monthly blog that will cover current topics. Topics will be organized around three central themes, with each theme having four discussion points. These themes are:
- Data-Driven Approach to Sports Science in Football
- Evidence-Based Practice for Return to Football
- Youth football.
Today we will start our first theme of a data-driven approach to sports science in footballwith emphasis on tactical periodization.
Tactical periodization states that training must include all principles of tactical play as envisaged by the head coach.1. The playing model – a specific way you play in matches, also known as playing principles – should guide the training process from the start.
Tactical periodization uses tactical principles as the vehicle in which all aspects of football are trained. This means that the technical, physical and psychological components of training are developed through very specifically designed tactical training sessions.2.
This ensures that the specificity of the training remains high. Specificity within a training session means that all the principles that are at the heart of the coach’s model of play are present. The greater the specificity of the training, the greater the transfer of practice into the game, and therefore the greater the chances of success of the game model.
As the coach has the role of creating and implementing the game model, we as sport scientists have the important role of helping the coach achieve the game model.
This requires us, as sports scientists, to fully understand the physical demands of football matches and, more importantly, the physical demands imposed by training.
If the head coach wants to train a specific principle, we as sports scientists must be able to identify the physical demands of that principle, quantify it, and understand how we can manipulate it.
As a key factor in tactical periodization is the presence of the three additional factors in the coach’s tactical exercises (physical, technical and psychological), we, as sports scientists, must guide the head coach in handling of the exercise to ensure that the exercise has the desired specificity. and the corresponding intensity.
The concept of specification is also reflected in the way we organize the requirements of the training week. Having clearly identified principles for each day of the training week allows sports scientists (through their understanding of training demands) to predict how athletes might meet those training demands. We wouldn’t want a coach to work on a certain principle a few days before a match and overload the team because he doesn’t realize how demanding the training is.
Understanding football and the physical demands it places on your players can guide and encourage the conversation with the head coach.
Once the head coach understands that we are not set up to be the handbrake or the individual who tells the coaches which player can practice and which cannot, but rather a tool in the box Coaching tools to help the coach have a higher level of coaching specificity in their training.
The head coach will be more inclined to make small changes to his principles to ensure players are well prepared – tactically, physically and emotionally for match day.
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Mendez-villanueva A. Tactical periodization: Mourinho’s best kept secret? Tactical periodization: Mourinho’s best kept secret? Tactical periodization: a new approach to football training. Search gate. Published online in 2017.
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Bordonau J, Villanueva J. TACTICAL PERIODIZATION: A proven training model.; 2018. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
