One-Eyed Richmond Forum
Football => Richmond Rant => Topic started by: one-eyed on June 22, 2008, 01:22:50 AM
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Weekly battle to force weary legs into shape
Nathan Brown | June 22, 2008
THE moment you realise you are not a young man any more is sobering for even the most optimistic person … and in football, the ageing process occurs much more quickly than in general life.
Getting your body ready to play competitive football at a level to give optimum results week in, week out is by far one of the hardest challenges, physically and mentally, facing a player who has been around for the best part of a decade.
I remember when I was just starting out, I could burst out on to the track two days after a game and be sprinting at top speed and kicking 50 metres on the run with no warm-up.
I could do hours of extra goalkicking and sprints and a warmdown or stretch were never part of the equation.
After training, I would play indoor cricket in the rooms and still be fresh and energetic enough to play some one-on-one basketball with Scott West that night. How times have changed.
My sole focus after a game now is how do I get myself fresh for a game in a week's time or, in some cases, in just five or six days.
As an older player, I have discovered a syndrome I call "heavy legs" and I spend most of my week making sure that this affliction is not present on the weekends.
Heavy legs, as the name suggests, makes the body heavy and slow. You can't run at the same pace, you can't cover the ground as quickly to make contests and, in general, you just feel lazy.
I know from experience that this is all in my head, but that doesn't stop me from going to extraordinary lengths to ease those demons.
The amount of work and the tricks or superstitions that go into getting your body right on a weekly basis would have your average punter suggesting we should see a shrink.
I spent all of my nights this pre-season sleeping in an altitude tent at 3600 metres.
This helps to produce red blood cells to enhance your aerobic capacity and recovery. It was like a big sweatbox and not the most romantic of settings for my girlfriend Sally, who was horrified by the process.
After a game, I have a five-minute ice-bath to help my legs recover, followed by a massage, which is the common highlight of the recovery process.
On Monday mornings we are out in Port Phillip Bay doing various walks, lunges, duck dives and stretching, much to the displeasure of everyone involved.
The bay isn't overly toasty in the middle of summer, let alone in June and July, so this is the real low point of the week.
Some players use machines called Body Flow, where electrodes are placed on your legs to stimulate arterial and lymphatic circulation while reducing inflammation and swelling. This accounts for about 20 minutes a day.
Over the course of the week in a season, I have a couple more ice-baths at the club and another trip to the bay later in the week to freshen up the body.
The day before and the day of the game are when the real manic stuff starts and where the shrink could be called in to assess. Copious amounts of water, energy drinks, multivitamins, spirulina, nasal decongestants and anti-inflammatories get the rest of your body tuned to unleash the week's frustrations.
The night before a game I will lie on the floor with my legs up against the wall in a bid to remove any lactic acid.
A few times before games, I have sat in the MCG showers with ice bags on my quads to take the heat out of them and hopefully freshen them up. To anybody (teammates included), this is very strange behaviour.
One of my favourite methods that my teammates find joy in is a couple of quick punches to the back of my legs along the hamstring and then to the front along the quads. In my mind, this alleviates tension, but then again my mind and my legs seem to have severed communication lines long ago.
Then it's on! About 2½ # hours of AFL football played at the highest intensity imaginable, kicking, bumping, tackling, sprinting, jumping and, most importantly, at the end of it all, hugging.
Twenty-two big, tough guys letting the emotion spill over with sweaty, aggressive hugs, pats on the backside and hair ruffles.
In some games, you run more than 18 kilometres, with flat-out sprinting for more than four kilometres of that distance (equivalent to sprinting the tan). And the GPS tracking devices we wear can measure the impact of bumps and tackles, which can be the equivalent of a car accident.
Game over, job done.
All this takes place and I'm right back where I started, feeling exhausted and listless, a little bit nervy, wondering how the hell I'm going to get up for next week, but more importantly I'm feeling euphoric as we've just won the game and all the hard work has paid off.
For a footballer, the 15 minutes straight after a win as you celebrate and sing the song with 21 of your mates is one of the best feelings you can have and is the reason why you play the game and go to all the effort.
After a loss? That's when the stringent disciplines come into play. Twelve years of playing football says to me that after a loss you need to go above and beyond to make sure your preparation is spot on for the next week.
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