Strength, Conditioning and Injury prevention

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Strength, Conditioning and Injury prevention

May 15, 2024, 10:24:55 pm

We could reincarnate Percy Cerutty and appoint him as our fitness guru and we’d still have Cuningham, Marchbank, Martin, Williams and Docherty injured more often than not, as well as the usual, run of the mill, soft tissue injuries and fractures.

Re: fitness

Reply #1 – Today at 08:05:00 am

Quote from: DJC on May 15, 2024, 10:24:55 pm

We could reincarnate Percy Cerutty and appoint him as our fitness guru and we’d still have Cuningham, Marchbank, Martin, Williams and Docherty injured more often than not, as well as the usual, run of the mill, soft tissue injuries and fractures.

I doubt they’d last 5 minutes under Cerutty before their legs blew off.

An interesting point though…
We all know Percy was a bit eccentric, but in amongst the ‘crazy’ there was also some very good practices. My own athletic coach knew Cerutty. I’m not sure how strong the connection was as I wasn’t with her at the time, but I do know she used some of his methods, and some of her athletes trained at Portsea, despite being NSW based, There was definitely some sharing of ideas, despite the fact that Percy’s focus was middle and long distance, and my coach was more concerned with sprinter, hurdler, jumper events.
One of the things she was ‘big on’, was laying a foundation fitness base during the Winter before attacking the more explosive work in the Spring/Summer. We trained as middle distance runners during that off-season. I think it stood us in pretty good stead because I don’t remember too many soft tissue injuries amongst our group.
One of the key features of this foundation period was the time we spent running up ‘bloody’ sand dunes and in soft sand along the beach. I’ve seen pictures of the Giants training in the dunes at Wanda Beach. I wonder whether we incorporate it in our conditioning period.

Re: fitness

Reply #2 – Today at 09:57:40 am

One of my brothers did middle distance with East Melbourne Harriers around Cerutty’s time and never missed an opportunity to run up a dune, often with me floundering in his wake 🙄

I suspect that our conditioning is more controlled than dune running … and that may be a problem and something to be discussed in another thread 🙂

Re: fitness

Reply #3 – Today at 10:48:48 am

I dont know what the story is, but I remember being a young tacker, and wanting to really progress my training and working hard to my own detriment.

With experience, came maturity, and with maturity came the understanding that even though I am impatient to play, and gain and re-gain, the experience taught me that rushing back too soon, can often cause more grief.

The coach can only select you, if you are declared fit. The fitness staff can give you advise, a clean bill of health, build you a program, but they cant feel how each athlete is feeling. If the athlete thinks they will be ok, but is not certain, the onus on them is to how risky it is for them to play. You will notice that someone like Walshy, who is the consumate professional, comes back and stars knowing he is right to play. I reckon Weiters is 50-50 and plays a bit hurt, but he might play within those limitations understanding his body, and another who seems good at picking this is Cripps. Now Key position players have the benefit, of being present, and not having to compete to provide value, but running players, who we rely on getting up and down the ground need to have a good understanding of their body to declare themselves ok. If they push that little bit harder, and they arent ready then all of a sudden go ping, that has to be partly on themselves. We can externalise this to Russell, but IMHO, do so at our own peril. Last fitness bloke who copped grief about our strength and conditioning was replaced by someone who arguably was worse until we got him.