Teams that suffer less injuries and have more explosive players are always successful.
This was the conclusion I drew after reading an article by Arnason in 2004 *.
At that time I was member of the Technical Staff of the first team of FC Barcelona of field hockey, and I shared the article with my two teammates (Physical Trainer and Physiotherapist) to be able to come up with a line to follow with the team. With the technicians' support we got to work and we could say that the three seasons we were there were very good. It was very positive to a point that the medical services of FC Barcelona were interested in our work as we were the non-professional section with fewer injuries within the Club.
The results and a high dose of ingenuity led us to create what 10 years later is Global Performance Sport S.L.
Time and economic investment have led us to develop this idea in a more objective and controlled way. And currently it is giving extraordinary results, both in professional athletes and young athletes, so much so that it has allowed us to develop the formula of sports success:
Explained in simpler terms: if we are able to reduce the risk of injury by 80% and increase the power of the athlete by 20%, we have a 100% chance of success in sport.
It has to be very clear that the order of the operation must be this, in spite of being a sum, it does not have the commutative property. And if we reverse the order we have a 100% chance of failing!
The key is to reduce the risk of injury in our athletes. Here's a brief description of our method:
In the first place, we must make it clear that we differentiate the injuries by the way they happen and these are: with contact and without contact.
The former may have some influence, although when external factors are involved, it does not depend solely on our performance. They are those of the second type (without contact) those that have more influence, and those that according to literature, occur more frequently, so we are going to analyze them.
There are two determining factors in a player's injury:
1. Muscular balance
2. Fatigue of the athlete
1 /Muscular balance:
It is very important to understand that if there is a decompensation between main and compensatory muscles, when the machine works at 100% at the end an injury will inevitably occur due to the imbalance of forces. To make a simile more understandable: if I have a Ferrari with bicycle brakes, obviously there will be a time when I will have an accident. The reason, the low stability between acceleration and braking. And that's exactly what happens with muscle imbalances. The first action to be carried out is the analysis and study of these decompensation with the initial assessments. In this way, both coach and athlete can learn to know when they are and what risks they present.
2 /Fatigue of the athlete:
For a long time the physical trainers tried to control the training workload with formulas to know what repercussion it has on our athletes and to quantify it.
The problem we see is that the same workload produces different effects in different individuals. That is why what we must control is the fatigue that the work produces in our athletes individually. Since it is the excess of fatigue that has a high risk of injury for the player.
At Global we control the athlete's condition prior to each training in order to determine the work plan for the session to come. It is the state of the athlete that shows us the work to be done. And not planning a role that does not give us any information about how our players are. This way we can give each individual the right work at each time.
In future articles we will develop these concepts in more depth in order to be able to provide more concrete actions in this regard. But at the moment it would be interesting to keep 3 words in mind: Decompensation, fatigue and individualization.
Be a dreamer!!
Óscar Martínez | CEO and Founder of Global Performance
Bibliography:
*Arnason et al. Physical Fitness, injuries, and team performance in soccer. American College of Sport Medicine (2004)
