The Running Demands of Team Sports

Something a little different for today's post.

As part of our work at FitSense Australia we conduct research for the Australian Football League (AFL) into the running based demands of AFL players. Players wear GPS units allowing their position and speed to be monitored throughout the game. 

We have been doing this research for the past 5 years and during that time have noticed some substantial changes in player workloads, most importantly increases in average playing intensity. Our 2009 research has just been released and interestingly we have seen increases in both the average playing intensity and the duration that players are on the field. This is quite an impressive change. Not only are players working harder when they are on the field, but the amount of time the average player is on the field has increased (for the non-AFL fan, playing durations in AFL vary according to stoppages). 

Lets put that into a bit of perspective, in 2008 a player's average speed was 7.33km/hr for 100min. In 2009, this increased to 7.42km/hr for 107min. To the average runner, this doesn't seem too hard, those speeds are not much more than a walk. And that is true; however it is also important to note that this includes situations where players are 'fighting' for the ball, making tackles and in physical encounters.

The average intensity of a game is quite low, and you would expect this when 64% of game time is spent walking. However, the challenging aspect is the 6% above 18km/hr (3:20 min/km pace) and a total of 14% of the game above 14km/hr (4:15min/km pace). Additionally, players are required to complete over 300 moderate accelerations and 15 maximal accelerations per game and run efforts of 12 seconds in length over 20km/hr (3:00min/km).

So while there is a lot of recover time, there is also some very intense periods that often determine key aspects of the game.

What is interesting, is that those players that do more work, complete more steady state running. This is running like distance running; with minimal variation in speed. These hard working players get less rest time, complete more work, but also spend less time at high speed (most likely a result of fatigue).

So would the average runner cope with the demands of a team sport?

There is no doubt that a runner could comfortably complete the work required in a team sport such as AFL, but the main area a runner would struggle with is the sprints and the rapid changes in speed and direction  (not to mention the physical contact). Remember, we are what we train for and us runners complete steady state, straight line running at sub-maximal intensities. While this type of training is an important consideration for team sports, equally as important is the accelerations, change of direction and repeat sprint training.

I hope you found this post interesting. We will be back on Monday with a running focus.