David Tenney is the High Performance Director of Austin FC, in MLS, a former Master’s Student and a Certified Coach by the Official School of Tactical Periodisation, and currently is finishing our Training for Trainers Course.  He talked with us about this new age that football is currently living, where data and Performance Departments are consolidated in Football reality.

TP: Considering how the technical staff has experienced significant growth in the last decade. Now, it’s a much more complex landscape. The outcome, which is training, has become a much more intricate process because it involves not only different people but also different perspectives on how to approach training. What is your opinion?

My role within the club is to make sure that I’m able to take in all of the other departments and teams’ thoughts on things and then be able to then work with the head coach as we create the Morphocycle every week, right. So, and that goes back, that was the issue I think that…

Rui Faria never said “GPS is bad”. What he said was in his experiences, when too many different teams, too many different departments are all looking at GPS data and all giving messages back to the players, then communication back to the players can go wrong and so then it’s better if they just don’t have that information.

And in that setting, in that environment, maybe GPS is not effective or helping the training process. What I would say from our standpoint is it’s very clear, you know, I try to make clear here to our medical staff and sports science staff and performance staff that we try to work on Tactical Periodization® methodology and what the goal of each day will likely be taking everything into account and they strive to understand that as well, right. So, I think it goes back to the starting point of what are the coaches trying to achieve on a daily basis and what are the physical impacts of what the coaches are trying to achieve and how can we facilitate the team and the players being able to do that all effectively.

TP: How have the players reacted collectively or how has the squad responded since you started approaching things differently?

I think it’s positive. I think it’s a very intuitive methodology from the standpoint of the players want to play, right. And so, the players want to play, and if you can structure things very close to the game model, then I think there’s natural buy-in from the players.

I think that there’s maybe the occasional player that says, “hey, coach, can I do some running after training? I’m not doing enough”, but it’s, but there’s always the older players and, and those are typically older players that don’t play a lot, right. But I think that’s what I love about the methodology is that it is structured around playing and it’s structured around giving the players what they want, not just from the physical standpoint, but from the emotional standpoint, from the cognitive standpoint, it’s almost like nourishment to them, right? You’re giving them what it is they want, why they’re a football player.

TP: What are your main concerns when organizing your week taking into consideration your responsabilities?

It’s a good question. I would say it’s interesting. I took the course and we are what, eight, nine months into the course before I actually went to Porto. And then I, I visited all of you in Porto and visited professor Frade.

And, I would say that, you know, what didn’t really come out over the course of the course until I was actually in Porto was, was the importance of the emotional part of the methodology. And maybe I think it’s just being around the Portuguese culture, the Portuguese environment. And something I think clicked from that standpoint is how our, how our morphocycle gives the right emotional stimulus at the right time.

I think that’s the really hard part. Because I think that’s, especially when you have a long season with a lot of games and high level football today, managing the emotional is such a critical piece, just as much as the physical.

Right. And I think sometimes people get… you can get lost purely in the physical. And so what exercises are you doing that you’re addressing, let’s say early in the week, on a Wednesday, if you play on the Sunday game on a Wednesday that, okay, the physical demands not might not be as high.

It might be what you’d call a “tension” day or some of the, you know, some of the wording that people use, but you have to address the emotional, you have to. And sometimes getting them emotionally in a good place before they’re ready to do the right physical work is so important for the rest of the week. So I think that’s one piece, I think earlier in the week, can you address the emotional side of the athlete?

The other thing that I think was, you know, if you look at all of the people that have spent time with Vítor Frade, and I think it’s even more so of the evolution of the methodology is: you have your single green day, four days after the match, that’s your most critical day. And that’s the day that you can’t sacrifice no matter what. And it’s not really three acquisition days that are all very hard, no. It’s not that, you have one day. That’s non negotiable, that you manage and control the loads. But that’s the day when you’re working in big spaces, you’re working your game model, it’s closely to the match as you will be.

And the days on either side of that, typically named as acquisition days in the past, they’re supplementary, you’re doing a certain work, but you’re also focusing on making sure the players are recovered as well. And really understanding that, I think, made a big impact on my understanding of the methodology.

And I will say what I was guilty of before probably is: my interpretation prior to the course was okay, three days after the game, we do a hard change of direction day, the fourth day after we’re doing bigger linear speed days. And sometimes I found the players wouldn’t respond well, three days after the game, because they’re not fully recovered yet. And we go back to the concept of relative maximal intensity, understanding what relative is, as we understand where the group is at. And now I find that the session three days after the game is probably far less of a high intensity load than I would have done prior.

Because to me now, it’s more important to address getting the group in a really good emotional place and not hard change of direction type exercises. And then I also would say after that, then, I think managing your two days before the game training session is the most critical piece to make sure that your group arrives on game day in the best place. And I think that’s, I knew that before, but again, I think it’s even more so managing that workload in the really appropriate way.

TP: Lot letting it get outo f control is difficult, small thinggs like the weather can be a factor in this…

I think it actually, it’s funny where I think that, you know, we had Bruno Oliveira right in our class speaking to us about his experience in Qatar and many similar experiences to here in Austin with the heat, I think last year we had 63 straight days above 38 degrees. And so it’s hot.

And that two days before the game, when you talk about being disciplined. If you get it right, there’s a freshness in the team on the weekend that you feel. And it’s so hot that you learn to be very disciplined with the head coach like, “what do we want to accomplish on the field? Be as quick as we can and then come off.” Because again, it’s so easy to not be disciplined, do a little bit too much. And then you seet it, you feel it on the weekend.

TP: Yes, because the line between losing control and not losing it is very thin. And the dose control is essential…

Don’t miss David Tenney’s comment in next week’s article.

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KEYWORDS: TACTICAL PERIODIZATION; TRAINING; FOOTBALL; SOCCER; SPORTS SCIENCE; GPS.