Update

I know I have been neglecting my blogging lately, but trust me – I have been busy… really busy. I started working for Hammarby Fotball Club in Stockholm, Sweden from January, 2012. And yes, it is damn cold and my fingers were frozen so I couldn’t type anything on the blog. Luckily it is getting warmer and I am getting more organized so hopefully I will find more time and energy for updates and new articles and projects.

For those interested here is the link to the short interview (on Swedish) I did when I arrived to Stockholm.

I must admit that I have learned a lot in the last month or so. First off, my strength training planning and programming (and general planning/periodization) have reached whole new level by applying ideas by Joe Kenn and Dan Baker and variations of their percent based training. Basically, every athlete is provided with individualized program based on his characteristics (BW, pull-up strength, bench press strength and squat strength).

Secondly, I have been playing with Polar Team2 system and I am trying to create a monitoring system that also calculates workloads, monotony, strain for every week, but it also warns if certain athlete is out of average (+/- 1 standard deviation from the mean value). I’ve got couple more ideas based on work by Andrew Coggan, co-author of Training and Racing with a Power Meter book and the concept of cycling form.

You can read more about it in the following links:
The scientific inspiration for the Performance Manager
What is the Performance Management Chart in TrainingPeaks WKO+?.
The Performance Menager

I plan to adapt this idea of moving averages of the training load (CHRONIC – 28 days; ACUTE – 3 days) for calculating FOOTBALL FORM for a given day. I do need more data, more testing and more observations to play with the constants of the equations. Here is the screen-shot of the Excel chart.

And one of the most important thing I’ve learned is the importance of knowing Excel! Yes guys, you need to be proficient in it. I have love~hate relationship with Excel and I am getting better and better at it. And yes, learn statistics – read A New View of Statistics by Will Hopkins. It is free and written by maybe the best statistician in the sport research field.

We have also used Martin Buchheit 30-15IFT test to program our entire (no-ball) interval running. Since we re-tested the guys, I might have some decent data for a research paper.

Also, I started developing a blog in Serbian that is aimed for recreative athletes. It takes time to work on it, but I currently don’t have it at my disposal. Hopefully when the competition season starts I will find more time to work on in it in greater depth.

And that is all for now. Stay in touch.