| Squat | Press-up | Lunge | Brace | Total AIMS | Dragon score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.9 ± 1.4 | 8.6 ± 2.3 | 7.8 ± 1.5 | 9.7 ± 1.4 | 35.1 ± 4.5 | 45.4 ± 3.3 |
ETC Testing Report
Overview
Developing good strength, speed, movement skill and fitness is important to
a) help you perform your skill through the whole game
b) to enable you to train harder to become a better football player.
When football skill is similar, fast, powerful players who can change direction quickly are likely to perform better in a game. The best female football teams have players who consistently achieve higher fitness tests scores than other teams. The ability to sprint fast is linked to goal scoring opportunities.
Physical literacy / fundamental movement skill
Movement skills are the building blocks to athletic development and sports performance. They allow us to safely progress to more complex training and, if developed well at a young age, provide the foundations to excel in sport.
The Dragon Challenge
What the test does
This tests players “physical litracy” this means it provides and understanding of the players combined fitness and general movement skill competence:
Balance and stability: Core agility (dish / arch on mat), Balance beam, Single leg balance
Object control: Basketball dribble, overarm throw, underarm throw and catch
Locomotive skill: Sprint, Jumping and hoping, T-agility
What we found
Players performed well on the test. Our average score of 45 falls just outside of the top 5% of children 46+ (platinum). All players scored within the “gold” threshold on this test (top 3rd of school children of a similar age) showing a good general physical literacy. However, there were two clear areas identified for improvement.
Players found multi-directional movement (T-agility) and core agility and balance more challenging.
Players also struggled technically with overarm throwing technique.
AIMS (Athlete Introductory Movement Screen)
What the test does
This tests a players ability to perform basic body weight movements that are key to strength and conditioning programmes:
- Overhead squat | Press-up | Lunge | Front brace (stability).
Each movement is scored out of 12 and you would expect to see around 9 or 10 for each.
What we found
The u12s are a little below the u16s age group which reflects the extra time they have spent in S&C developing these skills over the past few years.
The main areas for improvement were:
Maintaining good back and shoulder posture when holding a broom overhead and squatting.
Lunging: particularly control of the hip / pelvis and knee during this movement.
The graph below shows the u12s team scores on the AIMS and the Dragon challenge. Here you can see the players who were above the gold (orange line) and platinum (red line) thresholds for school children.
Overall observations on movement skill
Players have very good specific movement skill that relate to football
General movement skill and stability are areas for improvement
Improving these will help players become ready to cope with increased training in future years and not experience over use injuries.
Performing general athletic activities like strength and conditioning or other sports (gymnastics / martial arts / climbing / throwing base sports [cricket / netball] etc,) is good at this age.
We will also be including a focus on stability and multi-directional movements skills in pitch based warm-ups and S&C sessions.
Strength
We tested the players’ strength on three tests:
The isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) tests the total amount of force you can produce, it reflects both your lower body strength but also your trunk (core) and upperbody strength. It also useful to see your strength in relation to your body weight.
To improve focus on progressing the weights you lift on your big lifts, squats, deadlifts and pulls / Olympic Lifts.
Hip push test. The push tests the amount of force your hip abductors can generate - these are important for controling your knee (knee stability).
To improve focus on single-leg strength, band walks and single leg hop and holds.
Hip squeeze test. The squeeze tests the amount of force your groin muscles can generate - strength here might reduce groin injury risk.
To improve focus on side lunges and and sideways hop and holds.
Hamstring test. This tests the amount of force your hamstrings can generate - these are important for controlling your knee, for sprinting fast and strong hamstrings might reduce hamstring injury risk too.
To improve focus on hamstring strength, RLD’s, SL RDLs, Nordic Hamstrings Curls.
The players’ scores are graphed below:
by u16s we would like to see the players producing above 300 N of force.
currently players (across all age groups) are weaker on the hip pull than the squeeze tests - this is an area we are trying to address in S&C as it is important for knee control.
Warning: Removed 4 rows containing non-finite values (`stat_boxplot()`).
Jumping and sprinting
Counter-movement jump: this tests your lower body power. Elite female players will jump over 31 cm in height.
To improve focus on jumping and plyometric training in S&C & ↑ strength and speed.
Repeated jump test (10:5 repeated jump test): Tests your “bounciness” (fast strength). Elite female players will have a reactive strength index of over 1.8 m/s.
To improve work on landing skill, hoping and skipping and pogo jumps.
30 m Sprint time: Tests your acceleration and maximal speed
To improve ↑ power & focus on maximal sprint training after your warm-ups. Also, focus on improving your balance and stability to improve your sprint technique.
