Looking to play next year with no previous experience

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MegaBob

MegaBob

Premiership Player
Veteran Pokemon is Life
Jul 31, 2011
3,209
2,295
Adelaide
AFL Club
Collingwood
G'day all, apologies for a thread I'm sure has been posted before, but I'm just looking for advice for starting out to play footy. I'm 22, played soccer my whole life, around the 5'9 mark and weigh 85kg. I wouldn't say I'm supremely fit, but I'm not too bad. My endurance isn't fantastic though.

Anyway, I'm looking to play footy next year, and I've never played it before. I don't want to stumble into pre season of a footy team next year and get blind-sided by the fitness required to be a somewhat decent player. I was hoping to get a headstart on preparation for a sport that is more physically demanding than amateur soccer, and if anyone had any tips to get on my way that would be fantastic eg: kicking, running.
 
Get a ball and when sitting around at home doing nothing just twirl it around to get accustomed to the feel and shape of it. If you're keen on doing some fitness work, always run with a footy either kicking it and following up or just bouncing it.
Find someone with some patience and do short kicks back and forth and back and forth. Running after the missed kicks will build some fitness too.
The club I'm involved with has anything up to about 12 players come in each year who haven't played before; mentally the hardest thing to accept is knowing it's okay to make mistakes and that it will take some work.
Fitness wise, footer tends to have more flurries of burst running than soccer but endurance wise there often isn't that much difference.
 

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I was in your situation this time last year. Just try and build a good fitness base. It does not need to be awesome as once you start proper training it will grow very quickly. Try and get your 3km time under 15minutes and you should be fine for a lower division team. For me I kept getting bad shin splints so I mixed it up each week used a HIIT program for the stationary bike, it worked a treat. All other skills can really only be learned by playing and training. I think the most important thing for me as a new player was watching the more senior guys and how they go about their footy. Good luck!
 
Most of my mates played soccer their whole lives. When they started playing footy, it wasn't that hard to adjust to. I dunno, probably a combination of their determination and an average-to-decent competition. You'll always struggle with the soccer hook though...
 
Same boat here, but with a basketball background. The only experience I have with footy is playing for my school for about 7-8 games, played Full back/back pocket.

I've got a middle distance running background, I'm going to focus my on strength work and injury prevention work, then build my cardio vascular fitness up prior to pre season.

Good advice on having a kick around and getting the feel of the pill, going to start doing my running with a footy now as well.
 
MegaBob said:
G'day all, apologies for a thread I'm sure has been posted before, but I'm just looking for advice for starting out to play footy. I'm 22, played soccer my whole life, around the 5'9 mark and weigh 85kg. I wouldn't say I'm supremely fit, but I'm not too bad. My endurance isn't fantastic though.

Anyway, I'm looking to play footy next year, and I've never played it before. I don't want to stumble into pre season of a footy team next year and get blind-sided by the fitness required to be a somewhat decent player. I was hoping to get a headstart on preparation for a sport that is more physically demanding than amateur soccer, and if anyone had any tips to get on my way that would be fantastic eg: kicking, running.
Click to expand...

A good way to start, as said in the first post, is a get a football and get used to handling it. Start with basic skills like handballing it to yourself (in the air and back to you without moving or steppig) and kicking it to yourself (again, no moving or stepping). Those skills will teach you the fundamentals you need to be a footballer - handling, hand-eye co-ordination, kicking, handballing & marking.

Trawl through how-to videos on youtube for kicking, handballing and marking, there are heaps. Go to a football oval and practice your technique until it feels natural. It will take some time but its worth it.

Move up to body movement, side stepping, quick steps, twists & turns. Its all designed for evasion. Coming from soccer you should have the agility for it if you played in outfield. So think of it like jinks, dropping the shoulder, step overs and cut backs.

Sign up with a local football team and get stuck into tackling practice, marking & spoiling.

Once you've got those skills down pat, you can progress into any specialty you want.

Fundamentals:
- Kicking
- Marking
- Handballs
- Hand-eye co-ordination
- Body balance, movement & agility
- Spoiling
- Tackling

In the mean time, work on middle distance running and short sprints. When you play your first match, you will blow up and be absolutely buggered. The best way to prepare with short sprints is to set a course that has a turn every 2-5 metres. If will build your calf, quad and hamstring strength significantly more, especially for explosive movement, than long distance running. You'll still need middle to long distance running for your fitness base.
 
i remember when i was 16 i'd played soccer all my life and at one point state level, but wanted to give footy a crack. at training i'd wear soccer shorts and everybody noticed and said it would be a tough transition in kicking style.

towards the end of training the coach pulled me in front of everybody when we were doing kicking drills and said 'this kid has never played a game of footy in his life and he has a better opposite foot kick than everybody here, pull your bloody socks up boys'

i'd also missed the entire pre-season through injury and physiotherapy but kept up with the others in running - just.

cool story bro.

anyway if you can, go down to a local club and just do training sessions once a week or so if they let you then do running training and lots of swimming for fitness. skip the post-season break and continue to train and you'll be good to go for the pre-season
 
Hey thanks for the info everyone, it's a lot more than I anticipated and I'll take it all on board. A couple of things I want to query is injury management, I'm not really sure what that is, is it just being in decent shape. Also a more general question is being a generally one footed player a severe weakness? My left foot is non existent although I have a few months to try and fix that I suppose.
 
Its a severe weakness for a professional. But if you're prepared to run and tackle no one will care ... oh, also, theres a major plus of where you are now. You have no bad habits to be trained out of.
 
One more question and hopefully I'll be able to leave you guys alone, again, thanks for the help so far. I've picked up a Sherrin and I get a nice 40 metre drop punt at the moment, nothing inspiring but it's progress. Anyway, what would be a good weight for me? I'm around 178cm and currently weigh around 85kg.
 

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MegaBob said:
One more question and hopefully I'll be able to leave you guys alone, again, thanks for the help so far. I've picked up a Sherrin and I get a nice 40 metre drop punt at the moment, nothing inspiring but it's progress. Anyway, what would be a good weight for me? I'm around 178cm and currently weigh around 85kg.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure thinking of it in terms of your weight is the best way to go about things. If I were you I'd have a bit of a think about what your physical weaknesses for the game may be and plan your training based on improving those weaknesses.

For example, currently I am very strong but I am too fat which makes me slow and I also have poor endurance. So in order to improve as a footy player I would need to maintain strength while focusing on speed and endurance.

However there was a time as a player when my speed and endurance were very good but I was quite weak so at that point I needed to concentrate on putting on size and gaining strength.

It's a bit hard to determine where your deficiency lies without playing/training with others but in the end I'd say aim to improve your endurance and speed and maybe your strength and don't worry about what the scales say.
 
jacross said:
I'm not sure thinking of it in terms of your weight is the best way to go about things. If I were you I'd have a bit of a think about what your physical weaknesses for the game may be and plan your training based on improving those weaknesses.

For example, currently I am very strong but I am too fat which makes me slow and I also have poor endurance. So in order to improve as a footy player I would need to maintain strength while focusing on speed and endurance.

However there was a time as a player when my speed and endurance were very good but I was quite weak so at that point I needed to concentrate on putting on size and gaining strength.

It's a bit hard to determine where your deficiency lies without playing/training with others but in the end I'd say aim to improve your endurance and speed and maybe your strength and don't worry about what the scales say.
Click to expand...
That's a good point, just looking at my weight is a general figure which doesn't tell the whole story. I think for the moment I'll just focus on getting some run into my legs as I'm not that strong a runner and I don't think my strength needs a whole lot of tinkering.

This is what pre season is for I guess. :D
 
Alright, time for a update no one asked for :D

Been to a couple of preseason sessions with the local club, and the coach said he's not going to hit us before the Christmas break because there's no point training hard for a couple of weeks and then stopping and starting again. Anyway, it's been good. Fitness wise, I think I'm just a little bit behind the main group but nowhere near as bad as I thought I would be, although the real fit blokes blow my mind with how long they can maintain their pace, it'll take me a while to get that far. Kicking isn't too bad, I spray a couple of them, but I'm not going to get too despondent because hey, I've been training for two weeks. We did however try kicking around 40-50m on the run and I absolutely shanked those kicks, so if there's any tips for kicking on the run I'd love to hear them. There was also a circlework drill where everyone just moves the ball around the ground in a circle through kicking or handballing. I got the ball a few times but I was like a deer in headlights, everything was so quick, and I just knocked the ball upfield without much conviction, so I think I still need to get my head around how fast and clinical footy can be.

Anyway, it's been great. The team is really supportive of the new guys and it's great fun. Though I do say this without any drills involving shuttles, sprints or time trials yet so we'll see how we go then.
 
MegaBob said:
We did however try kicking around 40-50m on the run and I absolutely shanked those kicks, so if there's any tips for kicking on the run I'd love to hear them.
Click to expand...

Practice, practice, practice is the key here.

Also were you running flat out and trying to kick, if you were you may just need to slow down a fraction and steady yourself before you kick.

But like I said practice, practice and more practice.
 
Good on you mate.
I'm going to play in 2013 too, after playing Union up until recently.
Signed up with the West Magpies in Div 3.
Hopefully will get a run, I've been doing light fitness stuff from the start of December -
so hopefully I'm not to far behind.

/Edit

Sing out if you are ever near inner west and want to go for a kick, I just moved here and none of my uni mates can kick a pill!
 
Oh Christ, I was supposed to update this. Sorry for the delay. Also, cheers Phantam, hope 2013 is a good year for the both of us.

The team has taken a break over Christmas and we get back into it... next week? I was told the date but I forgot it, the club said they would be sending out a letter to everyone soon anyway, I assume it will say then. I've been a bit lazy over the last week due to Christmas and all the rubbish (read: drinking) that goes along with it. Started getting into some running yesterday and took the ball with me, and I was attempting to kick on the run, I'm still spraying a few of them but there is some slight progress happening. I've noticed when I kick I tend to swing my weight to the right of my body, not unlike when kicking a soccer ball, I don't notice the footy players doing that so that's going to be a habit I have to try and get out of.

Apart from that, not a whole lot happening at the moment. I'll wait til training kicks off again and get into the real preseason training I've heard so much about.
 
Yeah I just realised your location: "Adelaide".

I must be still belted from the turps from NYE, for some reason I thought you were in Sydney :p
 
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