Player Watch #11: Luke "Two Dogs" McDonald - Roo til end '26

Status
Not open for further replies.
Full page article on Two Dogs in the Hun today. The following extract is why I love the bloke:

d70fb21c124d483deb324cced1de812e.jpg

Wow. That is a massive effort.
 
Adrenaline?

It definitely helps.

Somehow he managed to recruit way more muscle fibres than he normally would I spose?

rambling story follows>>>

I knew a guy who used to do various martial arts and ended teaching Tai Chi of some sort. He was also post graduate (either sports science or natural medicine but probably sports science) stuff at Southern Cross Uni in Lismore. this was back in the 90s. He was trying to show "chi" existed, and although he never did one of his experiments was very interesting. i was one of his experimental subjects. He wanted to compare the effect of one particular training technique - a form of the horse riding stance that Chinese yoga/Chi Kung practitioners use. can't remember its specific name, but there are a few different ones and this one is one of the hardest/most physically demanding to do. I was fit and in my 20s at the time, had some familiarity with that stuff and noticed it was hard to maintain this stance for more than a couple of minutes. Instead of 45 minutes to an hour that I could do with some other ones.

So we'd sit on a bench and this bloke would strap our leg to something that would measure how much force a maximal contraction with your quads could generate, in Newtons. You'd do an unassisted maximum and then an assisted one. The unassisted one involved kicking as hard as you could and the assisted one involved attaching electrodes to your legs then getting enough electricity to theoretically cause an actual maximal contraction. Obviously it wasn't enough of a contraction to rip the muscle off the tendon.

The theory is that you don't activate or recruit all your muscle fibres when you do a maximal contraction (especially compared to jolting your leg with electricity). This was shown by his results. there was a large difference between the maximum force generated by the unassisted and assisted contractions. Probably at least 10% (can't remember exactly as it was 20 years ago) 60 to 70 newtons.

The guy was working on the theory that improving (and therefore showing the existance of) "chi" would be demonstrated by a decrease in the difference between your maximal assisted and unassisted contractions. Especially if they both improved overall as part of a training effect. He had different groups, some that did their normal lives and the chi Kung, some that did nothing, some that did an exercise regime and some that did the exercise regime and the chi kung. I was in the first group. Over the course of the experiment my personal results were quite noticeable. The difference between contractions decreased to well under 50 newtons while the amount of force generated increased by at least 10%. Between 65 and 100 N but I can't remember exactly.

A secondary theory was that if nothing else the horse riding stance would train all the fibres in your quads - you'd start out using faster twitch fibres to hold yourself up and as they tired the slower twitching firbes would pick up the slack. Basically you're (theoretically) not training your legs so much as your nervous system to function more effectively and activate more more muscle fibres than it previously did.

It was definitely noticeable. I noticed my legs were stronger and worked more effectively within a few weeks. I'd still be doing that stance if my joints were up to it.

I also noticed that my performances on the tests were better after a couple of beers. Which raises other interesting questions too.

<<<<anyway

Somehow LMac did the equivalent without any form of extra training.

Adrenaline probably helped. There are plenty of stories of people performing superhuman feats of strength in very stressful situations where adrenaline would be flooding their systems.
 
He got sucked in to the push and shove like a number of our blokes. Sydney brought the unsociable footy and we reacted poorly.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Thats right.

Stop trying to be a tough guy and win the bloody football.
 
Apr 1, 2008
57,330
100,789
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
Liverpool, Raiders, GSW, QPR, NYM
He got sucked in to the push and shove like a number of our blokes. Sydney brought the unsociable footy and we reacted poorly.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

It's a very legitimate tactic against our side.

We go to water when facing that kind of football.
 
It's a very legitimate tactic against our side.

We go to water when facing that kind of football.

Yep, and after Horse reviewed our game v The Crows where we hit them with similar intent from the first bounce, you just knew he'd have his side hellbent on matching that intensity to snuff out our engine room. The same goes for the way they approached nullifying BBB and Wood, without whom our forward line proved impotent.

Two Dogs had a mare but he's been far better than that this season so I expect he'll respond v the GoDees.
 
Yep, and after Horse reviewed our game v The Crows where we hit them with similar intent from the first bounce, you just knew he'd have his side hellbent on matching that intensity to snuff out our engine room. The same goes for the way they approached nullifying BBB and Wood, without whom our forward line proved impotent.

Two Dogs had a mare but he's been far better than that this season so I expect he'll respond v the GoDees.
Brown gets almost triple teamed each week. Our delivery needs to be desperately looked at.
 
Brown gets almost triple teamed each week. Our delivery needs to be desperately looked at.

Waite's inclusion will make a huge difference, likewise Garner, and it'd be nice if Wood worked hard enough to also provide further options for our mids when they're under pressure. One dimensional footy going forward is for the 1990's.
 
Waite's inclusion will make a huge difference, likewise Garner, and it'd be nice if Wood worked hard enough to also provide further options for our mids when they're under pressure. One dimensional footy going forward is for the 1990's.
In saying that, our midfield was smashed because we played guys like Clarke and Dumont in there often. These guys have not played even 30 games yet. Yes senior players need to be dropped, but at least our younger mids were shown how to play a strong contested game by guys like Parker and Kennedy.

This should be a midfield lesson for McDonald too, that he needs to get more involved in the clearance areas to get involved in the game.
 

Jindrrk

Norm Smith Medallist
Oct 20, 2016
8,105
18,620
Macau
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
*, St Dwarves, Lolmond
If I was an opposition supporter this guy would be at one of my most hated list. And now that he's sporting the mustache it makes him even worse.....he's so bloody obnoxious and I love it ha.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back