Kuala Lumpur: Coaches say the key requisite for a football player is basic football skills. With sports science the players can get better.
Look at Harimau Malaya and Harimau Muda. They have benefitted from sport science, says ISN. In an exclusive interview with Bola Pantai Timur, its CEO, Dato' Dr Ramlan Abd Aziz says ,"This could readily be seen from an initial start in 2007, in the performances between 2009-2012 when both teams managed to obtain a measure of success at the SEA Games and AFF Cup competitions."
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| Ramlan: Sports science has benefitted Harimau Malaya, Muda |
Sports Science can be defined as the scientific approach to sports training that seeks to enhance sports performance and to prevent injuries.
Admitting that it is difficult to quantify the percentage of sports science's contribution to the success, he asks," Imagine without a steady amount of work and monitoring of progress, from 2007-2009 and beyond, could we reasonably expect the same outcome or quality of performance?"
ISN has steadily expanded the range of sports science support to its current scope. Ramlan says, “These include physical conditioning initaially, plus the subsequent addition of video performance analysis, nutrition, physiology and psychology for both teams.”
He explains, "We had felt that the level of physical conditioning developed and maintained by the players’ respective state or club teams was inadequate for the physical and physiological demands for top level international football." ISN thus hired Ratislav Bozik and later, Martin Stanos, from Slovakia to set a higher level of peak physical performance. Bozik is the football High Performance Team (HPT) leader.
However Ramlan says he cannot tell how well the state or club teams have adopted
sports
science.
But he
had once proposed a sports science audit to the technical committee around
2009. He says, "The proposal sought to “audit” the use of sports science
at all super league clubs and at selected premier league outfits. This would
look at their training methods and how well the coaches have used scientific
elements to obtain best performance levels from the players, and how
well the teams’ medical support (if any) manage their players’s injuries."
Although the committee seemed keen on the idea then, it was not followed up. Ramlan says, " The idea probably caused some concern in some quarters. At any rate, I was not in the committee after that when the term ended soon after."
How far can we go with sports science?
Ramlan says, “The level of sport science's adoption now is good enough to obtain success at the South-East Asian level. For higher levels at Asian Games, Asia Cup and Olympic qualifying standard, a lot more has to be done. We should have started much earlier in the players’ development in order to get the fullest benefit.”
Still, ISN is not satisfied with the progress so far.
Ramlan says, " We believe that there is still some way to go before our players reach their potential." He admits that it hard to achieve though because of players' commitments with their respective states and clubs. Besides, state and club teams may not manage injuries that well. Reasons: inadequate or under-staffed medical support set-up.
He stresses that coaches and players must be fully committed to maintain the right level of intensity
and volume of training, interspersed with the necessary recovery procedures. Ramlan adds, " This will enable players to benefit fully from adapting to an increased level of overload necessary to progress to higher planes of performance."
Even for Harimau Malaya and Harimau Muda, ISN does recognise the coaches' role.
Ramlan says, " Contribution by coaches is the most vital aspect. In particular the quality of their tactical and technical practice. But their support for the work of the sports science support service personnel plus the practise of certain scientific elements in their training sessions are also important."
To be continued...
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