Toronto FC monitoring athletes remotely during COVID-19 (part three)
Read part one here, and part two here.
Tom Williams, Toronto FC’s Head of Strength and Conditioning, is an experienced practitioner having spent many years at Sheffield United and Leicester City before his tenure in Toronto. His time with these teams has not only taught him a lot about the fundamentals of strength and conditioning but also the impact other aspects of performance have on elite soccer players.
Psychological well-being
Given the circumstances, Toronto FC have faced many challenges. These stretch beyond the difficulty of monitoring the players’ workloads remotely to encompass the struggle of ensuring the players’ psychological well-being is not negatively affected.
The team’s players are stuck indoors for most of the day, only exercising outdoors once a day. “One of the hardest things to do in this situation is to keep the fun going and ensure the best parts of our culture aren’t lost,” explains Tom.
In order to mitigate the negative impacts of the situation and the players’ isolation, Tom has set up two full-group video conferencing sessions per week to ensure everyone comes together for some social interaction.
“It is clearly so important and something we have taken for granted now we’re in the current situation. It is so easy to get caught up on the physical side, ensuring players stay fit and doing strength work. But then you’ve got to realise that we’re all social beings. Interaction with others, especially amongst the group is so important.”
In addition to these group sessions, Tom has added cognitive development activities into the players’ training plans to stimulate the players beyond their typical workouts.
“We want the players to still act like professionals and continue their development through other activities available in their homes. We’ve been talking through technical simulations, set-piece plays, formations, and tactical decision-making. This has helped to engage the players psychologically and complemented their physical workouts.”
Preparing for a return to play
Should it be possible under future COVID-19 restrictions, Tom is hoping to “eventually get the players working out as close to how they did in a typical training week.”
When or if the season starts up again this year, Toronto FC are likely to face a heavily congested fixture schedule. To try and avoid the risks associated with congested fixtures, such as injuries, Tom is looking to make adaptations to the next three-week plan.
“Should the season continue, we understand that we will have a really congested fixture list. So we want to get the players to a point where they aren’t at risk or they are best prepared for this. Given the circumstances, it will be hard to replicate the physical conditions of a double-game week but if we can get their mindsets used to working on, for example, a Saturday and Wednesday then that will go some way to help us.”
Integrating competition
Competition between players does not feature in the current three-week training plan since Tom is empathetic to the difficulty of the situation faced by his players.
“I’m very mindful not to overload the players. We don’t want to throw loads of content through training plans at the players and cause further irritation in the difficult circumstances. Generally, it’s a frustrating situation for us all so we’re trying to be sensitive to that.”
With that said and in a few weeks, Tom hopes to integrate aspects of competition to help facilitate the players’ engagement in future training plans. “I do like the idea of integrating competition into what we do and competitive runs, cycles, and ball games will most likely feature in the next three-week block,” says Tom.
Although this hasn’t been an easy situation for Tom, his players, and others at Toronto FC, he has used foresight to see what challenges COVID-19 presents, empathy to understand the difficulty of the players’ circumstances, and established plans which enable him to best react to the ever-changing situation.
As the weeks ensue, we look forward to seeing how Tom and Toronto FC continue to approach the current situation in such a positive manner, how integrating aspects of competition will help maintain the players’ engagement in workouts and how they will continue to manage players’ psychological well being during the difficult time that many of us face.