by: Dr Marion Alexander, PhD, Dave Hill, Yumeng Li, BKin, Julie Hayward, B Kin
Introduction
The bicycle slide is a rapid sideways movement of a water polo player, in which she moves to the side of her current position while leading with her feet. The bicycle slide is primarily a key defensive skill in water polo when playing a zone in a gap between two players. It is used when the player has to move rapidly sideways to cover a shooter or a pass to a shooter, while still retaining visual contact with the ball. This technique allows the defender to move feet first toward the space, in order to provide defensive coverage. The defender executing the slide is horizontal on her side in the water with her head toward her primary defensive focus. In the attached photo (Figure 1), the defender is wearing a white cap and has her arm pointing upward. The center forward is in front of the net with the American (behind with white cap) holding on to her. The American defender with her arm up would use the bicycle slide to cover the area between the center forward and the player with the ball, before rising over her feet to present the blocking arm. The defender in this situation would slide toward the person she is defending with her feet leading the movement, which is a unique method of covering this distance.
This is fresh off the press, the most recent research in Water Polo. It focuses on the biomechanics of a specific movement in the water which really has no universally accepted name. The researchers called it the bicycle slide after viewing the video footage (see the article for the video and you will see why).
This research is coming out of Winnipeg, Canada. The athlete in the video is a member of the Canadian National Team program.
It definitely re-inforces the importance of good flexibiliy in the hips to be able to produce an efficient technique that is powerful and useful.
As a coach, understanding a skill at a deep level will give you more options when teaching said skill. So, although this article may be quite technical if you are not a biomechinist, read it, study it, read it some more and give the information time sink in. There are also some good references in the article that will further your knowledge.
Below is my latest article published on WaterPoloPlanet.com. Read and enjoy.
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RESEARCH REVIEW - #1, August 2010
In this series of articles I will copy the
abstracts of relevant Water Polo research and give a short commentary
on each one. Due to copyright laws I am unable to supply the full
article. If you wish to have the full article please go to PubMed.com
or other appropriate website to obtain a copy. If you are affiliated
with an university you will likely be able to obtain many of these
articles for free from your library.
McCluskey L, et al. Throwing velocity and jump height in female water polo players: Performance predictors. J Sci Med Sport (2009)
Abstract: Throwing velocity and
vertical jumping ability are essential components for shooting and
passing in water polo. The purpose of this study was to determine
whether there is a relationship between throwing velocity and water jump
height in highly skilled female water polo players. Throwing velocity
and head height at ball release were measured in twenty-two female
players (age 20.41 years (6.16); weight 68.28 kg (8.87)) with two 50
frames per second cameras while shooting at goal. Water jump height was
also measured with a modified Yardstick® device. Multiple regression
analyses showed that peak lower limb power was the most significant
predictor of maximal velocity. Power alone accounted for 62% of the
variance in maximum velocity (p < 0.001). Once power was entered
into the model none of the other physical characteristics (lean mass,
fat mass, land jump height and anthropometry) made a significant
contribution to throwing velocity. After controlling for the effect of
power, head height at ball release accounted for an additional
significant proportion of the variance in maximal velocity (R2 change
7%; p = 0.049). Lower body power was a significant predictor of higher
throwing velocity in highly skilled female water polo players. Players
with relatively higher underlying levels of lower limb power who are
able to generate greater elevation out of the water are able to throw
the ball faster.
My Comments: A critical factor
of having a big shot is leg power but not just in the water. The
athletes with an above average throwing velocity also had a higher
on-land vertical jump and were basically just larger athletes.
The
authors in their closing statement (see full article) state “...
multifactorial approach including water based training such as swimming
and water polo skills training as well as land based training such as
strength training are consistent with achievement of higher overhead
throwing velocities.”
So, don't discount your strength training
and other on-land activities BUT you still must practice and improve
your sports specific skills in the water.
McMaster WC, Long SC, Caiozzo VJ. Isokinetic torque imbalances in the rotator cuff of the elite water polo player. Am J Sports Med Jan-Feb;19(1):72-5 (1991)
Abstract: The specific
repetitive activity of water polo, like baseball pitching, emphasizes
adduction and internal rotation. This study used the Cybex II to
evaluate the isokinetic strength of the rotator cuff in elite water polo
players and in a group of control subjects. The water polo players
were significantly stronger than the controls. Of greater importance
was the confirmation of imbalances in the rotator cuff force couples of
adduction/abduction and external/internal rotation. These changes are
similar to those reported for pitchers. The adductors in the water polo
group had gained in relative strength resulting in an increase in the
adduction/abduction ratio to about 2:1. The internal rotators had
gained in relative strength resulting in a decrease in the
external/internal ratio to about 0.6:1. For both force couples the
differences are more apparent at a slow speed. Side-to-side differences
were not significant.
My Comments: This and other
similar articles are important to remember and think about when
designing strength training programs for Water Polo athletes. I believe
that the first thing all strength programs need to do is keep the
athlete healthy. Look at the sport and do the opposite! It may seem
contrary to conventional thought, especially when you think of
specificity but there is a cost for only doing sport specific training
and that cost is usually pain and injury.
Basically, spend more time on training your
pulling muscles and external rotators of the shoulder. This is a key to
effective programing for the Water Polo player and is outlined in many
of the articles I have written here on Water Polo Planet.
If I can train with a heavier ball, then when I go back to the regulation size and weight I should be able to just "kill it".
It makes sense right?
Get stronger by using heavier loads doing the same motion as your sport skill, it is basic strength training science.
Although this is a really good idea in many circumstances (i.e. trying to copy or mimic exactly what you do in your sport with heavier loads) it may not always be a good idea.
One thought process
I recently heard which I like and makes sense is (paraphrased from an audio interview of
Coach Nick Tumminello - http://nicktumminello.com):
If the sport skill requires lots of
accuracy (like Water Polo passing/shooting, golf swing, basketball shot) then you
need to be extremely careful with loading that skill, if you even load it at all.
But if the sport
skill does not require a lot of accuracy (like a vertical jump whether on land or in water) then loading that
sport skill can be much more aggressive and beneficial.
It has long been accepted that doing weighted squat jumps is one of the best exercises for improving your on-land vertical jump. A vertical jump doesn't require lots of accuracy, it is a fairly crude movement when compared to something like a golf swing or throwing a ball.
This is one reason I am
not a big fan of trying to mimic the shooting motion in the weight
room. Best case you only waist your time but worst case you really screw
up your sport skill.
I am a strong believer in getting strong with the basic movements first regardless of your sport.
I have written about Deadlifts before and it might just be the best exercise for everyone regardless of sport. It is one those strength exercises that you can positively say "just do this!".
With respect to Water Polo, there are heavy Water Polo balls on the market and I do believe they have a use on-land and in the water. But it depends with who and what you specifically do which will greatly determine if it becomes a positive or negative training adaptation.
This subject is very interesting to me and a recent study I just read used Handball players training not with a heavier ball but with a lighter ball!
They had two groups of athletes, one trained with the normal handball while the other trained with a handball that was 20% lighter.
"The results showed that training with lighter balls could improve the performance of throwing more than using normal balls."
"These findings are in agreement with previous studies that involve similar movements of other sports and suggest that the decreased resistance during training that involves ballistic movements can be advantageous for the player’s performance ..."
Skoufas D, Stefanidis P, Michailidis C, Hatzikotoulas K & Kotzamandou M. The Effect of Handball Training with Underweighted Balls on the Throwing Velocity of Novice Handball Players. JHMS, 2002
Performing ballistic movements with a light load can improve your strength; primarily starting and speed strength.
It is believed by some coaches that the mechanism at work is more one of inhibition.
What does this mean?
The human body is extremely strong and powerful. It is so powerful that if you were able to generate your true maximum force that you would probably end up breaking bones, rupturing tendons and tearing ligaments.
In strength trained athletes, they may be able to use only 35-40% of the available motor units, which means there is great room for improvement (non-strength trained athletes would be less).
So, it is believed that when lifting these light loads extremely fast you take the bodies safety brakes off a bit and thereby the athlete is able to recruit a higher number of motor units and ultimately generate more force.
From a training perspective, there is a little more to it then that because lifting heavy loads has a similar effect.
Something to consider whether to use light, heavy or a combination of both in your training is the actual movement you are training. It comes back to whether the skill (movement) does or doesn't require a high degree of accuracy.
In Water Polo that may mean doing a combination of both heavy and light resistance with your on-land training (example heavy deadlifts & jump squats; heavy push ups & medicine ball throws) but sticking with the regulation ball most of the time for your pool training.
There are exercises with the heavy ball in the pool that can be used with most athletes. One that I like is the 2-hand overhead throw; great for the legs especially if passing in partners and always keeping your hands out of the water.
What is your experience with training with heavy Water Polo balls or do you even use them?
Please write about your experience in the comment section below.
(Received: November 11, 2004) (Accepted: December 1, 2004)
abstract
This
study aimed to examine a relationship between changing swimming
direction and 25 m speed swimming. The changing swimming direction test
was selected to measure coordination ability in water, and the 25 m
speed swimming test to measure speed ability. The subjects were 36
competitive university swimmers including six water polo players. In
both tests, they started by kicking the wall in the water. The
intra-class correlation (ICC) between two trials was calculated to
examine reliability. Pearson' s correlation coefficient was used to
examine the relationship between both tests. Reliability in both tests
was judged to be very high, because their ICCs were 0.98. Although both
tests showed a significant, moderate correlation (r = 0.54), it was
judged that their relationship is not very high because of a low degree
of inter-contribution (under 30%). Factors other than swimming speed
are considered to relate to the changing swimming direction test
selected in this study. It is suggested that water polo players are
excellent in changing swimming direction.
I have always believed that just because you are a competitive swimmer does not mean you will be a good Water Polo player. It certainly helps to have a swimming background but what this article shows is that horizontal swimming is not very easily transferred to change of direction swimming.
Of course traditional lap swimming is still important but NOT it is not the only kind of swimming to train. Therefore as a coach, you must examine your teams practices and look for how much horizontal traditional lap swimming you are doing compared to short sprints with changes of directions.
From a purely swimming perspective, this is exactly what Water Polo is characterized by:
Short sprints with change of directions.
I was talking to a Water Polo coach a few weeks ago who had the local swim coach ask him to take his swimmers through a Water Polo practice.
You know what really gassed these Nationally ranked swimmers?
Any swimming with a change of direction and any prolonged vertical position (essentially what Water Polo is). These highly trained swimmers were extremely efficient when horizontal but almost completely useless in any other position.
This is the SAID principle at work: your body gets good at exactly what it does.
Basically, national team players are bigger, faster, can jump higher and have better endurance (not a big surprise).
What is of interest is the tests they used and if it would be possible to perform these tests on your own athletes.
It would be great to be able to compare them to top international players. It could give your developing athletes something very objective to reach for.
The three tests which is of the most interest to me and probably most coaches are the performance tests.
1. In-Water Vertical Jump
2. 10m Sprint (swim)
3. Endurance Swim Test (multistage shuttle swim test)
They also measured height, body mass and skin fold measurements (these can be used to estimated body fat%).
The height can certainly be used to screen potential athletes and is easy to measure, as someone once said "you can't teach height!"
Body mass is also easy to measure but this information is not very useful in isolation.
Skin fold measurements or body fat %, are much more time consuming then height and body mass and requires some special training in order to do it right. How many Water Polo coaches have the time or skill do this? Even if you do have the time and skill, I am going to try to convince you that it is a waste of time.
In many situations, body fat% testing is a waste of time; but why?
I will answer that with another question. As a coach, would you take a lower body fat% for reduced sprint times or any of the other swim tests?
The performance tests are the most important tests to do. If they improve, then does it really matter if body fat% went up, down or stayed the same?
Back to the performance tests.
The "In-Water Vertical Jump" is a great idea which was first researched and published in 2006 by Dr. Platanou from Greece.
left picture: Tan et al. (2009); right picture: Platanou (2006)
You will need to have a device as shown in the picture to measure how high the athlete can jump. There are commercially available devices similar to the ones shown above or you could certainly make one yourself.
Tan et al. (2009) used two measurements in their jumps. One was an absolute jump which is how high can you jump up and reach irrespective of your actual body length. The second measure was a relative jump value by first measuring the distance from the hip to tip of the finger with the arm overhead. They then would do the following calculation to get a percentage value.
[absolute jump height/hip to tip] x 100 = relative jump score as a %
If the athlete had a jump score of 100% then she was able to get her hips to the surface of the water. Less then 100%, her hips were below the water while above 100% meant her hips were above the surface of the water.
Goal Keeper Betsey Armstrong of the USA would score well over 100% on the relative jump score.
Tan et al (2009) performed multiple trial until they failed to improve over 2 consecutive trials, with the highest jump recorded. I would probably modify this to three trials so that you have some control over the total time to run the test. The researchers did not say how long the athletes rested between jumps but ~30s would be sufficient.
Below are the average jump scores comparing National League vs National Team athletes.
LeagueNational Team
Absolute Jump Ht (cm) 130cm 139cm
Relative Jump (%) 100% 102%
Not bad jump scores considering that the top of the cross bar is essentially 1m from the surface of the water.
Overall, I think this is a great test to use but you need the special testing equipment.
The other two performance related tests they used were both horizontal swimming but performed with a slight tweak to make them specific to Water Polo. The tweak was the distance of one length was 10m. The first swim test was a 10m sprint, with no push off the wall. The athlete would start with their head touching a lane rope (like during the start of a real match) and timing would commence once the athletes head left the rope.
Sounds like a great test of acceleration, speed and power but there is a problem.
How do you measure the time?
I ask this because in the research Tan et al. (2009) used "digital video (Sony DCR-VX2000E; Tokyo, Japan) at 50 Hz and later analyzed using a commercially available video analysis software package (Dartfish ProSuite, Fribourg, Switzerland)."
What looks like a great field test now becomes something where you need video cameras and special software in order to analyze your tests.
Why not just use a stop watch?
Yes, you could but you need to realize that with a test of such short duration a stop watch adds a high percentage of error. Maybe on a minimum of 25-30m the stop watch error would not be as significant.
For this reason, I give my thumbs down on this test. I would suggest to still test sprinting speed but use the length of the court (25-30m) to do so.
The third and final performance test was an Endurance Swim Test (multistage shuttle swim test). It was done over lengths of 10m long with no walls and is essentially a swim version of the beep test (see the below video for the beep test).
What I like about this swim test is that it is lengths of 10m and doesn't use the wall. What I am not too sure about is actually administering this test in a busy, noisy pool. Plus you need to have the 10m section roped off with lane ropes (hope your pools lane rope configuration fits to 10m). This is why I give a thumbs down on this test for practical reasons.
For simplicity reasons and the fact that endurance is only one of many important qualities of elite level Water Polo, I would just use a timed 400m front crawl.
In future posts I will be discussing other research particularly on female Water Polo since a few new papers have or are about to be published.
What kind of testing do you do if any with your Water Polo athletes?
I am really interested to hear what you have to say so please leave a comment below.
There are some great discussions going on in the message board atwww.waterpoloplanet.com regarding the training of Water Polo athletes.
The first one is entitled "Applying the Research: Specific Swim Sets for Water Polo", which is a discussion about the article of the same name which I wrote for www.waterpoloplanet.com.
The second discussion is about a phenomenon in USA College and High School Water Polo called "Hell Week". It is essentially when teams will swim 2-3x/day with extremely high volumes or something like that.
I have heard a high level USA coach once say, "put your best athlete at the goal keeper position".
This really shows me the importance of the goal keeper to the success of a Water Polo
team.
Anyone who has played at any level with a great goal keeper will
know what kind of confidence it gives a field player knowing that they
have an impenetrable force backing them up.
The goal keeper
holds a very unique position on a Water Polo team on many levels. I
will discuss the physiological demands of a goal keeper and how this
applies to training.
Key Physiological points:
goal keepers are anaerobic animals. Think power and speed.
The most intense portion of a match for goal keepers is when they are playing man-down.
~80% of a match, a goal keeper is simply treading water (low intensity work).
~15-20% of the time they are working at very intense levels (e.g. man down/6-5 situations, ready position and jumping).
Goal keepers activities are fairly standardized.
All of the above will slightly vary, depending upon "among others, on the importance of the game, game strategy, level of competition, quality of the opposition, the defense system and refereeing" (1).
Practical applications:
Focus
on exercises that develop explosive power. e.g. various different
kinds of jumps for 5-10 x 1-3 reps. Use complete rest, 2-3 minutes.
Include
some high intensity training of longer duration to simulate man-down/6-5
situations. e.g. ready position and slide back and forth across the
goal with jumps at various positions. Perform 3-5 x (20s on/20s off).
Treading
water is low intensity and of little importance to the game so simply
train by having the goalie tread water for recovery between drills.
Drills
that last for multiple minutes and are of medium to low intensity will
have a poor carry over to the goal keepers performance. These kinds of
drills are important for warm up and the general preparation phase but not very useful for
specific game conditioning. Please keep in mind that longer duration drills of medium to low intensity can be very useful for the developing youth athlete. It gives the athlete a greater volume of exposure to the key movements and the time needed to learn and master these movements with low risk of injury.
What are your favorite goal keeper drills?
Do they "conform" with the research?
By
the way the picture I have included is not doctored in anyway. I
actually played with this goal keeper back in Canada. Judging by the
height he gets out of the water, he is not very fit or of high level
but he does a good job of using his head!
Be Well, Mike Reid
references:
1. Platanou T, Physiological demands of water polo goalkeeping, J Sci Med Sport (2007).
ps. research on Water Polo is pretty non-existant, but on Goal keepers it is even smaller.
The
physiological demands of Water Polo field players is a very important
aspect to understand so that you can design training programs that will
be realistic to the demands of the sport.
The
information available although not great in volume is of high quality
and there is no reason to justify doing certain training regimes just
because of the phenomenon of"that's what we always did".
The Research
Here are some key
points of the research, with references at the end of the post. For simplicity, I
have grouped the different field positions together. All
the below key points refer to men's international match play. But I
believe that it still strongly relates to youth and women's Water Polo.
high intensity work demands last up to 15s with lower intensity effort work lasting up to ~20s.
Some studies report a Work:Rest ratio = 5:3 while other are closer to 1:1.
Average total minutes of work during a match = 34 minutes (7 min quarters)
Average total minutes of rest during a match = 20 minutes
Body
position during a match is split almost evenly between a horizontal
position (i.e. swimming) and a vertical position (i.e. passing,
shooting, blocking, centre forward ...).
Heart Rate exceeds 80% of maximum for most of the match.
moderate demands on all 3 energy systems - aerobic, anaerobic alactic and anaerobic glycolytic.
Distance
swam during a match has been estimated from 500m to 1800m, but this is
very difficult to measure accurately due to the complexity of movements
in Water Polo.
Aerobic Power or Vo2 Max of International players = 58-61 ml/kg/min.
This
Aerobic Power is similar to other contact team sports such as Ice
Hockey, Basketball, Rugby and Soccer but is lower then that of
endurance athletes who will generally be between 70-90 ml/kg/min.
Sedentary population is usually around 35 ml/kg/min.
Swimming economy is very useful in managing fatigue during a match.
The
shoulder is the most commonly injured area of Water Polo players.
Although at the 2004 Olympics, 58% of the injuries reported were to the
head with only 28% to shoulder, arm or hand. All head injuries were
via contact.
How do you think this applies to training a field player in Water Polo?
What would a sample training session look like or maybe a whole week of training?
Think about, investigate your own training and coaching.
HK Smith. Applied Physiology of Water Polo. Sports Med 1998 Nov; 26 (5): 317-334
M Franić, A Ivković, R Rudić. Injuries in Water Polo. Croat Med J. 2007;48:281-8
A
Junge, G Langevoort, A Pipe, A Peytavin, F Wong, M Mountjoy, G
Beltrami, R Terrell, M Holzgraefe, R Charles & Dvorak. Injuries in
Team Sport Tournaments During the 2004 Olympic Games. Am. J. Sports
Med. 2006; 34
G Pavlik, Z Kneffel, M Petrekanits, P Horvath & Z Sido. Echocardiographic Data in Hungarian Top-Level Water Polo Players. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2005 Feb;37(2):323-8.
T.
Platanou. Time-motion Analysis of International Level Water Polo
Players. Journal of Human Movement Studiesv46 (4) 2004; p. 319-331
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Body mass is also easy to measure but this information is not very useful in isolation.
r to do it right. How many Water Polo coaches have the time or skill do this? Even if you do have the time and skill, I am going to try to convince you that it is a waste of time.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=76ca8540-de0d-4c5d-a434-093f2cc29fce)
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