Read part one of Mark Holmes' interview with Liverpool's Head of Fitness Darren Burgess for an insight into some of the Reds' training methods.
Darren Burgess was hired by Liverpool in 2010 to take over the club's Fitness department. He had been approached during Rafa Benitez's reign at the club but never worked with the Spaniard due to his departure that summer.
However, Burgess still took on the role of Head of Fitness and Conditioning at Anfield and has since worked closely with Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish.
An Australian, Burgess previously held similar roles with the Socceroos' national team and also some Aussie Rules clubs. He is about to finish a PHd in movement analysis and was kind enough to speak to TEAMtalk about some of the work he does at Liverpool.
MH: Can you tell us a little about the fitness and sports science department at Liverpool, and your role within that?
DB: The department was set up around about this time last year. We have four full-time members and around four full-time PHd students.
We have a full-time strength and rehabilitation coach, a full-time sports scientist, a full-time performance analyst and then various students in different roles. It's my job to co-ordinate the department as well as do the on-pitch stuff with the players.
Not all coaches appreciate sports science. How have you found working under Kenny Dalglish? He was out of management for a long time, but is he receptive to modern techniques and methods?
It's been really good with Kenny and Steve Clarke, they're certainly fans of the work that we do and the monitoring that we do.
The great thing about Kenny is that he lets you do what you need to do, as long as you're reporting the information to him he doesn't try to interfere at all so he's been excellent.
Tell us about the fitness work you've been doing with the players over the summer.
We do most of our fitness work in training drills and game scenarios rather than the type of fitness work that was being done 15-20 years ago which involved lots of long, slow running. Most of our work is done with the ball in different training drills and match simulation exercises.
You've agreed a partnership with a company called TRX, that is providing the club with suspension training equipment. Tell us more about that.
TRX have been excellent. It's a fairly unique device which enables players to train pretty much any movement. For a sport like football which is multi-directional, and in which agility, speed, and power in all directions is crucial, TRX allows us to simulate what's going on in the game, in the gym.
In particular we've found it useful for injury prevention; we use a lot of our prevention strategies and it's really helped in keeping our players on the park.
How much of your work is done before the season is underway, and what is needed to keep fitness levels topped up through the season?
Pre-season is really important to get a good volume of work into players. It's probably most important for injury prevention because you want to make sure that players are capable of tolerating Premier League loads, which are pretty substantial. Injury prevention work is one of the key things we do over pre-season and TRX as well as our general training help out a lot there.
The injury prevention stuff is pretty ongoing through the season as you can get various exercises done in 5-10 minutes before training, after training or in gym sessions.
In terms of topping up fitness, generally the guys who are playing don't need anything at all but you might start to micro-manage the guys that aren't playing and assess what they need. That may be a game with our development squad, or some extra fitness work on their own, at the end of training, or on days off.
How much room for maneouvre is there to adapt training schedules for individual players?
That's the really good thing about the coaches that we have here in Kenny, Kevin (Keen) and Steve; they're quite willing to be adaptable to the needs of those individual players because they know we could get some injuries and that some players can come in and out of form - so these players (that aren't playing) need to be ready. We can adapt as much as the fixture list will allow you to.
What about training schedules for individual positions. Are there different levels that a defender is expected to reach than, say, a winger?
There are. What you tend to find is that there's not a large difference in the total distances that they cover, but there are large differences in the intensity of those distances.
Someone like Jamie Carragher might do 11km in a game and Dirk Kuyt might only do 12km, which is not much different, but Dirk will have to do anything up to 2km of that at high speed whereas Jamie might only need to do 700-800m at high speed so that's where the difference is.
And how do you keep track of this information to ensure players are reaching the required levels?
In matches it's fairly easy because we use Prozone which keeps track of all the distances and the speeds at which players are going. In training we use GPS devices to do the same. We also put heart monitors on the players in each session so we know how hard they're working.
We also do things like blood analysis, saliva analysis and sleep analysis to see how they players are coping with the demands of the Premier League. These days it's pretty technical and detailed and that's what you'll find at most clubs.
Tell us a bit more about these GPS devices.
It's a device a bit smaller than a mobile phone which you pop in the back of players' jerseys or vests, and it essentially uses satellite technology to track where the players run, walk, jog, sprint, how often they're standing still, how often they're accelerating, decelerating or in the case of Christian Poulsen going backwards. You can see exactly what each player is doing in each session and we use it to test individuals and also to see when we've done enough training as a group or when we might need to do a little bit more. It's been really useful for us.
How much value does Kenny place on these stats when it comes to choosing a team?
What you'll find with coaches that have been around for a while is that they can tell (who is meeting targets) just by looking at the players as well as I can tell by looking at the information, but the coaches here do take notice of the information because they know it's designed to keep the best eleven players on the park each week.
You mentioned that this type of technology is now common in the Premier League, so what are Liverpool doing as a club to get percentage gains out on the pitch?
There are two ways you can do it. One is through technological advances and the other is through human resources, and we'd like to think we've got a pretty good combination of both here.
We're always looking towards other European clubs and research and we've got a great link with Liverpool John Moores University which allows us to keep track of research in all fields, not just in football but cycling and running and things like that.
We'd like to think that with a combination of research and contacts that we've made in the US and other places, and with myself coming from Australia where sports science is pretty prolific, that we can keep on top of most things.
You'll also find that working for a club like this that a lot of people are keen to be involved so you're always getting phone calls to ask have you tried this and sometimes we're lucky enough to have people come to us.
I must say, though, that I wouldn't want to come across as being a nerd that collects information and sits behind a computer - we work with the coaches and the players each day rather than just collect information for the hell of it.
In part two of the interview, Darren talks to Mark about his previous work with the Australian national side, why he thinks players tend to pick up more injuries on international duty and how clubs keep in touch with international teams to manage their players.
He also reveals who the best and worst trainers are at Liverpool, and names the quickest and strongest players at the club.
Darren Burgess was hired by Liverpool in 2010 to take over the club's Fitness department. He had been approached during Rafa Benitez's reign at the club but never worked with the Spaniard due to his departure that summer.
However, Burgess still took on the role of Head of Fitness and Conditioning at Anfield and has since worked closely with Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish.
An Australian, Burgess previously held similar roles with the Socceroos' national team and also some Aussie Rules clubs. He is about to finish a PHd in movement analysis and was kind enough to speak to TEAMtalk about some of the work he does at Liverpool.
MH: Can you tell us a little about the fitness and sports science department at Liverpool, and your role within that?
DB: The department was set up around about this time last year. We have four full-time members and around four full-time PHd students.
We have a full-time strength and rehabilitation coach, a full-time sports scientist, a full-time performance analyst and then various students in different roles. It's my job to co-ordinate the department as well as do the on-pitch stuff with the players.
Not all coaches appreciate sports science. How have you found working under Kenny Dalglish? He was out of management for a long time, but is he receptive to modern techniques and methods?
It's been really good with Kenny and Steve Clarke, they're certainly fans of the work that we do and the monitoring that we do.
The great thing about Kenny is that he lets you do what you need to do, as long as you're reporting the information to him he doesn't try to interfere at all so he's been excellent.
Tell us about the fitness work you've been doing with the players over the summer.
We do most of our fitness work in training drills and game scenarios rather than the type of fitness work that was being done 15-20 years ago which involved lots of long, slow running. Most of our work is done with the ball in different training drills and match simulation exercises.
You've agreed a partnership with a company called TRX, that is providing the club with suspension training equipment. Tell us more about that.
TRX have been excellent. It's a fairly unique device which enables players to train pretty much any movement. For a sport like football which is multi-directional, and in which agility, speed, and power in all directions is crucial, TRX allows us to simulate what's going on in the game, in the gym.
In particular we've found it useful for injury prevention; we use a lot of our prevention strategies and it's really helped in keeping our players on the park.
How much of your work is done before the season is underway, and what is needed to keep fitness levels topped up through the season?
Pre-season is really important to get a good volume of work into players. It's probably most important for injury prevention because you want to make sure that players are capable of tolerating Premier League loads, which are pretty substantial. Injury prevention work is one of the key things we do over pre-season and TRX as well as our general training help out a lot there.
The injury prevention stuff is pretty ongoing through the season as you can get various exercises done in 5-10 minutes before training, after training or in gym sessions.
In terms of topping up fitness, generally the guys who are playing don't need anything at all but you might start to micro-manage the guys that aren't playing and assess what they need. That may be a game with our development squad, or some extra fitness work on their own, at the end of training, or on days off.
How much room for maneouvre is there to adapt training schedules for individual players?
That's the really good thing about the coaches that we have here in Kenny, Kevin (Keen) and Steve; they're quite willing to be adaptable to the needs of those individual players because they know we could get some injuries and that some players can come in and out of form - so these players (that aren't playing) need to be ready. We can adapt as much as the fixture list will allow you to.
What about training schedules for individual positions. Are there different levels that a defender is expected to reach than, say, a winger?
There are. What you tend to find is that there's not a large difference in the total distances that they cover, but there are large differences in the intensity of those distances.
Someone like Jamie Carragher might do 11km in a game and Dirk Kuyt might only do 12km, which is not much different, but Dirk will have to do anything up to 2km of that at high speed whereas Jamie might only need to do 700-800m at high speed so that's where the difference is.
And how do you keep track of this information to ensure players are reaching the required levels?
In matches it's fairly easy because we use Prozone which keeps track of all the distances and the speeds at which players are going. In training we use GPS devices to do the same. We also put heart monitors on the players in each session so we know how hard they're working.
We also do things like blood analysis, saliva analysis and sleep analysis to see how they players are coping with the demands of the Premier League. These days it's pretty technical and detailed and that's what you'll find at most clubs.
Tell us a bit more about these GPS devices.
It's a device a bit smaller than a mobile phone which you pop in the back of players' jerseys or vests, and it essentially uses satellite technology to track where the players run, walk, jog, sprint, how often they're standing still, how often they're accelerating, decelerating or in the case of Christian Poulsen going backwards. You can see exactly what each player is doing in each session and we use it to test individuals and also to see when we've done enough training as a group or when we might need to do a little bit more. It's been really useful for us.
How much value does Kenny place on these stats when it comes to choosing a team?
What you'll find with coaches that have been around for a while is that they can tell (who is meeting targets) just by looking at the players as well as I can tell by looking at the information, but the coaches here do take notice of the information because they know it's designed to keep the best eleven players on the park each week.
You mentioned that this type of technology is now common in the Premier League, so what are Liverpool doing as a club to get percentage gains out on the pitch?
There are two ways you can do it. One is through technological advances and the other is through human resources, and we'd like to think we've got a pretty good combination of both here.
We're always looking towards other European clubs and research and we've got a great link with Liverpool John Moores University which allows us to keep track of research in all fields, not just in football but cycling and running and things like that.
We'd like to think that with a combination of research and contacts that we've made in the US and other places, and with myself coming from Australia where sports science is pretty prolific, that we can keep on top of most things.
You'll also find that working for a club like this that a lot of people are keen to be involved so you're always getting phone calls to ask have you tried this and sometimes we're lucky enough to have people come to us.
I must say, though, that I wouldn't want to come across as being a nerd that collects information and sits behind a computer - we work with the coaches and the players each day rather than just collect information for the hell of it.
In part two of the interview, Darren talks to Mark about his previous work with the Australian national side, why he thinks players tend to pick up more injuries on international duty and how clubs keep in touch with international teams to manage their players.
He also reveals who the best and worst trainers are at Liverpool, and names the quickest and strongest players at the club.
interesting read - would be a great job to invovled with all that...
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