Football Recovery by Carlos Carvalhal (SC Braga Manager 24/25) (Patreon)

Recovery… in practice… lived, felt, and experienced! 

Recovery is seen and taken into account as part of the operationalization to perform at the top level and allow players to compete at their maximum potential!

Today, recovery is, and must be seen as, a fundamental part of the process, as energy management becomes a vital categorical imperative to respond to the competitive density of modern football.

Recovery is recovery everywhere in the world, but it is up to the Coach to understand and interpret his reality, his club, the culture, the league, and to comprehend that recovery is both individual and collective… meaning there are different kinds of recoveries.

Through our experiences and lived realities, we will touch upon some specific aspects related to recovery or the concerns we had regarding recovery.

Our “Playing” imposes a very particular coordination, with the tactical dimension dominating the other dimensions: technical, physical, and psychological. (Carlos Carvalhal)

From the first day, we sought to create an adaptability to a supra-tactical dimension that dominates the other dimensions, which are specific to this concrete supra-tactical dimension.

We have emphasized this adaptability through the creation of a weekly solicitation pattern, which repeats over several weeks of training in our process.

This weekly pattern allows us to monitor, control, and evolve our playing style as well as the individual and collective acquisition of it.

What we take into account from the first week is what we continue to take into account more or less throughout all the other weeks, as we must be sensitive to the moment of the team and the players as well.

In this way, we aim to create habits that are acquired in action, within the following logic: A habit is a know-how that is acquired in action. The habit seems to result in an economy of the Central Nervous System, as the fundamental sphere of know-how lies in the subconscious. (Carlos Carvalhal)

From the first day of our process, our concern has been to ensure that the players are available and in a position to acquire a certain style of play and that they are fresh for competition.

Thus, the performance-recovery binomial is taken into account from the mentioned day until the last day of our process. In other words, what interests us is to create an adaptability to a specific solicitation pattern inherent to our style of play.

Therefore, it is important to us that our players train at maximum relative intensity (relative to the Morphocycle day).

However, we must create optimal conditions in the context of acquisition in specificity - recovery to relive another context of acquisition in specificity.

For us, the most important thing is that players can frequently perform at their maximum a certain principle or subprinciple.

Logically, for this to happen, we must train under conditions that exacerbate a certain subprinciple, for example, and repeat it as many times as possible at maximum relative intensity.

Recovery between exercises and the contemplation of a game that allows us to alternate the pace of the game (when to accelerate or when to slow down to accelerate again).

So, training based on maximum intermissions according to our “Playing” will create the habit in the organism of getting tired from performing this type of effort but also, depending on this type of effort, of recovering more quickly. (Carlos Carvalhal)

The way we take care of recovery is daily; Recovery between exercises and between training units, as well as from games, assumes an "obligatory" character to exercise at maximum intensity, ensuring fractions of accumulated maximum intensity in concentration. (Carlos Carvalhal, 2000)

Training based on maximum intermissions according to our “Playing” will create the habit in the organism.

It is daily within a logic of having the players in the best possible condition within the training itself, from training to training, and to arrive fresh at the next competition, taking care throughout the week at both an individual and collective level, without losing sight of our Macro Collective References - ensuring their uninterrupted presence in and through the Morphocycle.

When we were in the United Arab Emirates, we assumed (prejudice) that the Emirati players were adapted to the high temperatures and the high humidity prevalent in that country.

The Emirati players, just like Europeans or South Americans, "suffered" greatly from the climatic conditions.

So, when we proposed contexts where we sought to exacerbate our Macro Collective References, we had to adjust the time.

They couldn't be the same times we proposed in Portugal or even in Spain.

To ensure their maximum performance and not compromise what was to come, instead of playing twelve minutes straight, we divided this time into two six-minute periods with a three-minute recovery interval.

This way, we ensured that the players played at their maximum during those six minutes, hydrated during the recovery time, and we took the opportunity to correct some aspects. Then, the players were once again ready to play in that context at maximum performance.

The recovery of the organism must always be present from day one. Even for preparation games, if we want things done at maximum intensity (correlating with the team's objectives), we must pay attention to the athletes' fatigue state. (Carlos Carvalhal)

When we start a process, it is vital to understand what surrounds us, what moment we arrive at that reality, what culture, what championship we arrive at, and which players we face.

Considering the various experiences we've had, our training pattern was the same but with different sensitivities, adjustments, and care.

When arriving at a club, we consider some points: Will our idea have an impact? Is it new for these players? Has our methodology been experienced before? Are we starting a process, or are we entering mid-season? In other words, do we have the preparatory period ahead, or not?

Players, when they return to the club after the holidays, generally, their bodies are not tuned or predisposed to train, they are "asleep."

For us, at the beginning of the season, it makes sense to increase the recovery time between exercises because the body is not adapted after coming back from holidays.

This is why we train twice a day in pre-season, not to train more (volume) but to split the training into two sessions so we can recover well from exercise to exercise and be at maximum relative availability to do it again. (Carlos Carvalhal, 2000)

Over the past years, we have experienced different realities in different countries, with competitions and championships with distinctly different individual and collective repercussions!

Thus, recovery has always been taken very seriously by us, but above all with a lot of sensitivity.

Here we share some concrete sensations we've felt in different championships: Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

In La Liga, coaches and their technical teams have enormous expertise, a broad competence, and consequently, bring enormous complexity to the game.

There is constant evolution in the game, an evolution that occurs both over time and within the game itself.

Within the game, through structural changes, by substituting some players, the game pattern can completely change, and the dominance can also completely change.

This requires players to have the capacity and the experience to adjust immediately and frequently to the many stimuli that occur during the game.

We felt that the recovery of a player competing in the Spanish championship is different from that of a player competing in the Portuguese championship.

In the Portuguese championship, we felt that, on the third day, the players were ready to train (in a more individual than collective acquisition, but they were ready to train).

In La Liga, we felt that, on the third day, most of the players were still "tied up," still tired, still fatigued.

In the context of this competition, any team, at any moment, can damage another team.

In Spain, the main objective of teams when they have the ball is to create damage. It's not about gaining time to create damage? No! It's about creating damage. This means that at any moment, a goal can be conceded.

The maximum intensity of concentration is always at its peak! So, training must be articulated with this need to make players "capable" of always being at this maximum performance.

But is it always the same throughout the week? No! On the other hand, when we recover from one training unit to another, it doesn't mean that the players aren't tired; that's where the ability to acquire a Morphocycle pattern comes in, where the dominance of nervous centers involved in the next day is altered to avoid injuries and keep the players always available to train.

In other words, the importance of recovery is present from day one, allowing specific adaptability in correlation with our Playing. (Carlos Carvalhal)

In Spain, we trained at maximum relative intensity, but the performance-recovery relationship had to be managed with precision.

Recovery times in Spain, compared to those in Portugal, were different.

The number of repetitions at maximum intensity in Spain was smaller but enough for the players to perform them at their best and align with the adaptability we wanted to create in each player.

In our process, these concerns with recovery are not only relative to training from one session to the next and from week to week but also concern recoveries between exercises to always have the players available to train in maximum intermissions from exercise to exercise. (Carlos Carvalhal)

In the Portuguese championship, some teams know what to expect. From our experience, we knew perfectly well what to expect: most teams dominated in a more intermediate, lower block.

They waited for our mistake; there was respect and individual and collective recognition of our team's competence. So, they would drop back, organize, and try to crowd in front of the goal, more or less organized.

In this context, the dominance of involvement differed from player to player.

But we knew, more or less, what we could expect, and the players were also more oriented towards this.

Their bodies were already prepared for that fatigue pattern. In other words, there was an adaptation to "that" solicitation pattern - allowing players to play with some energy conservation at times.

In the English championship; We recall our experience in perhaps the toughest championship in the world – the Championship in England.

In this competition, there is an extremely high game density, and we went through several cycles of 7/8 consecutive games with 72 hours in between.

We had a base of 7/8 players who played the majority of the games with consistent performance.

In Spain, we trained at maximum relative intensity, but the performance-recovery relationship had to be managed with precision. 

Curiously, these were all British players, except for the captain who was Dutch and had spent most of his career in Great Britain (Glen Loovens).

For example, we would play on a Saturday, do a recovery session with the players who played on Sunday, or sometimes simply tell them to sleep in and rest at home, or make it optional, letting them stay at home to rest (since some players lived 2 hours away from the training center), or they would come to recover at our training center – massage and therapeutic baths.

On the next day, Monday - the day before a game, before training, I sometimes asked the equipment manager to leave some balls on the pitch, and I would watch from my office. It was amazing what you could deduce from that.

The Latinos and South Americans, standing around chatting and occasionally stretching, but looking like they had been hit by a truck; the Northern Europeans, more available and also chatting, but with some movement; most of the British players were crossing balls to compete to see who scored more goals! This was 48 hours after a highly demanding game...

After much questioning and conversation, I found out that British players live in a reality where, from the moment they are born, they watch on TV and in stadiums their idols playing the vast majority of games.

During Christmas, there’s the "Boxing Day," and many play with 48/72-hour intervals and compete with impressive intensity. They see it happening, believe in the reality before their eyes, and dream of one day doing the same as their idols.

The mental capacity of these players is impressive; they firmly believe they can play all the games at a high level. “Boss, if you want to take me out of the team, do whatever you want, but don’t tell me I’m tired! I’m used to the championship, and I’ve never felt tired.” (Carlos Carvalhal)

This competitive density was similar to what we experienced in our first season at Braga during December, January, and February.

During these three months, we had twenty-four games!! 24!! What did we do between games? Recover!!! "Games in the middle of the week mean training takes on a recovery aspect, but it’s possible to direct these sessions towards preparing the team by training principles or sub-principles of our Playing" (Carlos Carvalhal).

A strategy the Mister devised, already experienced in another context, was to give the most-used players the day off after the game. Or rather, the most-used players had "optional attendance."

That is, in a logic of freeing players from training and football, players with more game time could stay at home, and in this way, we sought to free their central nervous system by giving them time to do other things besides training or playing football.

The players with less game time trained, but the sessions didn’t exceed 40 minutes because we also wanted them to be in perfect condition to compete.

The sessions were competitive, with short exercise times and significant breaks, focusing on spaces and dynamics important for the next game - concentration (intensity) - supported by our style of play, with competition always present.

During this recovery time, often playing on the third day, we sought to "naturally" accelerate the recovery of the players by playing! "The best way to recover seems to be to solicit the same structures that the game requires, removing space, duration, and concentration from the exercises" (Carlos Carvalhal).

We created a 4v4 context where we sought to engage the same structures that the game requires, as we believe that the 4x4 game goes into the finest details of the 11v11 game.

The logic and importance of the numbers, space, and time of this game are vital to targeting this solicitation in an individualized way.

Exercise: 5 teams of 4 players. The team draw is made so that no team plays two consecutive games and only plays again on the third game (A vs. B; C vs. D; E vs. A; B vs. C; D vs. E; A vs. C; B vs. D; E vs. C; A vs. D & B vs. E).. The game duration is around 45''. On average, all teams play 4 games, in a logic of playing all against all.

However, depending on the team's moment, mood, and the perceived higher or lower fatigue of the team or specific players, we decrease the number of games per team or player. The players are always on alert because they don’t know the order of the draw.

The transition time between the teams playing and the teams going out is practically zero.

The teams enter the field and immediately start playing. The ball starts with the first team called to play, and they already know before the start of the exercise which goal they should aim for.

The maximum intensity of concentration is once again exacerbated, and the integrity of the game is once again present!

Work produced by Carlos Carvalhal & Sérgio Ferreira (ANTF Magazine #1)