In his second week of pre-season training after a much deserved European holiday following the 2008 Toyota AFL Season, club captain Matthew Pavlich gave readers of The West Australian a personal insight into the rigours of his training regime. fremantlefc.com.au looks back on the five days of Matthew’s 2009 pre-season campaign.

Day 1 – Monday 24 November
Caution is crucial in early sessions

If you had come to watch us train at Fremantle Oval you wouldn’t have seen us on the track until about 9.15am, but we were almost two hours into our working day by then.

On Monday and Thursday mornings we run, for want of a better term, some due diligence on our bodies before we get out there. It starts with a series of physical checks to screen for minor injuries or sore spots that have gone unnoticed. It also includes filling in forms where we assess our own physical wellbeing.

The science of preparing for an AFL season these days goes well beyond the blood, sweat and tears approach. Our conditioning staff want to get a high volume of work into us, so having players break down with even minor injuries is the worst case scenario. It keeps them off the track and denies them training volume. We don’t want someone going out there ill or injured and doing further damage at the start of a heavy training week so twice a week we run health and fitness checks.

Once we are out there it is mainly skills work for my group — the bulk of the squad of 30 we have in training. Even then, injury prevention is a strong theme. At this stage we don’t kick the ball over any further then 30 or 40 metres. We don’t want anyone overstretching and pulling a quad muscle before they are properly conditioned. We also don’t want players kicking too hard or too often and developing soreness that may keep them off the track.

We are already implementing the way we want to play. It is too early to say it’s set in stone but we work at it in training drills. There are restrictions on how we do and don’t want to move the ball and that is set in the guys’ minds.

The players with naturally high skill levels and decision making ability already show out a bit. Roger Hayden and Des Headland do something special with the ball now and then, or they see little gaps in the zone that other people just won’t see.

There has been general improvement throughout the group and some of the younger guys have obviously done a bit of extra work over the off-season to get their touch and confidence up.

A smaller group — who need extra conditioning work, are coming back from injury or aren’t allowed in shorter sharper kicking drills — are running. I don’t envy them.
Some do the warm-up skills and then go off and do 45 minutes of running or conditioning in the gym. There are some who don’t even do the warm-up with the main group and get straight into conditioning — either interval running, longer distance running, agility work or in the gym or pool.

There is no one getting a rest out there, that’s for sure, but there are guys like Paul Hasleby, Clayton Hinkley and Kepler Bradley really pounding out the laps because they can’t get involved in the shorter sharper drills or kicking. Sometimes you look over and say “thank God I’m not with them”.

The older guys, myself, Luke McPharlin, Roger Hayden and Dean Solomon are off the track by about 10.45am — five or 10 minutes before everyone else. The preventative and recovery stuff goes on for about 30 to 45 minutes after training, too, with a stretch, ice baths and maybe a dip in the pool. Then the physios make themselves available from about midday to 4pm. You can book yourself in for an appointment.

I will be doing a strength and conditioning session which runs for about an hour to an hour-and-a-half. The strength program is not about making you look like the Hulk. There is a heavy focus on hip control, hip position and core strength. Once the guys are out there kicking the ball we want their hips strong and aligned. It helps with skill level and lessens fatigue but it also helps prevent injuries in the groin and upper leg. Osteitis pubis is just one injury that can occur if there is a deficiency in someone’s core strength. There are a lot of other things that can go wrong with their hamstrings, their lower back and their quads.

It has certainly gone away from the “you are looking good” weights. It is very much about pushing your own body weight and managing to get as much power out of your body as you can. There are still some upper body weights done but generally speaking this type of program has gradually diminished over the nine-and-a-bit years I have been involved.

Day 2 – Tuesday 25 November
First day almost my last

I will never forget my first training session at Fremantle. Neither will my mother.
I had flown in from Adelaide with a bit of a cold, intent on impressing in the session at Aquinas College. An hour in, we were asked to do six 1km time trials. In the sixth, my cold, dehydration and a level of fitness which was a bit off that of my teammates caught up with me. I woke up in intensive care in Murdoch Hospital.

I knew I was OK. My mum, who got a phone call in Adelaide telling her that her 17-year-old son who had just left home to play football was in hospital on a drip, didn’t. It wasn’t the best call for a mum to get.

It would astonish me if that happened now.

The level of science that goes into our running sessions these days is phenomenal. The nature of the running has changed and so has the way each player’s fitness program is individualised to suit his capacity and requirements.

Our running session today started at 8am but we were there at 7.30am doing a series of warm-ups. We were pretty much ready at 7.45am, but fitness and conditioning coaches Jason Weber and Chris Spinks then put us through an athletics specific warm-up. This led into the speed session we started with and then that in turn led into an aggressive speed-lactic-endurance session.

We did three blocks of sprint training over 30 to 40m, with a short recovery between sprints. The aim is being able to repeat the sprint so you run, get back to the line quickly and run again with short breaks between the sets.

Then we did a series of longer runs — round about 300m but again with only short breaks between each repetition. We did three sets, and the number of runs in each set varied.

When I first started in the AFL the running was very much focused on getting an aerobic base — longer distances at a cruise speed. That cruise speed is a lot slower than the speed players would run at in an AFL game today. So the way we train has changed, largely due to knowledge of the way players run in games. GPS tracking equipment and heart-rate monitors have provided a lot of data on what happens during games — how far players run, how much time they spend standing still, how much time they spend cruising, sprinting and on the bench. Using that data we can closely replicate the way we run during matches. And the equipment also helps track our training intensity and workloads to see how hard the team as a whole is working, how hard certain individuals are working and how they might be improved.

In any session, skills or running, we would have 10 to a dozen players wearing GPS equipment, and as many wearing heart monitors. That scientific data can get hard for people to comprehend but it is all based around replicating game-intensity running. That in turn means that in matches our players can run faster and for longer periods and are not as fatigued when they get the ball, which means they are more likely to execute skills properly.

There are a few guys who are running well at the moment — guys who have been up and going for about four weeks now. Garrick Ibbotson, Aaron Sandilands, Ryan Crowley, Steven Dodd and Andrew Browne have been running really well. The group that has been on restricted programs and doing serious laps while the rest of the guys are doing skills training — guys like Rhys Palmer, Chris Tarrant, Clayton Hinkley and Josh Head — are also working hard. When they do come back into the program, they won’t be far off as they have been “repping” the laps that the conditioning staff have been setting them.

As I said, I doubt what happened to me first up could happen now, the training loads are that well monitored these days — and especially for the young guys who go through a thorough screening process before they take their first step out on to the track.

There has to be a really thorough understanding between any individual player and the fitness staff. It is a delicate balance, getting the volume right and pushing the boundaries to get incremental improvements without pushing too hard and missing sessions.

After the session we either go down the beach for a dip or back to the club for ice baths. The afternoon is set aside for physio, massage, yoga or mobility sessions. We have had three pretty solid sessions with skills and weights yesterday and then running this morning so this is a brief recovery phase to ensure the guys are ready to go when they get here tomorrow.

Day 3 - Wednesday 26 November
Instinct and hard work are potent combination

Hawthorn legend John Kennedy’s famous player address went “don’t think, do”. Modern football requires both thinking and doing.

Star players tend to play more on instinct rather than conscious thought but there is a thought process behind all of their actions — it has just been honed to an instinctive level.

I had a busy day yesterday, doing skill work, some conditioning running, then headed back to the club for a weights session. The skills session at McGillivray Oval was about making sure players thought about our offensive ball movement and our defensive methods when the opposition have the ball. It was also about developing this to an instinctive level.

For 40 weeks of the year, we are training at Fremantle Oval or Subiaco Oval. The change of venue is great because it keeps players fresh. It also makes their on-field thinking, and instincts, adaptable to other environments. It is amazing what your brain and your instincts tell you when you become familiar with a certain environment.

Where the logos are placed on a ground, how tall the grandstands are and how big the playing surface is can all provide you with “cues” as to where you are. It has an effect on your perception of distance — and that in turn affects your ability to execute a skill under game pressure. It is not a major thing but it is a factor. We need to be able to adapt to different environments.

Collingwood might play at the MCG 18 times out of 22 but we play 12 games at Subiaco and, much to our disappointment, we don’t get to train on grounds like Telstra Dome before games so we need to be able to adapt quickly.

The background, grandstands, even sponsor signs may change things only marginally but your perception — that instinctive hand-eye co-ordination — has to make an adjustment.

We are also trying to hone our ball movement to a point where that is virtually instinctive. We introduced a couple of new drills yesterday so, though we were on the track for about two hours, we were probably working the ball for about 70 minutes as some drills had to be explained and worked through.

We did a drill in which the attacking team had an extra man and got them to move the ball through. Then we switched the extra man to the defending team. The aim is two- fold. We are working on defensive methods so when the opposition have the ball we want to make it as tough as possible to move it. Obviously when we have the ball we are looking for the best way to move it efficiently. We want to use the ball cleanly and execute the skill properly, but also we want to ensure we are running the patterns of movement that the coaching staff want.

For everything that has become scientific in terms of our preparation and conditioning, the game still relies heavily on the instincts of players. Star players act instinctively. Somewhere in the back of their mind it is imprinted what is required of them and what the team needs them to do in a given situation.

Day 4 – Thursday 27 November
Lonely day to feel the pain

Any pre-season running session will test you — but when you have to do one on your own, it is really tough.

We do two solid running sessions in a week, on top of another three skills and conditioning and weights sessions. Thursday is usually set aside for recovery, yoga, mobility, physiotherapy and massage but I am flying to Melbourne late tonight for an AFL Players’ Association meeting. That means I will miss a running session with the boys tomorrow morning and to compensate, I had a catch-up session yesterday. I will train in Melbourne tomorrow — either on the bike or in the pool — but I still needed the extra work-out.

The only other bloke out there yesterday was Scotty Thornton, but that didn’t mean our sports science manager Jason Weber was backing us off at all and we both wore heart rate and GPS monitors, so there was ample evidence on how hard we were working.

We arrived at the club around 8.40am and, as we do on Monday, did a quick fitness/health screening and some physio before hitting the track around 9.30am.
After a 20-minute warm-up the tough stuff started. We did some Fartlek running — which closely replicates the way you would run in a game. There is some jogging, some walking, some stationary work and some dramatic changes of pace and sprinting. We will normally do between three and five laps of this. We then had to repeat a series of 150m sprints on top of 300m runs.

Scott and I were doing the runs at different intervals, so we were basically running them on our own. It makes it difficult because you don’t have any pacesetter or a person who can judge how quickly you are going. You know it means you are going to work very hard because without anyone to set your pace off, you tend to just push yourself as hard as you can. The key is to be able to sustain your times throughout the session. If you can do that within a few seconds, it means you can sustain the same speed and effort for a long time.

Some of the guys who have been setting the pace and running well in our group sessions have been able to hold their times well. I don’t think I am at their standard yet, but I am not that far away and all things considered, I am relatively satisfied with where I am at.

Although running alone is tough, having someone like Scott out there is a source of inspiration. Not many people understand fully what Scott has gone through in terms of his fitness and his health to carve out an AFL career. He has endured interrupted pre-seasons and interrupted seasons and has still held down a spot in our back line.
The volume of work he is getting in at the moment is satisfying for all to see but I am sure he would be especially satisfied because he is not pulling up sore.

After the 150m and 300m sprints, we did some more Fartlek running and then, around 11am, we went into the pool to keep our bodies moving and have a quick stretch, then into ice baths. I had a massage and then joined the rest of the squad for a meeting on how to tackle the next few weeks.

Day 5 – Friday 28 November
Wounded back on track

Today we are faced with a weights session in the morning, followed by a skills and conditioning session in the afternoon.
It is a similar program to Wednesday, so I thought I would take the opportunity to update our supporters on the progress of some of our players who are overcoming injuries.

Paul Hasleby
Hase is pretty well positioned. He has been back in full training for six weeks having had a bit of a holiday after the early part of his rehab had been undertaken in the early to mid parts of this year. He is not quite involved in every drill and his workload is still being monitored but in terms of him having confidence in himself and the knee being very sound, he is very much at, if not ahead of, where he should be.
He would be confident of being ready for round one of the NAB Cup although it is still up to the medicos and fitness staff to ensure he is up to speed. He is involved in the majority of the skills session. Because he did the knee so early last season he has been able to get the rehab in, have a bit of a holiday and come back. In theory he shouldn’t be far away.

Rhys Palmer
Rhys hurt his foot in round 22 against Collingwood and was restricted for a lot of the off-season. He is back on track now. He has been doing a little bit of skills work and is one of that group I spoke about earlier in the week who has been really pounding out the laps. You have got to remember that guys like him and Chris Mayne are only in their second years so they have to be monitored closely anyway to make sure they are not worked too hard. Obviously if they have an injury the monitoring goes up a notch.

Kepler Bradley
He had a hernia operation but he has got over that very well and is ahead of schedule. He has been running well and he just started to join in some of the skills session on Wednesday. We don’t think he is too far away from getting back into full training. In the meantime, he has been pounding out the laps and doing some very hard yards.

Chris Tarrant
Taz had a shoulder operation and his upper body program has been changed because of that. He has been running very well and setting some really good standards in that regard. Using the shoulder operation I had a few years ago as a guide, it does take a little time to firstly get the range of movement back in the shoulder after the operation and then to get the strength back in the muscles around the joint. It is probably still a case of wait and see with Chris on how quickly he can get that strength back around the affected shoulder joint. We would expect him to join in part of the skills sessions before Christmas. Come the middle of January he shouldn’t be far away.

Antoni Grover
He had a similar operation to Chris Tarrant with his shoulder and they are on a similar program.

Josh Head
Josh hurt his knee in his third game for the club and had an operation just to clean that up. I would expect him to start joining the main group fairly soon. He has been doing some skills work off to the side and obviously a lot of running, and he is looking strong.

Clayton Hinkley
He played in the WAFL grand final and then started training not long after that. He is just being eased back in now because of some general soreness that the medicos have been monitoring.

Des Headland
Obviously he missed a lot of the season before getting back to play a couple of games. He has been able to do most if not all of the program.

Daniel Gilmore
Daniel suffered post traumatic migraine syndrome which ended his 2008 season. He has built his training loads up slowly but surely and is now joining in on everything.