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By Fraser Smith on Wed 23rd November 16
As most coaches will tell you pre-season training is the most important training players will go through over the course of a year and as most players will tell you it is also the most painful.
With the Western Force into their third week of pre-season training the team is putting more focus than ever before on their conditioning base and tailoring their training in order to allow the side to run out full 80-minute performances week-to-week.
Head of Athletic Performance Will Markwick says the training has been building over the first few weeks of the pre-season and is now really ramping up.
“In the first week we had no rugby at all we just had an athletic development week, we did some physical testing and a series of pretty arduous training sessions mainly based around the players' conditioning,” he said.
“In the second week we introduced the rugby content. There was a lot of technical learning around our tactics and our philosophy on attack and defence and now this week we are going to put all of that together, ramp it up and go pretty hard.”
Markwick says every aspect of training is designed to mimic or prepare players for game situations.
“It isn’t standalone conditioning; it isn’t just the athletic performance staff telling the players to run harder. We work very closely with the coaches on how we design drills around what these blokes need to do at Super Rugby level.”
“Every drill we are thinking about how we can best prepare the players for what is required of them in a game right down the small details - in specific parts of the field, at different times in the game and for different periods of time.”
After the team were found dropping off late in games last season the athletic performance staff have opted to adjust the way they approach pre-season training.
“As a high performance team we just have to tweak little things to take it to the next level, rather than being really efficient for one single effort we need the players to be able put together repeat efforts in all areas – strength, power, running.”
“The main thing we are doing we differently this pre-season is we aren’t preparing for the perfect picture, that is the common theme throughout our training.
“We aren’t preparing for the perfect phase, and that means when teams have us under pressure we will be able to cope and vice versa when we have teams under pressure we will have the capability to take advantage.”
Markwick believes the club has surrounded the players with the best athletic performance staff possible including Head of Strength and Conditioning, Scott Johnson who joins the club from the South Sydney Rabbitohs and Head Phyiso, Dave Dawes.
“Scott Johnson has been brought in with some great experience in rugby league and that was something we were really keen to utilise as a point of difference from a conditioning background and also his ability to work across many fields including strength, power, conditioning and rehabilitation.”
“Michael Symes manages our athletic performance data, it’s a crucial role that helps us design and measure our training to make sure that we’re actually doing what we are setting out to do.”
“We have a very skilled team of physiotherapists. Head Physio Dave Dawes is very knowledgeable and oversees all of the maintenance of our playing group. Ben Mather is our Senior Physio who brings great rugby experience and covers all of our injury prevention and rehabilitation and Nick Blackah is another awesome addition.”
With pre-season in full swing the 2017 Super Rugby season is just around the corner so renew your Membership or join the Sea of Blue today! http://bit.ly/2017Memberships
https://www.westernforce.com.au/arti...-fitness-focus
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