Off-season a bygone era for Richmond Tigers by: Matt Windley
From: Herald Sun
November 18, 2011THE players are back for pre-season but really most players never left.
The days of playing hard on the field during the winter and just as hard off it during the summer appear gone.
Skin folds are measured, training sessions programmed and injury rehabilitation completed.
And that's before clubs "officially" return from their eight-week break.
Richmond's David Astbury took one week off after Round 24 and then returned to Punt Rd for daily rehab on his injured knee, while fellow Tigers defender Dylan Grimes was reluctant to take the foot off the pedal after recovering from a serious mid-year hamstring injury.
"The staff at Richmond still put a pretty extensive program together," Grimes said.
"They marked out our movements on a GPS watch so every session we did was in there so they had a pretty close eye on who was doing the work and obviously players who missed out on some (sessions)."
There was no way to shirk it, Astbury said.
"We've got these watches on that track every program and once it's completed it's emailed through to the guys back at the club," Astbury said.
"You need to make sure that you're in touch with the physios or the fitness staff if you've got a niggle."
Grimes said each player's program was different.
"They upload all of these sessions on to your watch for you and when it comes time for you to do a run - which this year for me was Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with other training in between - it would come up with the session you needed to get done throughout the day," Grimes said.
"You had a 24-hour gap to get the job done. If you didn't get it done then you had to email the coach and let him know why it wasn't done and arrange for a time to get it back on the watch."
So is Big Brother always watching?
"In a way, but there's a lot of trust around the club and there has to be at sporting clubs," Grimes said.
"Players know that the work is just as important as the actual pre-season is. It's a pretty important stepping stone, because when you come back on October 31st we're expected to be ready to train and get back in to the swing of things.
"There's no time for catch-up really after the off-season."
Astbury did head to Vietnam for two weeks while Grimes also managed to sneak in a trip to Thailand.
But even on holiday the work never stopped.
Asked if he minded that his time off was basically spent working, Astbury reasoned that it was force of habit.
"You're allocated those eight weeks after the season and it's important that you go away and you're not in at the club every day," Astbury said.
"But I think, a lot of the guys if you ask them, the majority would say if they weren't expected to do anything then they would anyway. So to have a bit of a protocol to go by, a lot of the blokes find it very helpful.
"If you're a bit sore or whatever and you get in touch with the fitness staff they're absolutely fine (if you miss a session) and they recommend you not to do it because you've got six months of training before you go back to Round 1.
"It's just important that you maintain a little bit of routine."
Grimes said body composition tests were done after their last game of the season and again on the first day of pre-season "so they get a pretty good indication of who's been eating the right foods and who hasn't".
And while Grimes said "that definitely sticks in the back of your mind in the off-season", Astbury said "blowouts" weren't totally off the table.
"I guess if you're doing your training in the off-season it is a time where you can indulge a little bit," he said.
"I don't think it's as strict as it might be during the actual pre-season."
One feature of early pre-season training sessions across the board has been the prevalence of footballs from Day 1.
And while to an outsider the thought of honing skills for a season that does not start until the last weekend of March might seem odd, Grimes says it is a necessity.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/off-season-a-bygone-era-for-richmond-tigers/story-e6frf9jf-1226198339493
