Tigers Training - On Track!
11:15:11 AM Tue 24 January, 2006
Richmond Strength & Conditioning Coach Matt Hornsby
richmondfc.com.au
With only five weeks remaining before we take on Hawthorn in the NAB Cup, it is pleasing to have a healthy group of players on the training track. With the exception of Mark Chaffey we have all players involved in our main training sessions. Mark missed the last five games of the 2005 season due to osteitis pubis and has worked extremely hard with our medical team and Warren Kofoed (Rehabilitation Coordinator) to overcome the injury. Mark has been progressing through running sessions of increasing duration and intensity and is now only two weeks off joining in training. He will have a reduced pre-season campaign that will allow him to progress to the season proper.
The other player whose rehabilitation has created a lot of interest is Nathan Brown. Like Chaff, Browny's a highly motivated athlete who has been totally committed to his rehabilitation program. My concern was that he may lose his speed, however our testing in early January showed that there has been no decrease in his speed and power which is a great sign considering this is one of Nathan's most important assets.
In structuring the pre-season program, the coaches placed a big emphasis on small group sessions that allow players to focus on key areas that are critical to the success of their game. The players have been exposed to the knowledge and experience of our own coaching group plus the likes of Brian Taylor, Dale Weightman, Mick McGuane, Steve Alessio and Joe Misiti. The feedback from the players has been extremely positive and this exposure will certainly assist in fast-tracking the development of our younger players.
The conditioning focus has continued to be one of developing speed endurance, power and strength. The majority of our running sessions are short, high intensity intervals with varying rest periods and also include components of agility. It was really pleasing to see that this power/speed focus related to significant improvements in the speed testing that we conducted two weeks ago. The player's endurance ability has again been measured by a time trial at 'The Tan'. Considering our focus on multi-paced running versus continuous endurance running, it was great to see that our average time had reduced by 10 seconds compared to this time last year. One of the important factors in this improvement is the intensity and volume of our main training sessions. Our Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) tracking software has indicated that many of our training sessions are pushing players to between 13 and 16 kilometres - certainly great preparation for the workload required on game day.
Another change to this pre-season has been the addition of a Weight Training Coach, Mark Cera. Mark worked at Tigerland in the mid 90's and also spent four years at the Saints. He has introduced the players to a number of different exercises, many of which he experienced whilst working at the Guangdong Institute of Sport, China in 2005.
At this time of the year there are 16 AFL clubs talking up their pre-season and certainly at Richmond we're happy with the way the players have responded to the challenges that we've thrown at them so far. However the real test commences March 31 when the home and away season begins.
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