Training 2025 Pre Season Thread

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Agree, endurance is endurance, however you get it. But just getting consistent kms into the legs is the easiest way.
I disagree about the 10km though - it's repeat runs at ~90% max that build up the football running capacity.
Some clubs rarely have their players run more than 2km at a time but will have them do repeat 200-400m runs along with repeat sprints.

I've actually done some club running plans (the Swans running plan from the mid 2000s) and at my fittest I could only just make it. Repeat 150m, 250m, etc all the way to 750m then back down again - all with minimal test. It's far more brutal than just a 10km jog.

Dane Swan was a running beast (the lazy stuff was BS, he trained harder than most players) and his staple was repeat 400m runs after training. I was even doing a running session during lockdown with a couple of North boys nearby and the bulk of their session was 30m/60m sprints with minimal rest.

The more you read into it, the more you end up down a rabbit hole of acronyms - TSS/TRIMP/VO2Max etc
 

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Marra is training today on his own at Whitten oval if he hasn't been a naughty boy he would have been with his team mates.
Sounds like he needs to spend the year in the VFL. Playing AFL with his pea-heart intensity would only diminish his trade value and waste a spot of development in the side.
 
Sounds like he needs to spend the year in the VFL. Playing AFL with his pea-heart intensity would only diminish his trade value and waste a spot of development in the side.
Really did u forget he kick 43 of our goals this year I think u seem to have forgotten and was our leading goal kicker but yep lets put him in the vfl for the whole of next year ffs
 
The amount of unfounded speculation regarding Marra here is ridiculous.

Nobody really has a clue, and even if they had a bit of a clue, again, there's probably a bunch of context, caveat and other things that are completely missing.

He still found a way to have 99 total shots on goal (5th in the league) last season.

The four players above him were 30, 31, 29 and 27. The guy ranked 6th was 31.

Jamara's 22.

And some of the posting on this thread is speaking with the confidence of certainty for nothing else but pure speculation, that's completely unfounded in both his actual on-field performance last year, what we have a window into, and absolute zero actual corroboration of what some people have said.
 
Incorrect, each player has a program which involves a body of work they need to complete. Your mixing up official training with pre-season. I have an in with a direct player (through his uncle) and high klms is a huge part of his program and of course it was to be for the role he plays in the side. He is a fantastic kid.

Sorry LB, you’re mixing up off season with pre season. Pre season is official training. The majority of which is made up of group session circuit training with the remaining strength and conditioning sessions and applicable rehab.

Between the player, his uncle, and you, something has been lost in translation.

No doubt being able to run a strong 10km is a good base for any athlete, it just doesn’t have any application in today’s game. Hence it’s not something clubs do often if at all and not something that makes up the testing of draft age players, as someone else noted.

The player your uncle knows has probably been given off season program to build up his base due to injury or whatever, but 10km runs certainly wouldn’t be something the clubs requesting players do as part of match level conditioning during season (pre season sessions included).

A player spending 40-60min per 10km run, multiple times a week on something not really needed, just doesn’t make sense.

As myself and other have stated, match conditioning is built up over shorter circuit type sessions. With fast laps, half and full ground sprints in between those. This mirrors how a matches play out, as opposed to jogging 3-4min kilometres across a 2 hour period.
 
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I can see the players being required to cover a certain amount of kms so they aren't losing a fitness base when official pre-season starts again in November.

Requiring players to cover 100km jogging a fortnight during their October break to me seems entirely logical, even if it has no high performance application than to ensure the players haven't put on 3kgs that they need to lose again at the start of pre-season.
 
Marra is training today on his own at Whitten oval if he hasn't been a naughty boy he would have been with his team mates.
That's about enough speculation from you. I've given you a fairly long leash but this obsessive negative posting about JUH is not welcome here.
 
I can see the players being required to cover a certain amount of kms so they aren't losing a fitness base when official pre-season starts again in November.

Requiring players to cover 100km jogging a fortnight during their October break to me seems entirely logical, even if it has no high performance application than to ensure the players haven't put on 3kgs that they need to lose again at the start of pre-season.

The 100km’s was a misprint 🤪. Meant to say 10kms.

Wouldn’t be many players running 100km fortnight’s in the off season.
 
I disagree about the 10km though - it's repeat runs at ~90% max that build up the football running capacity.
Some clubs rarely have their players run more than 2km at a time but will have them do repeat 200-400m runs along with repeat sprints.

I've actually done some club running plans (the Swans running plan from the mid 2000s) and at my fittest I could only just make it. Repeat 150m, 250m, etc all the way to 750m then back down again - all with minimal test. It's far more brutal than just a 10km jog.

Dane Swan was a running beast (the lazy stuff was BS, he trained harder than most players) and his staple was repeat 400m runs after training. I was even doing a running session during lockdown with a couple of North boys nearby and the bulk of their session was 30m/60m sprints with minimal rest.

The more you read into it, the more you end up down a rabbit hole of acronyms - TSS/TRIMP/VO2Max etc

Entirely depends on what you mean by build up i.e, where you’re starting from. The original comment by LB was about a baseline level for aerobic fitness across various levels of footy, it wasn’t wrong.

Yes, HIIT type anaerobic training is a large focus of an AFL pre-season, but the context is that (a) AFL players typically won’t need to drastically improve their aerobic capacity and (b) will be covering significant kms through their training program and other aerobic exercises off the training track, such as cycling, swimming and rowing, etc, in any event, so invariably it’s a combination of the two.
 

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Bit of early internal pressure from the coach. Don’t mind it.
He's saying the right things. Let's see if they can translate it into early season results for a change.

I'm glad Bevo acknowledges that as a recent failing. I hope he has also reflected on his part in those early season struggles.
 
I couldn't give an ass about his stories etc. I don't think they are a negative reason for anything in the past, people are reaching too much over trivial stuff. If he wants to talk about Che, Ghandi, Lincoln, Curtain, whoever. Doesn't bother me, themes are just that. Most clubs have them.

The ONLY thing I want this preseason, is ZERO talk. From coaches or players. About being fit, strong, or looking good. Then get belted in round one. I want to see action over words this time. No words until we win a game.

We looked fools last year when Bevo promised we would be the fittest and strongest team ever put out on our colors come round one, only to be belted by Melbourne. Slow starts have been a theme in recent seasons. Given our fixture is pretty balanced in terms of difficulty spread next year. A slow start will likely mean another finals miss or early exit. As we don't have a super soft run to play catch up.
 
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We looked fools last year when Bevo promised we would be the fittest and strongest team ever put out in our colors come round one, only to be belted by Melbourne. Slow starts have been a theme in recent seasons. Given our fixture is pretty balanced in terms of difficulty spread. A slow start will likely mean another finals miss or early exit. As we don't have a super soft run to play catch up.
Sounds like he is very conscious of that and is already working on it not happening again. Fingers crossed.
 
Start of the season absolutely crucial to our season. As mentioned before a slow start and we are going nowhere. We are so hard to predict get it right and we are a challenge for any team with weapons aplenty. Just think, is our structuring of what appears our strength in our talls the right mix for today's footy. The one player on our list who could make a real difference if he can go from glimpses of star quality to a consistent performer is Arty. His speed buzzing around forward line is a real need.
 
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Training 2025 Pre Season Thread

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