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What does an AFL preseason involve?

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Nasma

Team Captain
Sep 12, 2007
506
7
Melbourne
AFL Club
Geelong
I can think of a few players talking about just how tough an AFL preseason is. Aker said near the start of the year that he didn't want to go through another one, and Robert Campbell mentioned that it was something he wouldn't miss about the game.

So what is it that makes it so tough? Obviously it is, but I always thought that you could only train so much before you started to do damage. Does anyone have an idea about the type of programs AFL players do?
 
it would be a lot of tough physical work that would be physically and mentally draining and painful. A good chuck would be common from individuals and recovery would be very important to do well. I would think juggling weights with running would be tough. But once they got into it they wouldn't find it so bad although by the end of it they would be glad it was over. They would probably train 5 days a week. Just a guess and taking things from preseasons I have done playing club football.
 
It gets tougher each season. It has to get tougher to stay ahead of the competition. Basically a pre-season at the highest level involves pushing yourself to the limit, and then some more.

What most of the above average people can do (country/metro level players) would be a piece of cake for every AFL player.
 

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Watch the late Rob Dixon's documentary titled "The Passion to Play" .

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It talks about a particular pre-season at the Brisbane Lions where the players did 100 x 100m sprints in a row. After they were all clinically dead or close to it, someone piped up that West Coast had done the same thing but did 110 of them, so the Brisbane players went back out and did another 20 sprints to finish it off.

And that's just one day...
 
Watch the late Rob Dixon's documentary titled "The Passion to Play" .

62604.jpg


It talks about a particular pre-season at the Brisbane Lions where the players did 100 x 100m sprints in a row. After they were all clinically dead or close to it, someone piped up that West Coast had done the same thing but did 110 of them, so the Brisbane players went back out and did another 20 sprints to finish it off.

And that's just one day...

DAMN! I wonder what the time difference was between the first and the last sprints? Full respect if thats what these blokes go through:thumbsu:.
 
A pre season is where the players flog themselves until their exhausted, and do it again. 5 days a week

This builds their fitness foundation without having to worry about preparing for a match later in the week. During the season they do a lot more skills work, as the fitness base is there, it just has to be maintained. They then don't work as hard at training (fitness wise) so they are better prepared for the weekend's match, where they flog themselves to the point of exhaustion.

Repeat process.
 
I watchd a video of the Lions pre-season for 2009 and it looked unbelieveable.

They were over on straddy carrying the biggest rope I have ever seen up and down sand dunes, I'm talking about a rope that was hard for 30 of them to just pick up, let alone then run up a freaking sand dune with it.

looked like the rope that would have handled the anchor for the Titanic (and it was wet too!)
 
A pre season is where the players flog themselves until their exhausted, and do it again. 5 days a week

This builds their fitness foundation without having to worry about preparing for a match later in the week. During the season they do a lot more skills work, as the fitness base is there, it just has to be maintained. They then don't work as hard at training (fitness wise) so they are better prepared for the weekend's match, where they flog themselves to the point of exhaustion.

Repeat process.
Brisbane do 6 days a week for preseason, well they did last year (Joel MacDonald said). He said he'd train 6 days a week and study the other day. Epic fail.
 

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you can add to all that

Yoga - core stability and flexibility
Swimming - aerobic capacity, core stability etc
bicycle riding - aerobic conditioning
classes like Balance - see yoga
Ballet (don't laugh takes lots of strength, core stability and flexibility)


with

massage
rest
and quite restricted diets.
 
Watch the late Rob Dixon's documentary titled "The Passion to Play" .

62604.jpg


It talks about a particular pre-season at the Brisbane Lions where the players did 100 x 100m sprints in a row. After they were all clinically dead or close to it, someone piped up that West Coast had done the same thing but did 110 of them, so the Brisbane players went back out and did another 20 sprints to finish it off.

And that's just one day...

I believe after that some one piped up about this guy called King Arthur who apparently was the only one in the land to pull some sword out of a stone.
Leigh Matthews immediately disappeared from the ground. Later reports confirmed that he had ran down to the local Mitre 10 and proceeded to buy a 25kg back of concrete and the new Black & Decker Excalibur.
Upon his return he presented Jonathan Brown with the mighty sword set in stone and the rest, was history ...

Just another pre-season really.
 
It's the repetitive nature of it that kills players. Every day from November through to round one they have to follow a routine that is physically and mentally gruelling.

Any injury is seen as something that either needs to be hidden or addressed immediately depending on which gives you the best chance of playing round one.

Running sessions, followed by boxing and skills sessions with an hour of weights training beforehand, on a daily basis. As another poster has said, pilades and yoga come into it, as well as swimming to make sure you can recover for the next big sesssion.

The pre-seasons I do are three nights a week incorporating most of those things, and if you want to get ahead you have to do at least an extra session in the gym. In January, February and March I'm rooted, they take a heap out of you and if you have to work full time behind a desk you're screwed.
 
http://www.fremantlefc.com.au/tabid/7009/default.aspx?newsid=70533

"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"

much much more at the link.
 

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I hear that if you rock up to pre-season immensely overweight, everyone says you're in for a MASSIVE pre-season and probably explains why Stuey Dew was so awesome last year.
 
Seriously, I'd absolutely love to do an AFL pre-season given the chance. I'd try my best in absolutely anything, and would make sure I did it with a smile on my face. When I played club basketball, I used to enjoy training as much as the actual games. The hard physical work sounds like fun to me, because at the level that I'm at now (still playing regular sport, but not 'super fit') I know I'd only be benefiting from everything I do. To get paid to play a sport and get assistance from expert trainers and medical staff to be at peak physical fitness is a dream job IMO.
 
lots and lots and lots of running...
north melbourne last week had their first pre-season training session they had a time trial around princess park.

collingwood is going back to america to do high altitude training.

they do this so it improves their aerobic fitness so they can run for a longer time during games.
 
Seriously, I'd absolutely love to do an AFL pre-season given the chance. I'd try my best in absolutely anything, and would make sure I did it with a smile on my face. When I played club basketball, I used to enjoy training as much as the actual games. The hard physical work sounds like fun to me, because at the level that I'm at now (still playing regular sport, but not 'super fit') I know I'd only be benefiting from everything I do. To get paid to play a sport and get assistance from expert trainers and medical staff to be at peak physical fitness is a dream job IMO.

I wouldn't be able to get through an AFL preseason - I struggle to do the majority of our preseason. My body is a mess. Too many injuries that I didn't look after at the time. I wish I listened to my body and didn't try to play hurt all the time.
 

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What does an AFL preseason involve?


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