“It takes time. It would be nice if we could get instant results but it is something that needs to be done properly and with the players’ long-term future in mind,” he said.
“You can’t just get a young player in and hammer him with an intense weight program. It just makes no sense because you end up with your young players suffering from overuse injuries. We see too many young players with shoulders and knees strapped -–I often get suspicious that it is a case of doing too much, too quickly in the gym,” Turner said.
“Last year was the most challenging year in terms of the physical development our draftees required. We had draftees and rookies who needed to be stripped back so we could start again such as Jobe Watson. Then we had others who we simply needed to start getting some weight on like Darren Walsh and Jason Winderlich.”
For 18-year-old Walsh, year one of a serious weights program was an important part of his development as a player. During his days as a junior footballer, weight training was a rarity.
“I wanted to put some weight on because I knew it would be hard trying to compete at the top level being the size I was and the coaches wanted me to put on some weight and that will be the goal in the pre-season as well,” Walsh said.
“I didn’t find my first year too bad, it was more trying to make sure I had my technique right. Previously when I did do weights I think I had my technique wrong and I wasn’t getting the benefit out of the work.”
Walsh is making very good progress, according to Turner.
“We needed to put weight on him but any more than five or six kilograms over the course of the season is dangerous in the first year in terms of overuse injuries. You can’t forget their bodies are also getting used to the rigours of AFL football,” he said.
“He was around 70kg when he got here so he has put on around five and this year we will try and push him up towards 80kg. He has a unique supplement program worked out between our fitness coach John Quinn and Musashi. That and a more intense weights program will see him develop further.”
“Musashi products play an important role in the whole process, particularly when it comes to recovery. Those products enable the players to do more back-to-back intense sessions without the concern of players breaking down. But we use their whole range of products be it muscle growth, recovery, fat burning, joint protection – they have got it all covered.”
So for some it is all about putting muscle on, for others it is maintaining the status quo or even stripping some off. Essendon captain James Hird and exciting youngster Damian Cupido are two such examples.
“John Quinn is very conscious of the captain’s weight because of his history with stress fractures. We don’t like him to get much over 90kg so we are very strict on what we ask him to do,” Turner said.
“Damian Cupido came from Brisbane where there is a real emphasis on size but we didn’t think he was coping with it that well and it may not have been helping his shoulders which he had been having problems with. He came here at about 93kg and was playing around 88kg – so we stripped him back a bit.
“For someone like Jason Johnson – we would work on strengthening his upper body – I still think he has some improvement there. But we might even strip a little bit off the bottom half of him and hopefully that will make him more explosive over the first five metres.”
Cupido says his change in body shape has done him the world of good. “I think it helped me enormously to play a bit lighter. You just feel better and I think it has helped my speed and agility and that might help me spend a bit of time in the midfield,” he said.
“And now I am around the weight I think I need to be I’ll try and keep it there. I am training now to ensure that I don’t come back for pre-season carrying any extra weight. You get more out of pre-season that way – you benefit straight away rather than having to lose weight you have put on during the break.”
So when is a player at his optimum playing weight?
“John Quinn and the coaching department will make that call. They know what position they want players in and we just make sure his body type fits in with that,” Turner said.
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