An “unparalleled” time in football has provided clubs with challenges they’ve never experienced before, and that’s no different for North Melbourne’s strength and conditioning team.
After months of preparation in the lead-up to Round 1, the Roos’ fitness staff had four quarters of footy to see all the hard work in action.
Barely a few hours later, it was back to the drawing board - this time for an unprecedented in-season two-month hiatus, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
High Performance Manager Jona Segal has been through plenty of highs and lows in 20 years at the club, but nothing could prepare him and his team for this.
“It was just trying to work out, ‘What’s real? What do we actually need to do now? What are we going to be faced with over the coming weeks?’, so that we have players well prepared and well equipped,” Segal told North Media.
“The first thing was to get as much of the equipment out as we can, and from there we can start to formulate programs based on the information we’ve got around resumption, what sort of rules and regulations were in place around how players can train, what they can access, what they can’t.”
Segal said the players embraced a difficult situation, keen to build off an impressive win in round one.
“We have a platform where every player has their own program prescribed on,” he explained.
“It’s heavy reliant on communication between myself, the other strength and conditioning coaches and the players, to ensure what we’re prescribing is actually achievable with the equipment that they’ve got.
“We need to be flexible; there needs to be the ability to adapt and to almost train a bit ‘old-school’ as well, with some of the equipment that’s around.”
Hay bales, tyres and tractors have become a familiar sight in players’ training regimes.
“I think there’s an element of enjoyment, some of the players really getting around that. It’s old-school stuff,” Segal explained.
“Ultimately it’s a massive change in stimulus … they are used to training in the same gym four or five times a week, know the equipment back-to-front and know exactly what it’s going to look like.
“All of a sudden to be thrown into a very different scenario, where they have to be creative with how they are getting their strength work done and injury-prevention done … it’s a challenge in itself.
“A lot of the guys are thriving in that, and really embracing the fact they can come up with some unique ideas. They’ve been really good and pro-active in discussing those with us, as far as how they are going to use those with their program.”
Segal said the focus would be on ensuring players returned as close as possible to game-ready.
“We took the opportunity just to give them a little conditioning boost, but the big focus has been trying to ensure that the players are absolutely ready to resume team-training, games-based training when the time comes to come back together as a group, so that two or three week period (before games) doesn’t create any issue from a soft tissue or recovery perspective, and that it can really have a strong football focus,” he added.
“It’s going to be an even shorter time frame until round three comes around, and round four comes around.
“Round one is often the sorest, with the exception of finals, that guys are for the year. We’re probably going to see the same again for round two, but then we are going to ask them to back up within four or five days for round three, round four and so soon.
“We are doing the best we can to make sure guys are physically ready; that is our challenge at the moment, and that’s the lens we are looking to for their programs.”
Watch the full interview with High Performance Manager Jona Segal below.
