Sent in for shoulder surgery, Wright was given strict orders to best prepare him for a full-on assault on his fourth year with the Kangaroos.
"The plan was always to drop the skin-folds and get as fit as I can so when I'm ready to do weights I can hit it as hard as I can," Wright explained to kangaroos.com.au shortly after completing a series of running sessions at Park City High in Utah.
"Putting on weight is one thing I needed to do and I'm starting to get back into the gym now to do weights now, but my first box to tick off was to get fit so I can really shove the food in and hit the weights hard when I'm allowed to."
The 21-year old has been a real surprise packet on the high-performance camp with his running ability at unprecedented levels.
"When I did my shoulder, the only thing I could do is run so that helped me a bit but I guess in the off-season, I just stuck to my program and I'm a lot stronger through the core now so I feel stronger when I'm running."
And Wright says he's even surprised himself.
"I thought I was in good nick, but I didn't think I would be in this good a nick. I thought I'd be middle range, not this high up at this stage but I probably needed to get a lot fitter to be able to make a bigger impact at AFL level."
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"My end of year meeting was a lot about the professionalism sort of stuff and my skin-folds are the lowest they've been since I've been at the club and I'm holding my weight at the moment too. It's everything combined really."
As for the shoulder, it's been a slow but successful recovery.
"It's starting to really come along now but I'm just taking it slow. The physios have been really good and they've got me to the stage where I need to be at right now."
Wright came third in a two-kilometre time trial on Sunday and was among the best performers in the 300-metre shuttle runs.
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