Pre-season training always throws everything, including a couple of kitchen sinks, at you. It’s a long hot summer full of sweat, lactic acid and pushing yourself to get yourself into the best shape possible. Our head conditioning coach continually comes up with new ways to challenge us.
The most famous, and most grueling of all, is the sand dunes session at Kurnell, near Cronulla. Sand dune running is a different type of running that is taxing on the body as you try to power up the dunes, while your feet sink deep into the sand with each step forward.
Recently, we were told to meet early on a Saturday morning at a specific location, and to prepare for a new challenging session. We didn’t know what to expect, but as we were told it would be “challenging” we all prepared for the worst.
On arrival at the location our fitness coach informed us that he was happy with how we had been training that week, and he had come up with a new challenging form of exercise for us… Zumba!
It’s hard to describe Zumba. It’s a combination of aerobics, dancing and pretty much all forms of exercise that footballers don’t want to be seen dead doing (hence the “challenging” aspect). Our fitness coach was in hysterics, and after a while we saw the funny side of it too as we realised that we’d been stitched up.
Injured players such as Craig Bolton watched on from the side, happy for once that they couldn’t take part in the session. However, Craig then decided to make matters worse by walking around taking happy snaps on his iPhone whilst we all moved like baby giraffes to the Zumba music.
We all had a bit of a laugh and decided to have as much fun as we could throughout the session. Irish import Chris McKaigue was the standout and dubbed “The Plank” for his inability to bend any part of his anatomy. Gary Rohan didn’t stop smiling the whole session, and later on was apparently seen enquiring as to when the next session was.
Afterwards we were told that it was intentionally a lighter training session for us as were coming off a tough week, and that instead of going for a light jog it would be a good way to change things up. Change things up it did!
Before I go, I just finished reading ‘Standing Tall’ by Tom Harley. It’s a book I especially recommend to any teenager who aspires to be drafted one day, or someone who wants to get the best out of their football abilities. It gives a great insight into the right and wrong ways to go about earning respect in a football team. These qualities of course can be applied to other aspects of life, not just football. As we learnt with our Zumba session, training can get pretty varied, but respect is a constant in a footy club.
Ted Richards
@richards_report
