BRISBANE Lions will send "six or seven" players to Arizona in November for altitude training as part of the club's pre-season.
The players will include captain Jonathan Brown, Daniel Merrett, Simon Black and Jed Adcock.
The move follows in the footsteps of other clubs like Collingwood and Gold Coast, who will both head to Arizona in the pre-season, and North Melbourne, which will train in Utah.
Lions coach Michael Voss said the move - a first for the Lions - would serve two purposes.
He said it would help elevate the players' fitness and serve as a fact-finding mission for potential future trips for the larger squad.
Voss said the experienced players had the most to gain.
"They've been around for a while and we can monitor their loads and we can change the stimulus of their training and break up pre-season training for them," Voss said.
"They're probably at a different stage to where a lot of our other guys are so we'll work them that way."
Brown and Merrett missed large chunks of last season and have plenty to gain from a big pre-season.
Brown missed a total of 12 matches after two sickening collisions caused multiple facial fractures, while Merrett missed the final 10 matches with a back injury.
Both were on restricted running programs by the end of the season.
Voss said the team's vast number of young players could gain just as much by training in Brisbane as they could from heading to altitude.
The Lions surrendered a number of fourth quarter leads in 2011, although Voss said that had more to do with composure and decision-making than it did with fitness.
"Don't underestimate the significance of being able to train in the Queensland heat and humidity," he said.
"It's hard to be able to train at that level. We think we'll get enough gains out of this pre-season and this summer with our heat and in the future we'll look at going to altitude."
The Lions' players will head to Arizona in mid-November.
Michael Whiting covers Brisbane Lions news for afl.com.au. Follow him on Twitter: @mike_whiting
