EVER wondered what the Crows get up to during the week? Or how the players prepare for a game while also looking after their bodies in what is a very long season?
AFL today involves so much more than training twice a week and showing up on match day. Adelaide utility Scott Stevens takes afc.com.au through an average week at West Lakes.
MONDAY – For Monday’s recovery session we split into six groups. We come down to the club in groups of five or six and have a stretch, a swim and a massage for half an hour, which allows us to feel fresh for the week ahead. Then we have a break, head home for some lunch and come back in the afternoon for a meeting with the coaches and a game review. The game review is where we watch tapes of the weekend’s game and go through both the positive and negative aspects of our performance. Depending on when we play, we might even have a light training run in the afternoon with the guys who played in the SANFL on Saturday.
TUESDAY – Tuesday’s are for weights and maintenance. The boys can choose from a few different activities, but I like yoga. Some of the other guys prefer gymnastics or pilates, which don’t sound like traditional training methods, but they’re excellent for core strengthening and flexibility. In the afternoon I try to fit in a bit of uni. I’m studying Human Resource Management at Uni SA, so it’s a good distraction from footy. A few of the boys, including Nathan Bock, like to have a hit of golf, which can get pretty competitive too from the sounds of it!
WEDNESDAY – Wednesday is the main training session of the week, unless we play on a Friday night or Sunday. We arrive about two hours prior to training and have a meeting in our respective groups, which for me this year has been the ‘backs’ or defensive group. Following that, we get changed and strapped up before heading into another meeting about 30 minutes before training where we discuss the upcoming game and our goals for the session. The training session can last anywhere from one to two hours and we cover all areas from skills, to goalkicking, to defensive zones and ball movement. After training we do some more recovery work, so we don’t pull up too sore the next morning.
THURSDAY – Thursday is usually a day we can spend away from the club. Some of the guys do a beach recovery session in the morning, while others, including myself, opt for another weights session. The younger guys at the club spend more time on specific skills they need to improve on whether it be fitness, goal kicking or another particular part of their game.
The rest of my day I use to run a program called ‘Beyond the Boundaries’, which is designed for year nine students who are at risk of not realising their full potential. Basically, we spend two or three hours at a couple of different schools just chatting to the kids and trying to help them in areas like leadership and goal setting.
A lot of the guys are involved in ‘Crows in Schools’, where players head off to schools and run coaching clinics with school kids. The club also coordinates visits to charities and hospitals, so quite often a handful of players will spend the afternoon trying to brighten the days of sick kids or fulfilling various media and sponsorship commitments.
FRIDAY – We always train the day before a game, so if we’re playing on the Saturday we’ll have a short session on the Friday. The team is named on a Thursday night, so Friday is our biggest day of meetings. We discuss the game, our individual roles, match-ups and areas we need to focus on.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY – Regardless of when the game is, I always like to have a low-key approach. Usually the boys try to relax throughout the day without being too lethargic, before heading to AAMI Stadium a couple of hours before the opening bounce. Each player has a different pre-game routine, but once that’s out of the way it’s game on and the entire week of preparation comes into play.
