THE AFL shutdown has forced players to do things differently and in GWS star Lachie Whitfield's case that has included training with former teammates Adam Tomlinson and Jon Patton.

Whitfield, one of the Giants' most important players who signed a seven-year contract extension during the off-season, returned to his family home in the coastal town of Mount Martha on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula last month.

The running machine has kept himself busy training in isolation, also regularly having a kick with GWS rebounding defender Nick Haynes.

Whitfield has also trained alongside Tomlinson and Patton, who left the Giants at the end of the 2019 season to join Melbourne and Hawthorn respectively, in separate sessions.

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"A few old teammates are down here, so it's been good to catch up with them," Whitfield told AAP.

"Obviously with the restrictions I'm keeping it to one other person. Nick's been the main guy, we're on the same program.

"We've been pretty good at picking ovals with nobody else on them."

Training with a player from a rival club in the middle of April would ordinarily raise some eyebrows and feel a little weird.

But competitive running sessions involving Whitfield and Tomlinson, who regularly featured on the podium in the Giants' 3km time trials, are nothing new.

"When he was at the Giants we'd do a lot of our off-season stuff and work on Christmas break together," Whitfield said.

"He's often down at his beach house, where my family house is. It sort of feels like that, almost normal, but obviously a bit different.

"He knows how the Giants are set up, so he probably doesn't have as many questions as I do."

Whitfield suggested time with family has been the biggest upside of the COVID-19 stoppage, while the 25-year-old has tuned out of "gossip" about a resumption date and season structure.

The former No.1 draft pick conceded shorter quarters would affect him and the League's endurance kings.

"We might lose a little bit of an advantage at the back end of quarters, when other people might normally be a bit more tired," Whitfield said.

"But it'll probably be a better spectacle, more intense ... and might make footy a bit more fun.

"I'm not fussed."