IF A week is a long time in footy, a year must seem like a lifetime for Gold Coast coach Guy McKenna, who says his young Suns are miles in front of where they were last year.

The Suns wrapped up their pre-Christmas training at Carrara on Tuesday morning with some match practice before parting ways for two weeks.

More than half the squad completed the two-hour session in hot and humid conditions, while some of the younger players sat out as their training workloads were monitored.

Most players have eight weeks training under their belts since resuming in late October - including a two-week camp at high altitude in Arizona - and McKenna said the improvements were enormous.

"It's amazing what 12 months can do to some of these young fellas," McKenna said.

"Given the conditioning and size and strength of some of these boys, I'm really rapt going into Christmas."

He said it was a stark contrast from the same time last year, when the Suns were in the midst of assembling a squad for their first AFL season.

"If you look at last pre-season, we had the uncontracted players come in 10 weeks after their season, we had the draftees turn up in December and had a very disjointed pre-season which made it very difficult for the conditioning staff," he said.

"This year it's been one in, all in, and made it so much better. The fitness level of everyone has increased, the continuity and chemistry amongst the group has increased so we're a mile ahead of where we were last year.

"But you know what? Port and Essendon and Carlton and West Coast and Geelong even would be a mile ahead of where they were this time last year so we're under no illusion about how hard it's going to be to climb up the ladder."

McKenna said he had already seen the benefits of the November training camp in Arizona, with 20 players recording personal bests over the club's 2km time trial.

He said each player would be given a training program to follow over the Christmas break, and expected his players to avoid the on and off-field pitfalls over the period.

"What we expect of our young fellas on the Gold Coast, I think they're very clear and understand what the ramifications are," he said.

"Apart from the end results, it's more about being comfortable with the education the boys have got. The education has been fairly clear since the end of the season. Going into this break I think the boys are very clear about what's expected.

"They were fantastic coming back after our last round, fantastic through Arizona and been fantastic up until Christmas and I certainly hope that'll be the case coming back."

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs