Heading into his third season as West Coast's fitness coach, Warren  Kofoed answers a few questions regarding the squad's pre-season training program

Tell us how the pre-season has worked so far for season 2011?

We split the pre-season into three phases prior to games approaching. We make sure to hit volume early and then begin to sharpen things up before Christmas.

We obviously have to be mindful with the guys just coming off a break and with flights and everything else, so it’s currently a transition week but then we jump into three solid weeks prior to the NAB cup when we really ramp things up and it becomes very game specific. 

So effectively we build a base of endurance and then repeat speed and now we’re into the sharper end of things.

Has there been a major sign of improvement since the beginning of pre-season in October?

Yeah definitely but we’re still hoping for further improvements. We will re-test at the end of January for specifics but it’s very much individually based now.

There are some players that we know what they’ll produce, such as what time Tim Houlihan will run a 2km time trial so we don’t really need to test him, but we might want to test some of the younger guys.

It won’t be a blanket rule, Houlihan may do the speed testing so it will just be dependent upon player needs and what we want to see them improving on.

Has it been difficult managing the programs for both the rehab group and the main training group to keep their fitness levels relatively the same?

We only have four or five in rehab at the moment, there’s been off-season surgery and injuries from last season which means the first month of training becomes a little bit problematic with regard to structuring up the sessions.

After December we have had a really good group out there and predominantly the majority of the squad has got all the work in.

Has there been any change from this pre-season compared to your previous two seasons at the club?

The group is a little bit more mature so we’ve got Brad Ebert, Chris Masten and Scott Selwood coming into their fourth year now so the volumes have gone up with that increase in maturity. We have seen that these players can cope with greater workloads so we have given that to them.

As far as a change in pre-season, I think the game evolves every year so we evolve with it. There has been a good strong focus on all aspects of our conditioning this pre-season.

Have there been any players during this pre-season that impressed you thus far?

Chris Masten has been a standout this pre-season, I think that’s been recognised across the group, particularly with his attitude. There have been a number of them really, Pat McGinnity has been really good, the young guys coming through like Tom Swift and Brad Sheppard have also been solid.

There has been a real focus from the younger guys and the improvements they have made have been really positive.