PORT Adelaide is looking to re-establish the barrier of physical capability on its 10-day training camp in Dubai, with players to be pushed harder and longer in every conceivable way.

The club was widely recognised as the fittest in the AFL last season and ended the year with stats to justify the tag.

Port was the fastest finishing side in the League, winning 16 of 22 final terms in the home and away season – two more than any other (Fremantle).

The team flies out of Adelaide on December 5 for the Middle East and will return on the 15th.

Stuart Graham is the club's head of sports science, responsible for monitoring the players' training loads and then feeding advice to high performance manager Darren Burgess.

Graham told AFL.com.au that the Power's preliminary final exit in 2014 was proof of the improvement required.

As such, players will be tested both physically and mentally in Dubai.

"The general volume of training is certainly something that shifts up, and each year we try to layer in more in volume and intensity," Graham said.

"There's going to be a bump up in the frequency of sessions and the standard that's expected.

"The game style we play is quite demanding and we fell short this year, so we’ve got to up everything.

"It just gets harder and harder; you're throwing more and more at them and the gains get that bit smaller – but that's the competition…as you get fitter you're getting smaller gains off the same amount of work."

Graham said the major key to success at any training camp was to identify a player's threshold and have them surf as close to the lip as possible.

Too conservative and the player won't get enough out of his training, push too far and the potential for injury escalates quickly.

Graham says there's no magical number that signals a player's breaking point, and it was important to balance data with "feel".

"We just make sure that you're not pushing them over the edge, getting them as close to the edge as possible without tipping over and causing training related injuries," he said.

"Once you've had three years with a group and seen how they handle pre-season, your numbers just become stronger – your precision and certainty improves.

"Everyone's got their own thresholds and you find them over time…by no means have you got it 100 per cent accurate, but you can get a stronger feel for where everyone's at."

A former SANFL footballer himself, Graham understands what it's like to be tested by coaches and fitness staff.

The PhD candidate also spent almost four years as a sports physiologist at the Australian Institute of Sport, where – amongst other athletes – he worked closely with the national rowing team.

He said the way rowers trained was indicative of endurance athletes and was something he and Burgess had tried to instill in the Power's playing group.

"Seeing the training standards different sports have, particularly rowers, they were just amazing in the volumes and intensities that they go at," he said.

"You appreciate what can be tolerated by athletes who probably dedicate their training to one style of fitness and you start to see what is possible.

"The intensive monitoring, the routine nature of monitoring that tends to happen more so in endurance sports – that's something we've shaped here."