Despite Melbourne’s temperature subsidising momentarily, the heat remains on the increase at Punt Road as Richmond’s pre-season training ramps up with 2016's NAB Challenge on the horizon.
Just 37 days remain until the Tigers travel to Mandurah for their opening pre-season fixture against Fremantle, and training sessions in the interim will be longer and more game-specific according to Richmond’s Physical Performance Manager, Peter Burge.
Speaking to Roar Vision earlier this week, Burge outlined what the players can expect over the coming weeks, with the start of the season-proper absolutely front of mind.
“Training probably progresses now into more match-play simulation-type training,” he said.
“There’s a little bit of conditioning we still need to do, because we are preparing for round one, ultimately, and the NAB (Challenge) is a great preparation component to that … so match-simulation, more specific drills, increasing time of training.
“The guys are doing a fair bit of hard work, our GPS numbers are increasing with that as well, so load-management becomes important for some players; it’s similar to every other year but we’re just trying to do things better this year than what we did them last year.
“Obviously there are changes to our training the coaches are implementing, but in terms of numbers in rehab and guys healthy and training, it’s looking pretty good.”
A key element of Richmond’s training schedule again this year was a pre-season training camp in northern Queensland held in Palm Cove and Cairns in mid-Decemer.
Burge indicated he can already see signs of positives gained from the camp upon the post-Christmas resumption of training.
“We’ve been up to North Queensland the last couple of years with the heat-training philosophy and we’ve put a lot of research into that and we feel we get a lot from it, and this year was no different,” he said.
“It was a fantastic camp; the guys worked extremely hard.
“The way the guys have come back from Christmas, some of the indicators we’ve looked at so far, there’s no doubt that the camp has given us a really good platform.”
Richmond’s Friday morning (January 15) training session will be open to the public with the gate out the front of the Tigerland Superstore open from 9.15am for a 9.30am start.
A larger twilight training session and free kids’ clinic will be held at Holm Park Recreation Reserve in Beaconsfield from 4pm on Friday, January 22.
