Adelaide United Women Strength and Conditioning Coach, Eleni Vosnakis, says managing player loads is imperative at this stage of the year.
The Reds held their second optional training session involving players from last season’s Westfield W-League squad and the best local Women’s National Premier League players on Sunday morning at Saint Ignatius’ College.
It was the second training session following a friendly game as well as a testing day since mid-August.
Vosnakis said with the majority of players in season with their local WNPL clubs preparing for the upcoming finals series; it was important to ensure training was not too physically demanding to prevent the risk of fatigue and injury.
“Obviously we’re not pushing them too hard because we understand many of them are approaching finals in the WNPL,” Vosnakis explained.
“So the standard is quite high as you can imagine when you bring a number of high quality players together.
“But with obviously just the one game we haven’t been able to see all of them in action just yet.”
She said workloads would naturally increase once the local campaign concludes ahead of the official commencement of pre-season.
“From a conditioning aspect we won’t build up too much because load management is super important at the moment,” she said.
“But as soon as finals are out the way and we have a better idea of what our training schedule will look like then yes we’ll definitely look to build and lift the intensity.
“Because a number of them probably aren’t used to working at higher intensities at local level at the moment.”
In saying that, AUFC Women Head Coach, Adrian Stenta, said the Reds players from last season were in solid physical condition.
“Their sharpness and conditioning is pretty good,” Stenta said.
“We’re reasonably happy with where they’re at. We did some fitness testing a couple of weeks ago just to get a sighter on where they are.
“And you’d expect them to be in pretty good condition for a lot of them heading into WNPL finals.
“So it’s just about keeping them ticking over, we were conscious of the interrupted year that we’ve had with COVID so just making sure that they can maintain a good level of physical fitness.”
