A contingency of 17 players cut their post season holiday plans short and travelled to the Qatari Capital of Doha, to take part in a gruelling 14 day pre-season training schedule.
Based at the world renowned ASPIRE Academy for Sport Excellence, the camp was the workings of Carlton’s High Performance Training Unit, in particular, Senior Fitness Coach Justin Cordy.
“Ideally we would have liked another week here, but the logistics of travelling with a large group and the timing of the facility requirements in Qatar (Ramadan and facility bookings) meant that we could only stay for two weeks, however we will continue to train for a further week in Abu Dhabi,”’ he said.
In recent years, the Club has placed a great deal of importance on sports science in relation to the performance of its athletes, which was why ASPIRE was chosen as the location to hold this type of training camp.
“Over the past two weeks we have conducted research that has not been done before in such a group,” Justin said.
“We have formed collaborative research and professional development links with the staff in Qatar and with the research facilities here, we can assess the efficacy of this new approach to pre-season training.”
“We have individually monitored the players responses to the camp to ensure they are coping and responding to training, and assessed the overall effectiveness on the camp at increasing aerobic fitness, blood volume, red blood cell mass, the players ability to adapt to heat as well as sleep and performance changes.
The players will complete their training in Qatar on Thursday and travel to Abu Dhabi where they will join the rest of the coaching panel and various other players for the final week of their pre-season camp.
