Michael Duff has hit the ground running as Swansea City boss with his new team being run ragged during a series of exhausting pre-season tests.
The Northern Irishman, who was finally unveiled as the Swans' new manager on Thursday, had pledged to use his first few weeks in the job to improve fitness levels across the squad, with an upcoming week-long training camp in Spain designated to do so.
But with less than six weeks to go until their Championship opener against Birmingham, there's no time like the present for Duff and his team to make improvements, with the Swansea squad left exhausted after being put through a gruelling first pre-season session.
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Having reported back for training and met their new manager for the first time, the team were put through physical and mental tests to determine where they were at after the summer break and what areas they needed to improve in before the first game of the season.
"Today is just an opportunity for us to kind of reconnect with [the players]," Swansea's head of performance Tom Barnden said. "The biggest thing for me is to put them through some tests that will first and foremost guide us on how they are physically and mentally [and also] shape some of the some of the individualised programmes that we will give the players. We put the players through a battery of different tests over the course of the day; standard strength tests, running tests, medical tests."
The squad were split up into groups to carry out the tests, which saw them put through the paces in the gym to test their musculoskeletal strength as well as having their body fat levels measured.
"We'll sit down once all the data has been gathered and work together to highlight any differences, imbalances, areas that might need improvement," said club therapist Matthew Murray. "Whether it's hamstring strength or anybody who needs to work on some mobility, body fat, anything like that. We'll work together and devise a plan over the coming weeks to get those players back to where they need to be."
The real killer, however, was the MAS - maximal aerobic speed - test which capped the first day back for Duff's new side, with players left shattered after the gruelling running exercise.
"It's essentially a test of endurance," Barnden explained. "It allows us to calculate their maximal aerobic speed. They run a set distance for a given length of time, which essentially allows us to see how far they can run. From there we can calculate their individual MAS scores. Then when we condition the players in pre-season, we can prescribe their thresholds and individual limits, which helps guide our practice."
There weren't too many smiles on the faces of the Swansea players as they completed the punishing exercise, with midfielder Azeem Abdulai seen falling to the ground in exhaustion as he caught his breath.
The full-on training session comes after Duff suggested he would not be going easy on his players during their training camp in Alicante, with improving fitness very much the focus of the trip.
“From my point of view, heading to Spain will be that opportunity to get eyes on the players and find out everything about them,” he said. “To see how they cope with physicality, how they cope with pressure, how they cope with stress. Then it’s about seeing them around the place and getting to know them as people because that’s the most important thing.
“The work in Spain will be about fitness. It’s not about dropping in tactical information or anything like that because the squad is thinner than it will be come the start of the season. It’s about getting fitness levels up and meeting the players as much as anything.”
