The last time Huw Bennett was in Fiesch, Switzerland, he quite literally threw himself into the heart of the action.
As the former Wales hooker addresses members of the media at the team's World Cup training camp, one of several paragliders occupying the sky above the small valley in the Swiss Alps swoops into view. Four years ago, he says, that was him.
"I did it up from where we stayed," he explained. "It was nine days into the camp and I felt like the players needed some kind of pick up, so me and Bobby [Paul Stridgeon] did it. The boys were warming up down below and we came paragliding while Mission Impossible was playing. I don't want to replicate what we did then [this year], but we might have something up our sleeve!"
READ MORE: Early starts, gruelling sessions and cable cars - Inside Wales' Switzerland World Cup training camp
While he may not take to skies this time around, Bennett's willingness to pull such a stunt is quite telling of his approach in his new role as Wales' head of physical performance. He is as fearless as much as he is ruthless, prepared to put his own body on the line to keep his players in top condition, both mentally and physically.
Such an approach is needed, having been given the huge task of turning around fitness levels that Warren Gatland said simply weren't good enough during Wales' dismal Six Nations campaign earlier this year.
Bennett hasn't held back, either, with his beastings already becoming somewhat legendary. A five-week mini-camp back home in Wales has seen players pushed to their limits in gruelling fitness tests, left dripping in sweat after leaving it all out on the training pitch. Their initial preparations even saw the squad put through an intense bootcamp at The Green Mile outdoor gym in Taff's Well, where they were tested psychologically, being placed in hoods, doused in water and subjected to the sound of babies crying to see how they would cope in high-stress situations.
That was just the start, however, with players now being tested in the Swiss Alps, where temperatures have pushed 30 degrees over the course of their stay.
"The mini camps were about building resilience and the base of a foundation of fitness," said Bennett. "When we come to Switzerland it’s not for them to feel the sessions are easier, it’s so we can push them harder.
"When we come here we want to take it to another level and all the players have bought into that. That’s why we had the mini camps in the Vale but just because they’re fitter doesn’t mean it gets easier.
"We’ve had a couple of conditioning sessions, into rugby, then into skills. Obviously it’s a little bit different between positions. The forwards are doing a lot more contact conditioning, a lot more mauling and scrummaging. The backs are more high-speed metres in their core rugby drills.
"The boys will say they have had a few hard ones already but I can assure them there’s a few more hard ones to come."
The squad has certainly been pushed hard so far in Fiesch, with a session on Saturday afternoon leaving players knackered after intense games of touch rugby, interspersed with various "punishments" including lifting tyres and medicine balls and shifting calories on an exercise bike.
That is all set against the backdrop of the squad's "live high, train low" policy, which sees players stay 2,200m above sea level before dropping down around 1,000 metres on gondolas (cable cars) to train: a move which has taken some getting used to for the new faces in camp.
But despite being left covered in sweat, with almost nothing in the tank, the players have taken well to the new regime, putting in the hard yards on the pitch as they look to, in Bennett's words, "take a positive from a negative" and make firm improvements upon last season.
"We’ve had a good time with a large core of the group and, in fairness to the boys, even in the off-season they put in the work we set out in terms of an off-season programme," he said. "They came in in good shape.
"We’ve had the fortune to be able to adjust as we go and introduce more rugby at an earlier stage than planned so that’s been great. That really is down to how the boys have gone in the off-season and how they’ve gone about it and approached the mini camps at the Vale and our first five days in Fiesch.
"They have got a really good attitude to what’s going on out here. We give them an insight sometimes into what the session is. Sometimes we let the rumours run because it’s quite funny what comes back sometimes. But the mindset is that when they come down on the gondola they have to work hard and need to be accurate with their skills.
"They really buy into it. They know it is hard work, but they apply themselves in the right way."
A large factor behind the players' positive mindset is Bennett's understanding of what they're going through, having won 51 caps for his country himself. He is about to embark on his sixth World Cup campaign, his third as a coach. He knows there is a fine balance to be struck in how far he pushes them, while there is a willingness to go with them and support them through the most gruelling of tasks.
"I do like to train myself and I do have a bond with some of the lads because they know I like to go to dark places at times. It does help when you are blowing the whistle. I don't do exactly the same as them, but I'm willing to go to those places you have to take yourself if you want to go and get the gains from it.
"In the last week they will work in two two-day blocks, morning and afternoon with weights in the morning. There will be a little bit more rugby during those double sessions. You have to plan everything properly so you don't break people - you don't want to take them to dark places just for the sake of it."
Crucially, the plan put in place by Bennett and his team seems to be working, both in terms of fitness and squad morale. Gone is the sluggish, laboured team which struggled through the Six Nations with confidence at an all-time low; here is a squad that - in fitness sessions, at least - looks fired up and ready to right some wrongs.
The real challenge, of course, is translating that to their rugby.
Bennett added: "Coming here, guys are surpassing the numbers they were setting at the end of Switzerland last time. We've been fortunate to have a lot of the players for a long build-up coming here, and that's why it's different. Speaking to the players, they feel in a much better place, even in our first four days of Switzerland than we did leaving [in 2019].
"Even before we've come out here, guys have hit PBs back in the Vale so the confidence from the players is obviously massive. And guys are making improvements throughout the weeks. So yes it looks good on paper, but now we're in a phase where we really are concentrating on rugby as well, and that's just making sure that their numbers are replicated in our rugby sessions.
"The guys are in a very good place. Everyone's applied themselves as you'd expect. It really is an exciting feeling among the group.”
So far, so good. But with little more than a month until Wales' first World Cup warm-up match against England, itself just over three weeks from the start of the showpiece in France, Bennett shows no sign of easing up.
Asked if the heavy workload would continue through the warm-ups, the former Ospreys man added: "Yeah, you've got to. At the end of the day, playing England twice and South Africa are huge Test matches but they're not the World Cup.
"Don't get me wrong, you want the players to go out and have good performances, they're putting on the red jersey, you don't want to put them in a situation where they don't feel prepared, or fatigued. Of course there's that element to it. But the end goal is being in prime condition come that first game of Rugby World Cup."
