“We’ve made one room a gym-based room.” “We’ve made one room a gym-based room.” Images: Theron Kirkman

WORKIN’ OUT

“Each of our gym sessions lasts between 45 minutes to an hour and starts with us having to do max sets of chin-ups and push-ups. Our trainers are hopeful that by the end of our long-term program in 2012 we can get to 30 push-ups and maybe 15 chin-ups. I’m not too bad, but some of the other girls are struggling to get one chin-up done! They might struggle a little bit with that target.“We’re put through plenty of leg work, plenty of squats, we do bench presses, glut blasts and a few core stability exercises. We’ll generally complete three sets of between 6-12 reps, depending on the exercise. We’ll mix between two or three exercises, and then move on to three more and so on. It’s about 10-12  exercises all up, all of about three sets each.“The squats are my least favourite. All us girls complain because we already have hockey legs and hockey butts, and we don’t like making them any bigger. So the trainers always demand we squat heavy weights, just to make us more stumpy-legged!”

MINT CONDITION

“To complement our weights sessions, we do about half an hour’s conditioning work as well. It might be running on Tuesday and spin cycling on Thursday … On the bikes it’s all based on getting our heart rates up as opposed to what speeds we can reach. Some girls up their resistance because they like to actually get a workout, whereas others can’t work with the resistance; they can’t pedal with the resistance and get their heart rates up at the same time.“Sometimes we’ll use the running track near our gym. We’ll run two kilometres – or otherwise we’ll do 800m runs where we do two laps at moderate pace and one lap sprinting, two moderate, one sprinting etc. I’m more of a sprinter. My fitness this year is up from what it’s been over the last couple of years. I’m probably above average in terms of fitness. I’m the quickest in the team – that’s my claim to fame. I just wish I could get some of those slow-twitch fibres and exchange them for some of my fast-twitch fibres.”

HOCKEY HEALTH

“I’ve learned a few food prep and nutrition tricks from the team-mate I’ve been living with the last two years. I actually hate cooking, but these days I’ll go back home to Mum and ask, ‘Mum, why are you doing this?’ My biggest downfall is that I have Coco Pops for breakfast, which – I’ve checked the nutritional information – aren’t too bad compared to some of the other cereals. I can’t stomach anything else. I don’t mind porridge, but I have to have brown sugar and cream on it.“Before the morning stick and ball training session I’ll have a banana and then come back home and have my Coco Pops. For our main meals at home we have what you might call designated meal nights. Sometimes we’ll have a pizza night, or a steak and veg night or stir-fry night. We have burger night as well. It’s all home-made stuff so we know what’s going into it.”

CHANGE OF PLAN

“In the last few years my diet and fitness have changed dramatically. I’ll still – after tournaments and when I’m back home after the six-month stint in Perth – let loose a little bit and eat whatever I want. Generally when we’re in Perth we’re pretty good and we stick to a pretty strict diet – not overly strict, I guess, but we try to eat healthy and do all the right things so that our fitness can take care of itself.“Fitness has always been one of those things I’ve wanted to work on. I find I get really buggered in games compared to everyone else. It’s match fitness more than anything, but in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics that was one of my main goals, to get my fitness up.“After the Olympics we had a really long break. I did my first beep test back with the open NSW group and it was really bad – the worst I’d ever done. But then coming over to Perth about two months later I recorded the best beep test I’d ever done when we returned to training. Once you have achieved your optimum fitness it’s hard to stay at that level. Especially in this program.”