Hard work starts on Monday - Rob

By Mark Stevens
23/6/17

Rob Baxter will welcome his title-winning Exeter Chiefs squad back for pre-season training on Monday, insisting the hard work starts immediately as they look to defend their Premiership Rugby crown.

The Chiefs head coach, along with a large nucleus of his playing squad, have spent the past month resting and relaxing following the club's Twickenham triumph over rivals Wasps.

However, that rest break will come to an end early next week when Baxter welcomes his players back for the first of what is sure to be a gruelling numbers of weeks in their pre-season programme.

The squad - minus those who have been involved with the British & Irish Lions and on international duty with their respective countries - will convene at Sandy Park for a couple of days, after which they will head to Portugal next Wednesday for their annual three-day team-bonding session.

Baxter said it would be approximately 10 days until pre-season training was running at full speed, with each player - including new recruits Nic White, Matt Kvesic, Toby Salmon, James Freeman and Tom O'Flaherty - all being closely monitored to see how they react to the club's regimen.

"There is an element of getting guys up and running. It is not like the olden days when players would have their first session and then not be able to walk for three weeks," Baxter said.

"You don't do it quite like that now, although all the players do have off-season programmes to complete themselves, so you expect them to come in relatively ready to go.

"We will bed them in over a week or 10 days until we get to the very, very high-intensity sessions we will build up to.

"It is done very much player by player. We see how players are dealing with the loading and go from there. Often players new to our training methods take a bit more monitoring and time to get up to speed while others will be used to what we do. Those used to it can often move on quickly while others might need more adaptation time."

"We are an early-start team during preseason. Monday and Tuesday will not be horrifically early but they will be starting by 8 most mornings," he continued. "We tend to start a lot of preseason days with swimming and they can be early – say, 6am.

"We also tend to do a lot of fitness work with the ball still. We like high-intensity game-like scenarios with high-intensity running and actions.

"That might involve stopping and going into contact drills, usually with bag work in preseason to get them used to banging into things.

"We will do some anaerobic work on Monday but it will be monitored and slowly get progressively tougher. The loading and intensity will progressively rise until we reach the level we want."

Such has been the success of the Chiefs in recent seasons, Baxter acknowledges it comes as no surprise that he starts pre-season these days without a number of his international contingent.

Jack Nowell and Tomas Francis are currently in New Zealand with the Lions, Michele Campagnaro is in Australia with Italy, while the England contingent of Henry Slade, Harry Williams, Don Armand, Jack Maunder and Ollie Devoto have only just returned from their summer tour to Argentina.

Alongside that group, players such as Luke Cowan-Dickie, Dave Ewers, Alec Hepburn, Sam Hill and Phil Dollman, have all been working hard during the off-season in the gym as they recover from a variety of injuries

Baxter explained: "On the whole, the guys who finished the season in the final but haven't been away or needed an operation, they will all be back on Monday.

"We always try and give the players a month off. Those who have not been involved in international rugby have pretty much had a month off, and that will run pretty much for everybody.

"There are certain players who have been in rehab right through – guys who have had operations – and their time away from the club is dealt with differently on an individual basis. It is the same with guys with long-term injuries, so it is going to be slightly different for them."