Darren Burgess, fresh from a stint as fitness guru at Premier League giant Liverpool FC, wants to do away with 'light' training runs for more intensive workouts in every session - similar to the training mechanism he oversaw at the English heavyweights.
While AFL clubs have up to two light sessions a week during the regular season, Burgess says it is time for Port Adelaide to always train at a high intensity.
"The training intensity that happens on a daily basis in the Premier League is something that took me a bit by surprise," Burgess said in his first interview with AFL.com.au.
"I saw it a lot when I was with the Socceroos and I was lucky enough to go around and visit most top European clubs and gridiron and basketball and baseball clubs.
"But it still didn't really hit me until I got into a club like Liverpool and saw how hard the senior players, in particular, trained each day.
"Even if they had a game the next day their training intensity was right up there and you just restricted the time.
"Hopefully we can do that at Port Adelaide, where we might not be training for very long, but the intensity is always high."
The Power landed a huge coup by luring the experienced 37-year-old back to Alberton after five years heading the fitness departments of the Socceroos and then Liverpool FC in the English Premier League.
(Burgess previously worked at the Power under Mark Williams.)
Coaching at one of the most famous sporting clubs on the planet had its perks, Burgess said, claiming he was regularly exposed to trailblazing technologies usually unavailable in Australia.
In the lead-up to the 2012 Olympic Games Burgess said England was "alive with sports science" and that he was able to use and analyse the use of various technologies from other sports and disciplines.
And in a clear boost for the Power, Burgess said his experience in the northern hemisphere availed him to technologies rarely cited in Australian-based sports science.
"I was lucky to be at a club like Liverpool where people want to present to you different ideas and different technologies. You're at the cutting edge which, sometimes being in Australia, you miss out on," he said.
"You get exposed to it on a weekly basis with clubs like the New York Jets or Chicago Bulls saying 'have you seen this?' 'have you tried this?'; the respect that Liverpool has in world sport meant I was exposed to a few things like that."
Burgess admitted there were technologies he would utilise at Alberton, but that he wanted to keep them secret weapons.
"There's a few things that I'll hopefully bring back to Port, but I don't want to tell people about it," he said.
Despite wanting to alter the Power's training habits, Burgess issued a glowing report of AFL players, labelling them the best-rounded athletes in the world.
While conceding elite soccer players were more agile and possessed greater acceleration, the diverse qualities needed to excel in the AFL meant Australian footballers came out on top, he said.
And Burgess dispelled the myth that soccer players needed a greater aerobic base than AFL players.
"AFL athletes are at least as good in terms of their aerobic fitness if not better but in terms of acceleration and agility the soccer athletes are definitely better," he said.
"In terms of strength and power and things like that then it's definitely the AFL guys … they're probably the most complete athletes in world sport really because you need so many different physical capabilities to succeed in it.
"There's no problem in how AFL guys compare."
Physically, anyway.
In terms of players' finances and lifestyles, Burgess said the difference was staggering.
He said he was blown away by the earnings of Premier League players.
"You can't comprehend the amount of money that they actually earn, even if you say it, it just doesn’t sort of resonate until you go into their houses," he said.
"I probably got a soft landing being involved with the Socceroos and being able to see some of their lifestyles like Tim Cahill, but it still just didn't hit home until I saw some of the 18, 19 year-old players' houses and what they were driving.
"Compare that to a first or second-year AFL player, these guys are earning more than Gary Ablett, Chris Judd and Nick Riewoldt put together and this is an 18 year-old guy who's probably played one or two games.
"It certainly puts into perspective the global factor of soccer compared to the intense local factor of AFL."
But while EPL players stood to earn much more than their AFL counterparts, Burgess said they often paid for it with minimal-at-best time off.
Unlike AFL players who get one day off a week in season and up to eight weeks' break before pre-season, elite soccer players might get a few weeks off a year in total.
Rest is rare.
"The really good players play all year round, they actually don't get an off season," Burgess said.
"There's no players' association, there's nothing like that to say that they must have 'this many days off' or 'this many weeks off at the end of the year', they just play year-round.
"A lot of the really good soccer players just don’t get that downtime that the AFL guys get where they can relax a little bit."
As for the AFL itself, Burgess was full of praise, especially for the help the League offered its players on a wide rage of issues.
He said soccer players in Europe didn’t receive anything near the level of support Australian footballers received from their league.
"They get a reasonable amount of help over there, but overall they would get less help than what the AFL would provide our guys and that's on a whole range of issues," he said.
"All the lectures and education sessions the AFL provides the players, that's certainly not the case (in Europe)."
Harry Thring is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL
