Chris Judd: How to train like a footy player

Training is about a lot more than just the physical effort that you put in. In this piece, Chris Judd shares five tips that he picked up during his time on the field.

Training as a professional footy player is pretty different from the kind of fitness regime most people follow. But there is some crossover. You’ve got to stay motivated, set goals and be open to new ideas. No matter what level you’re at, it can be helpful to engage some of that elite athlete mindset.

Competition is healthy – it’s just got to be done the right way. I was in competition for 14 years in professional football, and each week and each year I could potentially win. That was fair. What’s not fair is competing against idealised versions of people on social media. Or competing against someone much younger than you. That’s really demotivating. You can't win.

What you need to do is find a competition that you can potentially win, and you don’t have to look far. Comparison to other people is usually a mistake, but comparison to yourself is really important – particularly yourself three months ago or six months ago, or a year ago.

If you're an elite athlete, it's a competitive binary environment where you either win or you lose. If you want to be better than someone else, you have to do something that they're not prepared to do. And that something, obviously, has to be useful to performance.

How does that translate for your personal fitness journey? If you want to be better than you were a year ago, then you have to be prepared to do something that that person wasn't prepared to do a year ago. Compete against that version of you. And be accountable to your future self.

If you want to be different to how you were last year, there will have to be some behavioural changes. You really do see this all the time in AFL. It's the typical story of the young player: he comes in, doesn't know what he's doing, and gets pushed around. He doesn't get broken by that. Eventually he grows stronger and resolves to act differently, then ends up becoming the highly successful player the coach and the team want him to be.

Sometimes people get tired of trying to recreate themselves, and they don't have a crack at it anymore. They might see flaws or issues and just ignore them. But the more you do that, the bigger the problems grow. You're almost better off running towards a flaw, addressing it, and creating a plan. Then it stops it festering and building.

As long as you've got that ambition and that energy to keep recreating yourself, you can absolutely change behaviour and move towards achieving your goals.

Sometimes those attempts to recreate yourself will be embarrassing, and sometimes you will fail. Because each time you commit to recreating yourself you put yourself out there; you make yourself vulnerable. For professional athletes, that might mean doing things in your training that are odd or unique, putting you at risk of ridicule if you can't actually perform on the big stage.

It’s no different for people in the real world when they commit to doing something and three months later go back to their old ways. It’s that fear of ridicule from recreating yourself overriding the desire to experience change. And you’ve got to fight that. Embrace those new challenges and new ways of doing things.

You might have long-terms goals, like weight loss or endurance, and it makes sense to measure your progress along the way. But a big two-year plan will quickly become overwhelming, so you need to be able to shorten the horizons on your goals around the process.

Maybe tomorrow you go to the gym for 40 minutes, or you run a slightly longer distance. Build upon those really short and tight goals. Then have a longer-term measurable that's clear and fair to you as well.

This can be a tough process, and there comes a point when you've got to treat yourself how you would treat someone else, like a teammate or a friend. Sometimes that might mean saying, “This isn’t good enough.” But a lot of times it means quitting the constant negative self-talk and being a bit kind to yourself.

More often than not people are harsher on themselves than they would be to someone who they care about or who they were playing football with, for instance. People can be really savage on themselves, and there’s a level where it no longer becomes helpful.

But you don’t have to do it all on your own, and certainly having someone else who you're accountable to can help. Group activities or team sports can be a lot of fun, and if something is fun, you will do more of it. We are social animals, after all. It's often hard to find time in the day to socialise when people have kids, or work, or have busy schedules in general. So that may add as a motivating force, too. Build your own team, and cheer each other on.

Former Australian Rules footballer Chris Judd is familiar with how to get your heart rate up and push yourself physically. Twice winner of the prestigious Brownlow Medal, Chris is an honoured sportsman and father to four children, Oscar, Billie, Tom and Darcy. The information in this article is general information only and is not intended as medical, health, nutritional or other advice. You should obtain professional advice from a medical or health practitioner in relation to your own personal circumstances.