Our new fitness guru

[Sir-Allen-Jakovich 0]

Press release from MELBOURNEfc:

MELBOURNEfc is pleased to announce that Bohdan Babijczuk has been appointed as the club's Physical Preparation Manager.

Bohdan has had a strong involvement with AFL football along with other numerous sporting codes and his experience will further boost the club's coaching and fitness resources. He is a highly experienced and respected athletics coach.

Prior to joining Melbourne, Bohdan worked with the Australian National Basketball Team (the Boomers), as Head Fitness Coach from 2002 until 2006, while he also worked as a consultant and specialist speed coach with Richmond, St Kilda, and the Kangaroos during 2005 and 2006.

Before these appointments, Bohdan was the Fitness Coordinator at Hawthorn Football Club from 1994 until 2004, after a stint with Collingwood as Weights and Conditioning Coach from 1991 to 1993.

General Manager - Football Operations, Chris Fagan said of Bohdan's appointment, "Bohdan comes to us with a proven ability to improve the running capacity of AFL players. He was highly respected at the Hawthorn Football Club for his work in this area and is very keen to apply his knowledge & experience to the Melbourne playing group.

"The club is also delighted that Brentan Parsons has agreed to remain as Rehabilitation & Sports Science Coordinator, whilst Adam Paulo, who recently completed a Masters Degree in Sports Science, has been appointed as full time Player Energy & Wellness Coordinator. All three are highly qualified and the club is confident that they will form a very competent and progressive strength and conditioning unit," Fagan added.

Bohdan has a Bachelor of Education - Physical Education and is a Level 5 Athletic Coach. Bohdan will take up his position with MELBOURNEfc in November, 2006.

[brey9186 102]

thought he was the guy i was thinking of

his early 2000 ahwks were supreme athletes, they were fit, fast and muscular

he can only do good down at melbourne

our young mids are going to be running machines come round 1 with this guy at the helm

[Rampaging Demons 1]

Is this a good thing??

Did Hawhtorn not have a high number of soft tissue injuries during his reign and hence he was discarded!!!

[Jarka 767]

"The club is also delighted that Brentan Parsons has agreed to remain as Rehabilitation & Sports Science Coordinator, whilst Adam Paulo, who recently completed a Masters Degree in Sports Science, has been appointed as full time Player Energy & Wellness Coordinator.

Player Energy and Wellness Coordinator? I'd be too embarrased to show anyone my business card

[JJJ 972]

Rampaging, it was certainly rumoured as a reason for his release by Hawthorn. I must admit im a little dubious about his ability to keep players on the park.

[Rampaging Demons 1]

tigger, we can only hope that these were rumours.......

well, i hope that he does not bring the dance of the sugar plum fairies to the sidelines!!

[astrodee 0]

In his time at HFC, their soft tissue injury rate soared. The bloke I regularly run with, who was at one time the fitness guru for the umpires (and still privately helps a couple of the older ones), reckons he is a disaster area. I am horrified that he's with us - unless he has drastically changed his ways.

[Jaded No More 66,967]

I was very excited to hear about the appointment, until I read the opinions on here.

While I'm positive the club is aware of any past problems Babijczuk's style may have caused, I guess you can never really estimate the impact of his work.

Overall it sounds like a very positive and proactive move to get our list moving faster. Hopefully it brings about more success than injuries.

[hendo 1]

yes this is my first post but seeming the topic of physical preparation came up i had to register and have my say as this is my area of work.

personally im not too sure on his appointment. i thought glen turner had done a pretty good job with the development of our strength and conditioning and was surprised to see him go. we still have a pretty young list and there would be some good development to come from the playing group with another preseason under their belt.

the reason hawthorn got rid of him was due to the high soft tissue injury rate. i got told this by thier head trainer of hawthorn who used to work at eastern ranges - i worked there for 4 and half years myself as a fitness advisor and rehab coordinator before moving out on my own to focus on a more sports science testing service.

bohdan trains players to be not only athletes, but sprinters. imho, in AFL you can't have that - players need to be fast yes, but also have a strong aerobic and waste removal capacity that will allow them to do repeated efforts of high work for up to 120minutes. funnily enough training footballers to be fit, strong and injury prevented isnt rocket science, its pretty simple stuff.

I hope he has changed his methods on how to train players because if not we will be in some trouble.

[Dappa Dan 2,188]

Ta for that Hendo, and don't be a stranger.

The dees have, for some years now, been a fairly good 4th quarter team. My mates all reckon that our ability to run out games is the one thing they fear from us. That is, even when their sides (Hawks, Blues, Roos etc.) are up against us, they're never sure they're going to get over the line. Even against the ridiculously fit Crows in round 3 we nearlt over-ran them.

To be honest, one of the things I'm proudest about at MFC is that we get our fair share, maybe more than our fair share of victories by less than a kick.

Over at Geelong (or was it the Roos, I can't remember. A blue and white team anyway) I heard that earlier this year they copped quite a bit of criticism for training their players explosively. Or in other words, high impact training without any endurance involved. I think it may have been around the time they somehow gave up a huge lead to the Eagles that this criticism surfaced.

Now I'm not one to string a guy up before he's had a chance to prove what he's worth, but all this information on here certainly makes me nervous...

[QueenC 74]

While I'm positive the club is aware of any past problems Babijczuk's style may have caused, I guess you can never really estimate the impact of his work.

Overall it sounds like a very positive and proactive move to get our list moving faster. Hopefully it brings about more success than injuries.

Over the past weeks and months we have been on here whinging (a lot) that our team is too slow by current AFL standards, they have trouble playing out the full four quarters and that they are generally one paced, especially in the midfield.

How many times have we heard Daniher say in post match press conferences that "we ran out of legs". Now the club does something proactive and appoints someone they believe can remedy this problem and we are still suspicious and generally negative.

I am not going to pretend to know anything about what he did or didn't do at Hawthorn (I don't really give much thought to the Hawks) but I for one am willing to put faith in the Melbourne Football Club to actually hire the person they truly believe is the best person for the job.

If I am proved wrong, which I pray I will not be, then so be it, but you can't have it both ways.

Does anyone here actually believe that the Dees would not have done their homework on their prospective employee and his history before the appointment was made? And that he would have had to go though what he will do with the players to increase whatever needs to be increased before he got the job?

Of course they did and I am going to put my faith in the fact that they know more about what they are doing than we do.

Just my opinion :D !!!

[deeangel 2]

Here! Here!

[drdrake 3,105]

His claim to fame prior to Hawthorn was coaching a Stawell Gift winner, I can't remember which one it was mid 90's.

I trained as a sprinter for a few years and I remember going to a Hawthorn/Melb game and Hawthorn did sprinting drills as a warm up, high knee lifts, bounds and a few other things I had a good laugh and knew we had the game won because they would be spent after doing this. Conditioning coaches that have a sprinting background have not had a lot of success at AFL clubs.

It is hard to go from training someone to be fast for a certain distance 100m 200m 400m to coaching football teams it is constant running with short bursts.

As previous posters have said the Hawks soft tissue injuries where high when this guy headed them up. Hopefully he has learnt new training methods and trains them as footballers and not sprinters. I am really concerned about this appointment, especially the issues we have had with OP to our younger players over the past 2-3 seasons.

[Richo_15 0]

Good luck. Your soft tissue injuries will increase by double..

[QueenC 74]

As previous posters have said the Hawks soft tissue injuries where high when this guy headed them up. Hopefully he has learnt new training methods and trains them as footballers and not sprinters.

He was at Hawthorn for ten years.....

Did they have an excessive number of soft tissue injuries throughout his tenure (if so then why was he there for so long?)

or was it allegedly just in the last couple of years of his appointment?

He was also fired when Clarkson was appointed in 2004 as the new coach, which really is not that shocking given that new coaches generally put the broom through.

http://www.sportal.com.au/football.asp?i=news&id=56634

All I am trying to say is that lets not jump to any conclusions and lets give the guy, who is well credentialed, and the Club the benefit of any doubt we may have.

Just my opinion :D !!!

[hendo 1]

from my understanding he wasnt there as the 'one in charge' for ten years and im pretty sure he was only there for about 5 years all up. i heard him present and he comes across quite well, very based on the russian periodisation model which is still used today by almost all phys prep people.

i have no doubt he has a lot to bring to the club but i question some of his training methods, especially as mentioned by drdrake that he has a sprinting/athletics background. getting players to do triathlons and run 100m sprints at athletics events over the preseason isn't football based fitness training. the reason paul ford got pushed in 04 before glen turner came along was partly due to amping up players running loads by up to 15k a week mid season, hence maybe why we faded so bad in lead up to finals. to me that is just plain stupid. there is no fitness like game fitness.

a lot of 'running out of legs' has to do with the mental aspect that is within the player. this is also why there has been a big shift to recovery interventions and measures to ensure players are coming up each week.

i hope im making sense and i also hope he has seen light of his past mistakes and has changed his perspective on physically preparing footballers.

[Rolling Stone 137]

So next time we hire ourselves a fitness guru could we at least not give him a fancy title?

[demonique 314]

That is a alll very disturbing, I hadn't read it first time around and it all can't be co-incidental with all our injuries.

Melbourne is run by a bunch of clowns! as I suspected

[QueenC 74]

If I am proved wrong, which I pray I will not be, then so be it, but you can't have it both ways.

I am going to put my faith in the fact that they know more about what they are doing than we do.

Possibly I'm being proved wrong (player size-wise at least), unfortunately........

And my faith in that they know more than we do is diminishing ever so quickly !!!

[joeboy 3,134]

To add insult to injury , the fitness guru at the resurgent Kangaloos is a fanatical Demon suporter !

[Jaded No More 66,967]

Like every other staff member at the MFC, the fitness team will also be looked at. They'll have a lot of explaining to do, although not all of our injury woes can be attributed to the new fitness regime.

On the other hand, we've run out most games quite well... pity about the first 3 and a half quarters

[Rampaging Demons 1]

but what was wrong with the way we finished games last season???

seriously, he was brought on to help with 'gut running'... he has us running through rope ladders, dancing around like ponces, etc... however, i am yet to see this gut running that other teams talk about!!

our players cannot do the simple things like man up, hit a target 20 metres away, run from behind, punch the ball, stand their feet, lay a tackle, win a clearance - surely these are areas that should be addressed!!!