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Fitness First with Sale Sharks - week three

9/ 7/2008

WEEK three of our exclusive column with Sale Sharks' head of athletic performance, Steve Walsh ...

STEVE Walsh has spent most of his career working as a fitness coach for rugby league teams. But players beware. There is an air of formidable PE teacher about Walsh, who has a degree in Physical Education, and those who don’t tow the line will be punished!

"If I was going to take the Sharks lads out for a meal I’d take them to Harry Ramsden’s.

I’d flog them for about two hours and then we’d all go to the original Harry Ramsden’s in Yorkshire for a meal.

When there’s enough money in the fine pot that is what we’re going to do.

The lads get fined if they’re late for training, if they don’t wear the right shoes in the gym or if they forget their drinks bottle. Their names go on the list and the following week they have to roll the dice. The fine could be anything from £5 to £20 or they could get out of jail free.

The beauty of this place [Carrington training base] is that you can do that sort of thing here - it is a one-stop shop, you’re all here all of the time.

There’s no reason why you can’t have good team spirit in this place because once they’re here they're not going anywhere.

The only time we leave the site is to use Sale pool and now we’re going on bikes they cycle there, swim for 35 minutes and cycle back...

There’s rule changes coming into rugby union now. People are hypothesising about what’s going to happen to the game and how it is going to be affected but the bottom line is, as the game gets better, players have to be fitter, so they have to be better trained athletes.

Because I came from a rugby league background I trained Harlequins union side like a rugby league team. They exceeded all my expectations, bearing in mind they are a soft London club notoriously full of public school boys!

Up here it is a more working class environment but my training methodology won’t change because it is something I have built up over the years.

I apply the same principles here."

THE opinions expressed in this column are those of Steve Walsh and do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper or its editor.