This off-season, Rabbitohs Sports Science and Rehabilitation Coach, Jarrod Wade, will be heading off to the United States to take part in some Personal Development.
Wade started out with the Club last year at the commencement of the 2017 pre-season and has two main roles with the playing group.
“At the Rabbitohs I have two main roles with the playing group,” reiterated Wade.
“The first one’s Sport Science which is looking after all the GPS information and testing information for the players, feeding that information back to the coaches to see how they are training, who needs to be modified from training, who needs to be pushed a little bit harder at times.
“We work out their training loads, plan those, make sure they keep nice and fit and injury free throughout the year.
“My second role is with Rehabilitation and that’s looking after the injured players so if a player gets injured for whatever reason, they come to me and I work out their program from a gym point of view, running point of view, cross training point of view to get them back on the field as quickly as possible so they can get back to playing good footy.”
Prior to joining the Rabbitohs, Wade was the Lead Strength Coach with the Parramatta Eels during the 2016 season, and has previously worked in strength and rehabilitation roles with Essendon in the AFL, performance analysis with AFL club Geelong, and as Head Strength and Conditioning Coach with West Perth Football Club in the WAFL.
“Previously I had been at another NRL club but before that I came from 10 years in the AFL system so from Victoria originally, worked with the Geelong Football Club and the Essendon Football Club in the AFL in those areas of Sports Science and Rehabilitation.”
While Wade has a range of experience in Australian sport, he will head off to the U.S. with the aim of knowledge sharing and finding out new ideas to bring back and implement into the Rabbitohs.
“I’m off to the U.S., America in the off-season. Looking at visiting some clubs over there, mostly NFL, NBA and some College teams just going out there to scout what’s around in worldwide best practice in Sports Science and Rehabilitation trying to bring back a few things that we can do better here at the Rabbitohs next season.
“It’s a share knowledge trip as well to try and give them a bit of knowledge about what we do because what we do is pretty good but hopefully I can bring back a couple of things that we can do differently to keep the boys fit and firing next year.”
For Wade, this isn’t his first rodeo taking on the U.S. He has previously spent time with teams on a separate Personal Development trip, not only picking up ideas for training players but also identifying the way in which staff communicate with each other.
“Last time I went over there I spent a week with the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA and a week with Oregon University, a college team over there and I basically just brought back different training techniques.
“One thing they do over there is they train their boys really hard, they push them to the limits so that’s something that I bought back and we implemented this year at the Rabbitohs trying to keep our boys fit for the season.
“I also spent a couple of days at some NFL clubs, the Oakland Raiders and the Green Bay Packers, just looking at how their staff interact with each other between the physios, the performance staff, trying to get the best out of their players, looking at the way they meet each other, the way they continually record information on their players so that we make sure that the boys were being looked after all the way through that rehab process.
“It’s good to go over there and share information so that we can potentially better them and that they better us here at the Rabbitohs.”
View the interview with Wade in the video player above.
