Star Essendon forward Orazio Fantasia has taken a valuable leaf out of teammate David Zaharakis’ book after joining him for an intensive overseas training trip to fine tune his preparation for 2019.
Fantasia’s pre-seasons have been plagued by injuries in recent years and he was restricted to just 13 games in 2018, but a different approach to his training this time around has seen him return to The Hangar with new-found confidence.
Zaharakis has travelled to Boulder in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, USA, for several consecutive off-seasons and Fantasia believes it is the key to the on-baller’s consistency and longevity.
“I think there was about six of us that went over there under Zacka’s supervision. Coach David, as he likes to be called, ran a little training camp over there,” Fantasia said on Wednesday.
“You look at Zacka for the majority of his career – he’s super durable and continues to clock up numbers through the pre-season and hardly misses games.
“For someone like myself who has been injured a fair bit, I look at someone like David who works really hard on his body and wanted to follow his footsteps a bit.
“(I wanted) to try to come back in some pretty good condition – not peak condition and flying – but to come back in good nick to be ready for the pre-season.”
A large contingent of Bombers joined the pair including Kyle Langford, Conor McKenna, Shaun McKernan and senior strength and conditioning coach Paul Turk, and Fantasia said the group was able to utilise a number of elite facilities in the picturesque environment.
“We spoke about it initially halfway through the year that he (Zaharakis) always goes, every year he goes there and swears by it,” he said.
“A few of us got on board and Zacka was like, ‘Yep, come I can teach you guys where to go and what to do’, and we just jumped on board.
“We were lucky enough to use Colorado University there – they’ve got a massive gym there – we hiked the mountains, they were for free so we could use them no worries, and a couple of ovals at a rec centre which were pretty good.”
While the benefits of the high-altitude training are not immediate, Fantasia said the rewards are starting to come to the fore since arriving back in Melbourne nearly two weeks ago.
“Zacka initially said the first couple of weeks when you come back – considering we came back on a Sunday and then we were back into training on the Monday – you still feel a bit jetlagged and things like that.
“But as the weeks progress you’ll definitely know the difference, he said.
“I’m starting to feel a little bit and hopefully in the next couple of weeks it will give us that little head start on everyone else.”
The 23-year-old said it is “awesome” to be back at the club with his teammates.
“That banter in the locker room is back, which you’ve missed in the last eight weeks,” he said.
“There’s a few gags, Jakey Stringer’s up to some mischief, so it’s always good fun.”
His clear goal for the 2019 season is to stay fit and play as much football as possible, while from the club’s perspective, he expects one of the key focal points in the pre-season to be the squad’s team defence, an aspect the Bombers improved drastically on in the latter stages of this year.
The explosive forward says a number of young teammates have particularly impressed him on the track in the last fortnight.
“The majority of the boys, if not everyone, have come back in good nick. (There are) a few boys still in rehab, but they’re tracking well.
“A lot of the young guys have really caught my eye; Darcy Parish is running really well, same with Kobe Mutch, Dylan Clarke as well, so they’re the ones to knock off in the running.”
The Bombers will soon face the traditionally-dreaded pre-season time trial and Fantasia jokingly admitted he wasn’t counting down the days for the run.
“It’s fair to say no one ever looks forward to it,” he said.
“But it’s a good little test for us not only mentally, but also physically, to see how well we’ve trained in the off-season and it gives us a good benchmark to see if we can knock it off later.”
