With a new Essendon coach set to be appointed over the coming weeks, Essendon midfielder, Jason Winderlich is already putting in the hard yards in the gym in order to make a good early impression.
“You only get one chance to make a first impression so now that a new coach is coming in, I want to make sure that it’s a good one,” Winderlich told essendonfc.com.au.
Two back operations over the 2009 pre-season, a back spasm at the beginning of 2010 and a broken hand in Round 17 this year, meant Winderlich has had little opportunity for a full pre-season over the past few years but he is hoping his luck might change ahead of the 2011 season.
“I had a bad back spasm before the 2010 season started so I missed a couple of weeks of training,"" Winderlich said.
""It was really disappointing because I was absolutely flying through practice games and then had a bit of a setback.
""It was a case of a little bit of scar tissue pulling away from the nerve. I think there is a 0.001 per cent chance of me doing the same injury to my back again so fingers crossed.""
Winderlich has begun preparing his body for what he hopes will be an injury-free 2011 season.
“Training-wise, I’ve stayed off my legs a bit in order to give them a rest,"" he said.
""For the first couple of weeks I’ve only been running a couple of times a week but I’ve been doing weights four or five times a week just to put weight back on.
“Once I broke my hand I couldn’t do weights properly for about six weeks so I lost about four kilos but since the end of the season I’ve put almost three kilos back on, which is good.
“I want to be a couple of kilos heavier next year so that I can play a lot more inside football to support Jobe a bit more.""
With the players' end of season holidays underway, Winderlich has been using some of his free time away from training to work on his vegetable patch.
“I just moved into a new house and I had a lot of spare space in the backyard so I thought I’d plant some vegetable gardens,"" he said.
""Being from the country I like eating fresh food and I wanted to try to grow something that’s totally natural.
“I’ve planted all my favourite stuff like baby spinach, leek - which I use in all my risottos, I’ve got some potatoes, some lettuce, for salads since we’re coming up to summer soon, they’ll be ready to harvest during summer,” Winderlich laughed.
