Welcome: Matthew Olds

The Perth Football Club would like to welcome Matthew Olds who has been appointed Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for 2015.

Matthew comes to the club after recently completing a Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc), Exercise Physiology degree at Murdoch University where he received an excellence in rehabilitation award.

He is also a qualified Level Two Strength and Conditioning Coach with the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association and has completed Certificate III and Certificate IV in Fitness with the Australian Institute of Fitness.

While Matthew may only be young he has certainly had a lot of exposure in the strength and conditioning departments of elite sporting organisations.

For the past two seasons Matthew has worked as an Intern Strength and Conditioning Coach at the Perth Wildcats.  Some of his duties there included monitoring strength sessions, performance testing, data collection and analysis, workload monitoring and video analysis.  He has also spent time at the Western Force.

Matthew learnt a lot while working at the Wildcats and the Force but the main thing he took away was that preparation is an essential part of sport.

“The main thing I learnt was that from an athlete’s perspective, preparation is the key.  I hope to be able to get the boys as well prepared as I can so that they can go out and play their best football.”

When questioned about the upcoming preseason Matthew said that the players would not be allowed to take the easy option when it came to increasing their fitness levels.

“I think definitely the focus over preseason is going to be building up the player’s aerobic capacity.  We will be trying to get a fair few kilometres into their legs and building them up from there.  There is going to be a no shortcut approach.”

Matthew though does know what it is like to be a player and going through the process of a preseason.  In 2011 he played colts at East Fremantle.  He believes that having recently been a part of a WAFL team is a good thing as it will help him relate to the players more as he has experienced and felt some of the things that they would be going through in a training session.

“In this type of industry to get someone to do something you need to know what it is going to feel like and you can turn around and say to them look, I am going to be honest, the running is going to hurt but you are going to reap the benefits out of it in the future.”