PRE-SEASON training with Warrington Wolves is not all about getting bigger, stronger and faster.

Head of strength and conditioning Jon Clarke explained that all components of a rugby league player’s make-up are taken into consideration.

He said: “The beauty of working with a head coach like Tony Smith and assistant coaches in Richie (Richard Agar) and Briersy (Lee Briers) is that you never lose sight of the fact that these are rugby league players.

“They’ve got to be skilful and they’ve got to understand the game.

“As we saw over the course of last season, big games are generally decided by who holds their nerve under pressure.

“Yes, pre-season is physical but we install basic skills and basic thinking under pressure with the ball as much as possible, and more so than other teams I’ve seen or worked with.

“There’s a heavy skill element to what we do and I try to integrate my strength and conditioning programmes into the skill rather than having the skill integrated into the physical side of things.”

Although Wolves’ pre-season training will be focused around their Padgate Campus base, there will be some changes to the players' regular environment.

There will be a warm-weather camp in Tenerife in January, less than a month before Wolves’ season starts at Catalans Dragons on February 11.

The first home game will be against Brisbane Broncos in the World Club Series a week later.

“We’ll do the usual trip to Tenerife, and we’ve got the added element this year of trying to get the lads in a good physical state for the World Club Series as well,” said Clarke.

“Although our work will be heavily centred around Padgate, we’ll try to get them on the hills in different places,” which is good.

“And we’ll try and do some club sessions with the academy, and do some club activities with them as well.

“We’re working on these as we go along.”