2x4 - The Recruit

Week 4 and The Recruits spend the week in their home town of Melbourne, with the focus being on “pressure”. Coaches Michael Malthouse and Ben Dixon take the boys to the Richmond FC swimming pool and give them a taste of hypoxic swimming training – another way to improve their fitness. A surprise for the boys is a visit from Olympic hero Ian Thorpe. He gives the Recruits a few pointers on how to improve their swimming and chats to the boys about how he handled pressure across his long career. With this week being the first Gay Pride round in the AFL, he also chats about homophobia in sport, and how each of them should stand up and realise that it is not acceptable to tolerate any kind of homophobia in sport.