How the average Aussie measures up to a professional AFL player

By Stuart Marsh|

The author and his personal idol, Sydney Swan Harry Cunningham.
Surprisingly, it's more even than you might expect.

It's pretty easy to heap criticism on the lifestyles on professional footy players – after all, they only have to turn up to training and games to succeed right? Compared to the average Joe blow, they should have waaay more time in their lives…

As I found out, in a ground-breaking experiment with HCF and the Sydney Swans, living the life of a professional athlete involves way more than simply "showing up".

The premise of the experiment was brutally simple: over the course of a week I would wear an activity tracker 24/7 that counted every step I took, every calorie I burned and every wink of sleep I missed out on.

But it doesn’t end there: I was also asked to chronicle every last morsel that crossed my lips by taking a picture of every single meal and then sending that on to the club's accredited practising dietitian.

(Yes, that includes the beers too – and for that I'm sorry about the constant emails at three in the morning, Elise.)

Each of my results would then be compared to those of an elite AFL player inside the Sydney Swans, and I know what you're thinking – there's no way an average Aussie could match up – but you'd be surprised.

But first: A little about me

Every good experiment needs a baseline to start with, and I'm proud to say mine wasn't too far off the mark for a "generally" healthy adult. Being a health reporter, it would be rather critical of me to be telling people day-in and day-out to exercise when I'm spending my time noshing down on Maccas fries.

I'm a 26-year-old male, 175cm tall, and on a good day I weigh around 75kg. That puts my BMI at 24.5, which just on the cusp of the normal weight range.

While medically healthy, compared to an AFL player I am very short and a little bit too fat.

(Also pretty unco but let's not get into the reasons why I'm not a professional athlete — the social media posts alone would have me sacked within a week.)

(The most flattering image of the author that he could find.)


And so onto the particulars: over the course of the week I averaged around 13,000 steps a day, which was just 11 percent less than the AFL players.

(It’s suggested that average Aussies aim for 10,000 steps a day, but it's a rather arbitrary number that doesn’t really factor in dedicated exercise sessions or energy consumption.)

The maximum time spent exercising in any one day was three hours and 36 minutes. That sounds like an absurd amount of time, although in practice I went to the gym for an hour and then did the groceries and walked home (a true test of a man, no doubt).

Compared to the players, that was a whopping two hours less time spent exercising every day. Yep, if you're a professional athlete you're literally training six hours a day – that's a full-time job.

Resting heart rate

It's typical for most of us to assume that the fitter you are, the longer and harder you'll be able to exercise. While this is strictly true, a person's real fitness is measured in how fast they recover from a hard session – and much of that comes down to your resting heart rate.

My average resting heart rate hovered around 55 bpm (beats per minute), which is quite good but not as low as the players who have been measured in the low 30s.

If you're keen to try this out for yourself, make sure you take your measurements very first thing in the morning. Place two fingers on the underside of your wrist, and count how many beats occur in 20 seconds. Simply multiply that by three and you have your resting heart rate.


Here's where things start to get ugly. According to the club's dietitian Elise Cameron, my near-zero consumption of fruit over the course of the week was "alarming".

Further to that, Cameron also believed that I wasn't eating enough. "Dietary data does not reflect a diet that would be sufficient for someone who exercises as much as Stu," she wrote in her notes.

"To maximise benefits of his exercise, Stu should consume less caffeine, more fruit and vegetables and reduce saturated fat intake."

She was also particularly alarmed that I consumed far more calories on the weekend (I got real deep into a "treat yo’self" phase) than on weekdays.

Compared to the players my diet was, in a word: horrific. I consumed half the amount of carbohydrates as the players did, double the dairy, 30 percent less vegetables than the players and a lower amount of calories overall.

Somewhat shockingly, my caffeine intake was an astonishing six times higher than the players – even on game days where they deliberately "caffeine load" for energy before the first bounce.


Speaking of caffeine, it appears that another weak point where the average Joe falls down compared to an AFL player is how much time in the sack we get.

My total sleep time came in at a very poor six hours a night, which was 20 percent less than the players, who each aim to get a solid eight hours a night.

On average, I woke up one or two times a night to pee, which the Swans exercise scientists didn't really seem to have a problem with. (If only they knew the fridge raids that were involved.)

My rabid caffeine consumption – disappointingly fuelled by el-cheapo instant coffee and constant writing deadlines – was what the experts thought was hurting me the most.

"We suggest a decrease in caffeine intake and an increase in total sleep duration," they wrote in their notes.

"Stu's sleep time during the week is likely insufficient and people who tend to sleep-in on weekends are generally those who already have a 'sleep debt'."

(For reference: an extremely dedicated profession athlete in Oliver Florent. Image: Dean Lewins/AAP)


Surprise, surprise: a young, coffee-drinking journalist is not as healthy as a professional athlete.

Despite that ground-breaking finding, there was two really particular things I took out of the experiment, and neither come from a personal basis.

First, is that being a professional athlete would have to be one of the most time-consuming jobs on the planet. Sure training, game time and media commitments take up some time, but constantly being on top of your recovery is nothing to sneeze.

The second is that it's okay not to be perfect. Despite eating no fruit at all, getting barely a wink of sleep every night and drinking eight coffees every day, I can still reasonably say that I'm on the right side of the healthy/unhealthy swing.

Sure, nobody's expecting me to look or perform like an AFL player, but every step closer you can take towards your hero athletes is doing you a world of good.

To celebrate its fourth year of partnership with the Sydney Swans, health fund HCF has created a content series launching this April to start a conversation about health at all levels and ultimately create a healthier future for all Australians. You can watch the first episode here. 

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