No doubt in my mind: Wayne Lombard doubles down on Indian women’s hockey team’s fitness levels for Asian Games

Wayne Lombard, an Athlete Performance Specialist from South Africa, has held different positions with various sporting organisations across India. The highly rated sports scientist, strength and conditioning expert, is presently the Head of Athletic Performance – Indian women’s hockey team.

Last year, he was also roped in by the Boxing Federation of India. Lombard also was part of the Indian women’s hockey team’s backroom staff that slotted in at the fourth place in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He has also worked closely with other elite Indian athletes such as PV Sindhu, Murali Sreeshankar and Tejaswin Shankar.

In the aftermath of India’s fine run at the 2026 Women’s Hockey World Cup, where they ended up as the fifth-placed team, Lombard opened up in an exclusive chat to RevSportz on various aspects related to the players’ fitness, recovery process, individualising and adapting to a players’ needs, integrating the junior players to the system, and employing GPS and other modern sports science technologies.

Excerpts:

Q: From relegation to the Pro League to making a fine comeback. In the just concluded World Cup, just one loss and that too against the Netherlands. Pushing Australia, almost beating China and England. Even in the practice match, India were competitive against the Netherlands. Wayne, what have you done with the girls that we are seeing a very different India on the park?

A: Look, it is my second stint with the team, coming back the second time around you could say is technically easier. Although when we got the list of injuries that we had in January, it was a little bit scary to see. The thing I pride on is to keep things as simple as possible and trying to get as consistent processes as possible.

Maybe, that is what was lacking in the past. We weren’t able to keep our best players on the park for as long as possible. We weren’t able to string together a good training block without having injuries. That is something that we have changed a lot. And having a really good sports science team on the ground, I am like a captain on a ship, trying to steer things, trying to make things work as well as possible. Just putting the processes that enable the players to perform at their best.

The most important thing is I want them fresh, I want them to be fit. Obviously, I want them to train hard. However, we need to be smart about what we are doing.

Q: You know one size doesn’t fit all. How have you kind of addressed that because of the divergence that you see in India. People from North East will be different from East, and that can be extended to North or Southern India. Secondly, the recovery time could be limited. For example, take into consideration the game against the Netherlands was played within the 24 hours of the previous game. Yet you’re expected to be fresh. So, how do you manage a team that is very different?

A: It is a good observation. Yes, we are a team that is competing in the same event, but we are a team of individuals. Everyone adapts differently, everyone recovers differently. And as much as possible, you try to individualise certain parameters within the strength and conditioning, physiotherapy and recovery that we do. We monitor things quite closely, so we collect a lot of data on the players to see how everyone is adapting. So, from internal or rotational load or GPS stuff.

I know people get very scared when you mention sports science and data. However, that gives us a very good insight as to how people are actually adapting and what we can do to individualise things a little more. If we can address things across the board the same way, it becomes very difficult for individuals to perform because everyone is different. Let alone position-wise, but individually, physiology is different.

Also, culturally, as you said everyone is from different parts. Some people like different foods, whatever it might be. So as much as possible, we try to adjust the best we can for each individual. The reality of the situation is we can’t individualise everything. But we try as much as possible and say – this one requires this type of recovery, this one requires this type of training and we do that. So, we collect a lot of data to see exactly how everyone is. Adapt where we can; we change those small nuances so that an individual is thriving as much as possible.

Q: Obviously, sports science and analytics have a huge role to play in elite sport in modern times. So, are the sports science methods being utilised at the junior level as well?

A: In the past, it probably wasn’t the case, but now things are changing a lot. We are trying to set-up a system where whatever we do filters down to the juniors as much as possible. So, yes, the junior teams are currently using the GPS. We are giving a new system. We do sit with the support staff of the junior system, discuss their plans and see how they are progressing.

Ultimately, the difficulty is if we get junior players coming to our system and we are starting from the scratch, it becomes really difficult to get things as fast as possible. So, where can we try to line up our programmes with regards to sports science and medicine side of things as much as possible. It is easier said than done because we travel a lot, we don’t keep our eyes on everything. But you’re 100 per cent right, we somehow need to align things as much as we can. So, when someone comes into my system, or our system, they are able to cope with the type of training or the amount of training.

As you already pointed out, in hockey, it is a highly intense schedule. We train a lot, we train hard, the intensity is very tough at the senior level. So, when juniors come in, are they able to cope with that? Also, when the juniors come, they can’t just come in and do what we are doing. We have to adjust our programme a little bit for them before we expect them to perform at the highest level.

Q: Having covered Indian sport for a good three decades now, the problem earlier was we would concede a goal at the last minute. Now I see they are switched on till the last minute. So, from your standpoint, what was done differently in the last year?

A: Definitely, the programme changed completely. One thing is these girls have done a lot of work, but haven’t got enough rest, they are really burnt out. We have to allow them to get to a point where they are fit enough, but also to let them recover well enough. That is what we have built into our programme really well.

Everyone thinks about how much schedule and how much training we need to do. But we need to be really smart in how we put recovery strategies into our programme. There are periods in our schedule where I take out a lot of the recovery because I want physiology to do the work for me. I want to learn how to recover. And there are periods I load with recovery modalities so that we are fresh going into a tournament.

I think what we did really well was the intensity of our training matched the outputs in games a lot better because Sjoerd (Marijne) and I worked closely together, that is where the GPS comes in. I want to make sure that the intensity of our training sessions are either at match intensity or above match intensity. Ideally, it needs to be above match intensity because then whatever the opposition throws at us, we need to be physically prepared for it, because if your training is matching match intensity, you will be okay. But if you’re superseding match intensity, you get to a point where back-to-back matches don’t become a problem for us because we have done that in the training and that is okay.

Obviously, the girls will get fatigued, because they are working hard, then rotations on the field are also important. There are many things to it. But the programme has changed completely. We really take pride in making sure the players are fresh from session to session. Yes, they train helluva hard but we are quite smart with how the schedule is arranged from a week-to-week perspective. And from a macro perspective, we know exactly what we are doing, every tournament where we want to go.

Q: In India, we have a tendency to over-celebrate as well. Fifth place at the World Cup is a great result but it is still not a podium. You need to win the gold at the Asian Games to qualify for the Olympics. The problem is once the girls come back, they will soon leave for the airport. We will say, ‘have one sweet, one mitahi (sweet)’. That is India, you can’t take the culture away. Have you been able to monitor that or inculcate the macro picture among the girls?

A: Spot on. Fifth-place finish, our best in 50-odd years, however that wasn’t good enough for us as well. So, internally, we wanted to get to the semi-finals, we wanted to have a chance of getting into the podium, The girls and the staff are hungry.

Even with my first stint, one of the rules I had was no synthetic sugars, not allowed to add sugar to anything. I think they brought themselves into that process. We have only one week now. One thing we have decided, we are going back into the camps, the girls won’t go back home. So, we have got a little more control, if I can call it that. It isn’t that we don’t trust. It is just that travelling within India is quite tough, so they are not going to recover that well. Whereas we can make sure any niggles that we have got, we can take care of that.

More importantly, the process that we have put into place, the players are brought into it. That is more important to us because we can’t police every second of the day. And we can’t police what they might be buying on Swiggy or whatever it might be. It is more important that they buy into this process than we are policing everything. I think we have got to that process (stage), which is really good for us.

Q: Not much time left for the Asian Games. To peak twice in terms of physical fitness would be quite tough. There is China, alongside Japan and South Korea. So, do you think we can peak again, three weeks down the line in Nagoya?

A: No doubt in my mind. We worked it out, we have pretty much three weeks before our first really tough game. There is a little bit of a build-up, no disrespect to other nations that are competing. But we have time to build up to them. Yes, we have been on tour for a month. Obviously, you do some fitness. With a congested match schedule, you focus on recovery to ensure you’re peaking match by match.

However, we have built a really strong and big base and that is the key for us. Over eight months, it has been a process of building up a base, so that they are fit enough to handle all the competitions that are coming up to us. In saying that, the next two-three weeks are really important for us. One, we really need to make sure that any niggle is there, we need to take care of that. Secondly, we need to build up a little more. I think if we can increase our fitness by 10-20 per cent, then other countries will struggle. I think it is still possible to do that in the short period of time that we have.

(Transcript: Bharath Ramaraj)

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