Sharni Layton on the gruelling regime she’s undertaken to improve her footy
For most people watching AFLW this season, Sharni Layton has improved out of sight. But it hasn’t just happened overnight. She opens up about the gym sessions where she was nearly crying and balancing her mental health.
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Sharni Layton wondered what exactly she had gotten herself into.
The former Australian netballer had turned her hand to football at the end of 2018, thinking a background in elite sport would hold her in good stead to pivot her focus to a Sherrin.
She admits she couldn’t have been more wrong.
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“The transition was just so hard. I thought it was going to be easier than what it was,” Layton concedes.
“And when I say easier, I just thought that I would adapt a bit quicker, be able to read the play and read the ball, because that’s what I did in netball. But I completely underestimated how quick the girls play. If I had played in years one and two when the league was developing, I probably would have been able to adapt a little bit quicker.
“I am glad that I didn’t stay in netball, I was 100 per cent cooked.
“But I was like ‘what have I done in entering another elite sport?’.”
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There was the physical drain – changing her body from anaerobic to aerobic capacity for football, and having to run further distances and for longer.
Then there was the mental side of learning new skills, how to run, where to run, how to read the play, how to execute the play. It was a lot to take in, as work on her own mental health continued after it suffered during her netball career.
Layton jokes that she “sucked” in her first season of AFLW last year, but she was just finding her way.
And now, the fruits of what has been significant labour over the last 12 months in particular are starting to be borne.
She averaged just 42 Champion Data rankings points in 2019 — that’s up to 111.
She’s doubled her disposal average, and quadrupled her hitouts to advantage and contested possession average.
It’s no fluke.
“I worked my arse off in the pre-season,” the ever-candid 32-year-old said.
“I worked so hard. And I think that sum of things … people say ‘oh, she’s come out and she’s doing really well’, which is great, but I know that I have to be good because I want to be good for the team.
“I know the ruck has to cover the whole ground, so I need to be running my 2k, with the midfielders. I was really skinny in my first season, and I got pushed around.”
The bulking up was done in “solid gym sessions” throughout 2019, three times a week and “smashing my body”.
“It’s hard,” she said.
“You feel like crying. I’m sweating, it’s painful.
“Pushing yourself in the gym is so different to pushing yourself on the field. It takes a different kind of mental strength, and it was a mental strength that I’d lost for a little while there, especially at the end of my netball career.
“But I know to be the best I needed to be, that’s what I needed to achieve.”
She added four kilos of muscle in eight weeks, along with “the confidence to know that people might have worked as hard as me, but I can guarantee you that no one has worked harder than me”.
Her game has transformed. The 2018 rookie selection was rated as “poor” by Champion Data last season, but has proven dangerous in front of goal in her three games so far this year and dominant in the ruck.
And it’s not only a new player in black and white this season, but a new person.
She still has “ups and downs” with depression.
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But to have reshaped her AFLW presence in the gruelling off-season and at VFLW level has proven more rewarding than Layton ever could have imagined.
“It’s more rewarding mentally,” she said.
“I’ve overcome every physical challenge that I’ve ever had. I’ve had injuries, I’ve been the fittest I could ever be. I’ve had all of that. Once you’ve got anxiety and depression, it’s always something that lingers and that you’re always managing, so to be able to push myself that hard, and study full-time and be doing all my training sessions, for me, I was like, ‘guys, I completed it!’.
“For everyone else, it was like ‘that’s what normal people do’, but it was huge for me.
“My concentration span, be able to cope with that load … I mentally hadn’t been able to cope with that. That was really exciting time to go, OK, I’m almost back to a standard where I used to be, and it’s taken me two and a half years to get there.”
She had the skills “to be an athlete”, Layton says, but the recent period has been to “maintain a healthy human” – not being too hard on herself, knowing that she’s giving her best, being kind to herself, doing the best with what she’s got on any day.
“I used to push myself to be the best athlete, I parked the human part of myself,” she said.
“I have lots of different aspects. You have to switch in and out of those, which can be really tricky.”
She credits new Collingwood coach Steve Symonds for his game plan and belief in the team for the 2-1 start to the season, and said the likes of All-Australian ruck Brodie Grundy and former AFL senior coach and family friend Mark “Choco” Williams for shaping her work at taps and around the ground.
But fiance Luke Norder – who Layton will marry in Hawaii at the end of April, in her first “real” holiday since 2014, which even then included training – has been a pivotal figure on and off the field.
“He was a ruck for Morwell, and he was great as well,” she said.
“He is so helpful. I don’t think I would have progressed as quickly as what I have without the advice that he gives me off the field as well.
“Luke is also a huge part of what’s balanced me as a human, especially over the last two years. He’s so supportive of me.
“Just having that person to rely on and have something else to focus on has added something to my life that I was missing previously.”
Originally published as Sharni Layton on the gruelling regime she’s undertaken to improve her footy