AFL Draft Combine tests
The AFL Draft Combine battery is the reference point every serious Australian footballer knows, which makes it the most useful set of benchmarks in the country even if you will never be drafted. If your club tests you, it almost certainly tests some version of this.
The AFL Draft Combine physical battery centres on a 2km time trial, a 20m sprint, standing and running vertical jumps, an agility test and a repeat-sprint test. Jumps and sprints are run fresh; endurance goes last.
Run in the wrong order it measures fatigue rather than speed — which is the most common mistake clubs make when copying the battery.
The point of the test
A deliberately broad picture: aerobic capacity, acceleration, vertical power off one leg and two, agility and repeat-effort ability. No single test is the point — the profile is.
Why it is in the Train Smart battery: Because it profiles a footballer across every physical quality the game asks for, and because clubs, coaches and recruiters all already speak its language.
How to run it
The battery is run over a session with full recovery between tests, in a fixed order: jumps and sprints while fresh, endurance last. Running the 2km first and the sprints after it would measure fatigue, not speed.
- What you need
- A track or oval · Timing gates ideally, a stopwatch at minimum · A Vertec or marked wall · Cones
What is in it
| Test | What it measures | |
|---|---|---|
| 2km time trial | Aerobic capacity — the engine that carries four quarters. | Protocol → |
| 20m sprint | Acceleration over the distance most contests are decided in. | Protocol → |
| Running vertical jump | One-foot take-off out of movement — the marking contest. | Protocol → |
| Standing vertical jump | Two-foot power with no run-up. | Protocol → |
| Repeat-sprint ability | Whether the speed lasts into the last quarter. | Protocol → |
What is a good score?
We are not going to publish a precise-looking table for this test. Reported ranges vary too much with protocol, equipment, level, age and sex for a single table to be honest, and most of the tables in circulation for it are uncited copies of each other.
The comparison that actually changes your training is against your own last score. That is not a consolation prize — it is what the monitoring literature supports, and it is what Train Smart does: re-test every eight weeks under the same conditions and let the trend, not the percentile, drive the program. The papers behind that are here.
What people get wrong
Most of the variation between two tests is protocol, not fitness. These are the faults that make one score incomparable to the last.
- Running the tests in the wrong order.
- Jumps and sprints fresh, endurance last. Reversing it makes every speed and power number worse for a reason that has nothing to do with the athlete.
- Testing a whole battery in one go with no recovery.
- Full recovery between tests, or you are measuring fatigue resistance across all of them.
- Training the combine instead of the game.
- The battery exists to describe a footballer. An athlete who trains only for the tests improves the tests.
How to actually move the number
The battery covers five qualities that do not all improve at once — and trying to peak all of them simultaneously is the classic mistake. The order that works:
- Off-season and early pre-season: aerobic base and maximal strength. These take the longest and everything else sits on them.
- Mid pre-season: speed and power, trained fresh with full recovery, on top of the base you just built.
- Late pre-season: repeat-effort work, which is where the base and the speed get combined.
That sequencing is not a suggestion — it is the whole reason Train Smart periodises by season phase. A program that trains everything every week improves nothing in particular.
AFL Draft Combine tests — questions
What tests are in the AFL Draft Combine?
Do I need to do the combine tests if I play community footy?
How often should I test the full battery?
Related tests and guides
2km time trial
The aerobic benchmark every Australian footballer has been made to run. What the times mean, how to pace it, a…
Open20m sprint test
The 20m sprint measures acceleration — the distance most of a game is run over. Protocol, indicative times, th…
Openrunning vertical jump
A short run-up, one-foot take-off, measured off standing reach. Protocol, what the gap to your standing jump m…
OpenKnow your number. Now train for it.
Train Smart re-tests you every eight weeks on your sport’s own battery — and the results re-price your training weights and reset your conditioning paces automatically.
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