Torture of the ice age gave us faith

DON’T tell me or any of the boys from 2011 that the players in the Welsh squad training for the World Cup are having a hard time of it. Hoods, splashes of water in their faces and carrying logs on long marches – luxury!

- SHANE WILLIAMS

For me, Warren Gatland has gone soft by not taking them to Spala, in Poland. Now that was real torture... but it worked.

The Welsh players are off to train at altitude in Switzerland for the next two weeks and I’m sure they will be pushed to their limits. These are the days when you work harder than ever before to build up your physical and mental toughness. I don’t think I was ever fitter in my life than I was going into the 2011 World Cup. We all felt indestructible!

I don’t think anyone preparing for a World Cup is going to shy away from hard work. You are ready to push your body beyond normal limits because the prize is so great. But what Gats exposed us to in Poland took us to places we had never ever imagined we could go to. For those who don’t recall what it was all about, it involved twice daily sessions in a cryotherapy chamber that took you into a small room in which the temperature plunged to minus 184F (-120C).

The army instructors who put the ‘Class of 23’ through their paces recently had nothing on the professor who closed the door on us as we stepped into the icy chamber at the Olympic Sports Centre in central Poland. For the record, the temperatures were around minus 30C lower than the coldest ever recorded on Earth. Freezing!