Graham Alexander has been delighted to see his players buy into his new training set-up as he continues trying to push the club up the Scottish Premiership table.
The former Salford boss and assistant Chris Lucketti arrived at Fir Park with fresh ideas on how to structure the day and he was encouraged to see players were already keen to spend much of their time working on their fitness and performance.
Motherwell are looking to get back to winning ways at Kilmarnock on Wednesday following a 2-1 defeat at Celtic Park and delays in getting through the snow to train indoors were of little consequence.
"We have done a lot of thinking, not just since we came in, but during Covid with my previous club we had numerous Zoom calls with the staff talking about our structure and how we improve," Alexander said.
"We train in the afternoons instead of the mornings to coincide generally with most kick-off times. We do gym sessions every day rather than the traditional one or two a week.
"It's not to say anything else is wrong but we did a lot of research into it and talked to a lot of people outside football coaches about it. We included players in those discussions at the previous club.
"We felt we had to come in and go with what we wanted to do straight away and that's what we did. It's been pretty clear for the players and the players have responded to it really well."
Alexander quickly realised his players were adaptable.
The former Scotland international added: "It's important the players buy into all your structure and ideas but we don't do things on a whim and just on feeling.
"We always have to make evidence-based decisions and there's a lot of evidence around why we do what we do, over so many different aspects of the day.
"We just couldn't think of a reason why training started at a time of day which you don't play at. We tried to find the reason and we couldn't, apart from tradition.
"And I'll be honest, even when we continued as before for the first week and trained at half 10, the players were still here at three in the afternoon anyway, working in the gym and doing bits and pieces. They were here for a full day's work, which was brilliant for us.
"That's when we decided we can go with changing the training programme to what we want to do.
"The players don't have to get in until 10 but people like Allan Campbell are in at eight anyway. You can't get him away from the place, he loves it.
"I love it when players really enjoy being in the environment of football, it's a good sign your club is in a good place. We know we need to improve on results and our position but the general environment is a good one."
Alexander played more than 1,000 games during his career, embarked on his international career in his 30s, made his Premier League debut at the age of 37 and was still playing for Preston at the age of 41.
"As a manager, you have to continue learning and have an open mind," he said. "If you just go along saying 'this is how we have always done it', I don't think you will last very long in football.
"I certainly had to make changes in my playing career to continue my career as long as I did. I didn't stay the same professional as I was when I was 25. I would have been finished by 32.
"So I made changes in my playing career to win and be successful."
